I just bought, and started to read, *From the Dust Returned * and noted that it took 55 years to write (1945-2000). My question–while trying, probably in futility, to avoid the question of whether or not *From the Dust Returned * is really a novel–is, what is the record longest time for one author writing a novel? For that matter, what is the shortest time?
Don’t know longest, but there are recorded cases of people writing novels over a weekend.
Lionel Fanthorp (a British science fiction writer famed for his ability to write fast) claims that he started one novel at 6 AM and got it in the mail to his publisher at 5 PM.
Just a comment about the OP’s post: it’s very hard to evaluate how long it took to write this particular “novel” since, like Martian Chronicles by the same author, * From the dust returned *is made up from a number of short stories that have been published over the years. The stories concern the same group of people, and filler was added in like mortar between the stories in order to tie them into a whole. Yes, I do know that this was not the answer you were seeking. However, I think that it is easier to answer your question about the shortest time in which a novel was written (WendellWagner’s reply is a case in point)than to determine what was the record longest time for one author writing one novel.
I think this is better suited to Cafe Society than GQ, so I’ll move it.
bibliophage
moderator GQ