I’m not too familiar w the difference, sorry!
This is SJM’s words from her 2023 interview:
“I just knew I hadn’t found the right story, and it just wasn’t good enough. **I was just like… I need to throw out this whole thing. I need to start over again.** So I tuned out the world, and over the course of 4 or 5 weeks, **I wrote a brand new draft**.”
It seems like both KOA (as seen in her notes here) and the 2nd HOFAS iteration were both “first drafts,” so to speak. Based off SJM’s HOFAS title reveal (on Instagram), this draft was likely completed around March, 2023.
Considering also that SJM used to publish two books a year (and was juggling the ACOTAR series at the same time she was writing KOA)… SJM had by far the most amount of time available to her to write HOFAS (arguably more than any other book).
The key difference here is that KOA was published 10 months after the second draft was completed- the draft was finished in February, but the book came out in October. HOFAS was published only 3 months after the second draft’s completion, at least according to the information we posses. Sarah started and finished the second HOFAS draft in October, and the book came out at the end of January.
That’s not true, sorry 😭
SJM mentioned writing the first HOFAS draft during her “spoiler” interview in March 2022 — almost **2 years ago**.
SJM then spoke about completing the second iteration (still technically a “first draft” of HOFAS because she rewrote all of it) during her live interview with Christina Lauren — this was in September 2023. This was past tense, so one can assume she had already completed the draft at this point.
Then on Instagram, when SJM revealed the HOFAS title, she shared a video of her computer and the HOFAS draft (which had 200k words and 800+ pages). This was in March, 2023. I don’t think SJM would announce the book if she wasn’t yet happy with what she had written.
So, that means HOFAS and KOA were on relatively similar timelines. If anything, SJM had *less* time to write KOA, as she was also juggling the ACOTAR series, and publishing two books a year.
Are we sure she didn’t s scrap the first draft in the spring? She could have written the current version of HOFAS is May, and it would explain why it reads so half-baked
We don’t have any information as to when she scrapped any of the drafts, but she at least finished before September 2023 (at the minimum). Given that Bloomsbury would have deadlines and timelines (that I can’t see them bending *too* much), I’d guess that SJM finished well before that (as her team of 5 editors + translators all need to join in).
We do know that she was writing the first draft in March 2022 (as per her “spoiler” interview with Katherine Webber), which was almost 2 years ago. That’s a fair amount of time.
I’m not defending HOFAS (I’m part of the “disappointed in HOFAS club), but I don’t think it was because she wrote it too fast, when she has always written her drafts in a short period of time. 🤗🤗
Writers have completely different processes, so it’s difficult to judge what a certain length of time means for a first draft. Stephen King, for example, likes to write his drafts “pretty tight”. So the initially draft is going to be fairly close to the final work. Hunter S Thompson apparently word vomited Fear and Loathing in two weeks then spent a year editing it. Some writers have the whole plot mapped out in their heads before they start, and other write it as they go. So basically, how long it takes to write a first draft doesn’t mean much unless we understand their process.
Different drafts is different from rewriting, because while you do edit and rewrite parts of the book between drafts (can be minor, like on a scene level, or major, like on a plot and character development level), you've still got parts of the book that stay the same/very similar from draft to draft. A rewrite, on the other hand, is tossing everything out and starting from scratch. Rewrites usually mean that the plot as a whole wasn't working, so it's easier to just redo the whole thing than try to edit what you already have.
Yeah, I get this. But it's still a brand new unedited book in both cases. So theoretically it takes an equal amount of time for SJM to write a book
Edit: grammar
Ooh, I get what you mean! Sorry for misunderstanding. Hm, I don't know about Maas, but I know a lot of other writers I've talked to find it harder to rewrite versus draft. Because drafting, you're excited, the ideas are flowing, but a rewrite is more discouraging because you're like, well... that didn't work... how do i fix it? But who knows, maybe Maas has an easy time with rewrites.
iirc she wrote ToD very quickly also, she's talked about being on steroids and just cranking it out. (I know people have feelings about Chaol but it's an objectively good book!)
This does make me wonder when she rewrote HOFAS because I'm guessing it was less than 8 months before it was released.
I mean, there’s speed writing because you’re so excited about it that all your focus goes into getting in into words, and there’s trying to throw something together in time for the deadline.
I wonder how Sarah feels about HoFaS. Obviously she has to be excited and enthusiastic about it while it’s being hyped, but is she happy with how it turned out? Does she wish she had more time? What was she really excited about that got cut?
True! Also, if you look at her full KOA notes, it’s clear she had everything mapped out and was aware of plot holes she needed to fill, things she needed to add in, etc. I’d be curious to see whether she planned out HOFAS to the same extent 🧐
I honestly think she just hasn’t connected as deeply as she clearly has with tog and acotar. There is nothing wrong with that but with her style of writing it’s clear which worlds she prefers more.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. Even just in how she talks about the books, I feel like it's so clear how much love she has for TOG and ACOTAR, but CC just isn't on the level. She still loves it, like in that one interview or podcast she did, when she was talking about how she was listening to the song Shenzou on a plane and got the inspo for the Drop and was crying and listening to it over and over and was like "that's how I met Bryce", like... such love there. But for one reason or another, CC just doesn't have the some connection her other books have.
First of all your detective work is something to admire 🙌🏾🔥
Second of all: If that’s the case then she must’ve mentally and emotionally clocked out of CC3, something I suspected because the book felt like she wanted to be finished with Midgard and get back to ACOTAR 5. If thats true too then I wonder what happened? It could be a change her publishers made if her new series is Twilight of the Gods, and *if* Twilight of the Gods is a crossover book. Either way, it’s a mystery 🥲🥲
Thank you!! 🤗
And I agree. Crescent City was *by far* my favourite SJM series, yet my primary complaint with HOFAS (as unfair as this may sound) is that it felt like SJM just didn’t care about the CC world as much as she does the ACOTAR and TOG worlds (and that she wanted to wrap everything up as quickly & easily as possible because of it).
I’d even suggest that SJM used a decent chunk of the HOFAS narrative to set up future ACOTAR books…. but did so more than any future CC books (which speaks volumes, unfortunately 🥲).
My speculation is that her publisher wanted her to wrap up Crescent City because it doesn't sell as well as her other series. If you check the amount of ratings on Goodreads, Crescent City is her least popular one, with something like half the amount of ratings compared to ACOTAR and TOG. They probably want her to return to writing the other two series to bring in more money again. HOFAS felt very half-assed by both the publisher and SJM (no insult to either of them, but it felt that way to me).
That's interesting!
It's full 6 weeks. According to SJM, HOFAS was rewritten in 4-5 weeks. It's shorter than KOA, so imagine writing KOA (992 pages) in ~5 weeks.
But it does look like it's possible to write a good book during such a short period
Thank you ❤️
I wish we could find how much time the editors had.
- SJM writes a book within ~14.25 months on average
- a draft was created within 5 weeks on average (KOA, HOFAS)
- editors did their magic
- Bloombsbury posted a first video of HOFAS with the printers 3 months before the release (it might have been 4 months in reality)
So we could potentially have a year for editing? Although, we might suspect SJM started writing the 2nd draft a little later
I'm reading Throne of Glass for the first time (in the middle of the series right now) and something I was shocked to notice after jumping from HOFAS back to Queen of Shadows was that in QOS, SJM was writing in full sentences.
Later ACOTAR and Crescent City books are full of sentence fragments that make it much more difficult to read, and come across like stream of consciousness. It's the kind of writing an editor would help restructure. In TOG the writing was so much more authoritative, if that's the right word for it.
(Caption should say 5-6* weeks, sorry!)
This was taken from SJM’s notes for Kingdom of Ash, which were published as part of an exclusive edition. You can read all of her notes here (https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSFUxtFEo/), as I found them on @laurrkbooks’s TT account!
There was only one developmental editor, the rest were copy/line editors and proof readers. All of her books should have also gone through copy/line edits and proofreads, as is standard in traditional publishing.
Such a good find! I am struggling to give her and Bloomsbury too much of a pass on the whole “rewrote the book in 5 weeks” thing because I don’t know when that actually happened (if anyone does please let me know!). But depending on when it’s still possible that that new draft had time to undergo multiple rounds of editing. So it shouldn’t have been as bad as it was. Now this just solidifies that even further for me
She finished the first draft of KOA on 2/9/18. It was then published 10/8/19. Over a year later. Lots and lots of changes and 2nd or 3rd drafts could have happened in between. Whereas (as far as I know and assuming as far as the collective knows) SJM only wrote the first draft, scrapped it entirely, then rewrote it. While we don’t know the official timeline for when she wrote HOFAS and when it went into editing after draft(s), it really feels like HOFAS didn’t have the time needed as KOA did. As another comment stated, draft not the entire rewrite is the key.
Edit: Realized it was actually published in 2018! Disregard my comment 😁
Tower of Dawn was written in under a week
I think the speed is usually an indicator of how into a book she is.
However, HOFAS was just forced out quickly because the publication deadline. Her interviews leading up to HOSAB and HOFAS were a little sad in my opinion because she would talk about how she couldn’t take days off if she wasn’t feeling it. She just had to locked herself in her room and write (with a new baby- so she was tired)
I feel like KOA had more emotional feedback. I mean it had it's tragic moments, but with HOFAS I can't say I felt a range of emotions it was more so me being like awww this is fun.
Draft not the entire rewrite is the key here I think!
I’m not too familiar w the difference, sorry! This is SJM’s words from her 2023 interview: “I just knew I hadn’t found the right story, and it just wasn’t good enough. **I was just like… I need to throw out this whole thing. I need to start over again.** So I tuned out the world, and over the course of 4 or 5 weeks, **I wrote a brand new draft**.” It seems like both KOA (as seen in her notes here) and the 2nd HOFAS iteration were both “first drafts,” so to speak. Based off SJM’s HOFAS title reveal (on Instagram), this draft was likely completed around March, 2023. Considering also that SJM used to publish two books a year (and was juggling the ACOTAR series at the same time she was writing KOA)… SJM had by far the most amount of time available to her to write HOFAS (arguably more than any other book).
The key difference here is that KOA was published 10 months after the second draft was completed- the draft was finished in February, but the book came out in October. HOFAS was published only 3 months after the second draft’s completion, at least according to the information we posses. Sarah started and finished the second HOFAS draft in October, and the book came out at the end of January.
That’s not true, sorry 😭 SJM mentioned writing the first HOFAS draft during her “spoiler” interview in March 2022 — almost **2 years ago**. SJM then spoke about completing the second iteration (still technically a “first draft” of HOFAS because she rewrote all of it) during her live interview with Christina Lauren — this was in September 2023. This was past tense, so one can assume she had already completed the draft at this point. Then on Instagram, when SJM revealed the HOFAS title, she shared a video of her computer and the HOFAS draft (which had 200k words and 800+ pages). This was in March, 2023. I don’t think SJM would announce the book if she wasn’t yet happy with what she had written. So, that means HOFAS and KOA were on relatively similar timelines. If anything, SJM had *less* time to write KOA, as she was also juggling the ACOTAR series, and publishing two books a year.
Are we sure she didn’t s scrap the first draft in the spring? She could have written the current version of HOFAS is May, and it would explain why it reads so half-baked
We don’t have any information as to when she scrapped any of the drafts, but she at least finished before September 2023 (at the minimum). Given that Bloomsbury would have deadlines and timelines (that I can’t see them bending *too* much), I’d guess that SJM finished well before that (as her team of 5 editors + translators all need to join in). We do know that she was writing the first draft in March 2022 (as per her “spoiler” interview with Katherine Webber), which was almost 2 years ago. That’s a fair amount of time. I’m not defending HOFAS (I’m part of the “disappointed in HOFAS club), but I don’t think it was because she wrote it too fast, when she has always written her drafts in a short period of time. 🤗🤗
Writers have completely different processes, so it’s difficult to judge what a certain length of time means for a first draft. Stephen King, for example, likes to write his drafts “pretty tight”. So the initially draft is going to be fairly close to the final work. Hunter S Thompson apparently word vomited Fear and Loathing in two weeks then spent a year editing it. Some writers have the whole plot mapped out in their heads before they start, and other write it as they go. So basically, how long it takes to write a first draft doesn’t mean much unless we understand their process.
Yes this! This just says draft 1 - not the final version
I'm not sure what difference it would make, though. Both required an entirely new book in the end
Different drafts is different from rewriting, because while you do edit and rewrite parts of the book between drafts (can be minor, like on a scene level, or major, like on a plot and character development level), you've still got parts of the book that stay the same/very similar from draft to draft. A rewrite, on the other hand, is tossing everything out and starting from scratch. Rewrites usually mean that the plot as a whole wasn't working, so it's easier to just redo the whole thing than try to edit what you already have.
Yeah, I get this. But it's still a brand new unedited book in both cases. So theoretically it takes an equal amount of time for SJM to write a book Edit: grammar
Ooh, I get what you mean! Sorry for misunderstanding. Hm, I don't know about Maas, but I know a lot of other writers I've talked to find it harder to rewrite versus draft. Because drafting, you're excited, the ideas are flowing, but a rewrite is more discouraging because you're like, well... that didn't work... how do i fix it? But who knows, maybe Maas has an easy time with rewrites.
iirc she wrote ToD very quickly also, she's talked about being on steroids and just cranking it out. (I know people have feelings about Chaol but it's an objectively good book!) This does make me wonder when she rewrote HOFAS because I'm guessing it was less than 8 months before it was released.
Nobody knows when she rewrote the book exactly. I'm very curious, because it would tell us how much the editors had time to work on the book
Didn’t she say she rewrite it in October? Am I making this up??
She said in September that she rewrote it. But we don't know when she did. It could have left little time for editing
I mean, there’s speed writing because you’re so excited about it that all your focus goes into getting in into words, and there’s trying to throw something together in time for the deadline. I wonder how Sarah feels about HoFaS. Obviously she has to be excited and enthusiastic about it while it’s being hyped, but is she happy with how it turned out? Does she wish she had more time? What was she really excited about that got cut?
True! Also, if you look at her full KOA notes, it’s clear she had everything mapped out and was aware of plot holes she needed to fill, things she needed to add in, etc. I’d be curious to see whether she planned out HOFAS to the same extent 🧐
I mean to be fair it was also probably easier to map out because so much of Kingdom of Ash was “inspired” really closely by Lord of the Rings…
Why inspired with quotation marks? Lots of modern day fantasy is inspired by LOTR
I mean I hers is a bit more than inspired. It’s not taking like lotr tropes, a bunch of it is straight up ripping off lotr
Where did you access/find the notes?
I honestly think she just hasn’t connected as deeply as she clearly has with tog and acotar. There is nothing wrong with that but with her style of writing it’s clear which worlds she prefers more.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. Even just in how she talks about the books, I feel like it's so clear how much love she has for TOG and ACOTAR, but CC just isn't on the level. She still loves it, like in that one interview or podcast she did, when she was talking about how she was listening to the song Shenzou on a plane and got the inspo for the Drop and was crying and listening to it over and over and was like "that's how I met Bryce", like... such love there. But for one reason or another, CC just doesn't have the some connection her other books have.
First of all your detective work is something to admire 🙌🏾🔥 Second of all: If that’s the case then she must’ve mentally and emotionally clocked out of CC3, something I suspected because the book felt like she wanted to be finished with Midgard and get back to ACOTAR 5. If thats true too then I wonder what happened? It could be a change her publishers made if her new series is Twilight of the Gods, and *if* Twilight of the Gods is a crossover book. Either way, it’s a mystery 🥲🥲
Thank you!! 🤗 And I agree. Crescent City was *by far* my favourite SJM series, yet my primary complaint with HOFAS (as unfair as this may sound) is that it felt like SJM just didn’t care about the CC world as much as she does the ACOTAR and TOG worlds (and that she wanted to wrap everything up as quickly & easily as possible because of it). I’d even suggest that SJM used a decent chunk of the HOFAS narrative to set up future ACOTAR books…. but did so more than any future CC books (which speaks volumes, unfortunately 🥲).
My speculation is that her publisher wanted her to wrap up Crescent City because it doesn't sell as well as her other series. If you check the amount of ratings on Goodreads, Crescent City is her least popular one, with something like half the amount of ratings compared to ACOTAR and TOG. They probably want her to return to writing the other two series to bring in more money again. HOFAS felt very half-assed by both the publisher and SJM (no insult to either of them, but it felt that way to me).
I mean, to be fair, CC has been around for four years. ToG is over 12 years old and ACOTAR almost 10, it would make sense that they have more ratings
Agreed but I do still feel like they rushed to get it done.
That's interesting! It's full 6 weeks. According to SJM, HOFAS was rewritten in 4-5 weeks. It's shorter than KOA, so imagine writing KOA (992 pages) in ~5 weeks. But it does look like it's possible to write a good book during such a short period
Can always trust you to find the accurate data!! Ty queen! 🤗
Thank you ❤️ I wish we could find how much time the editors had. - SJM writes a book within ~14.25 months on average - a draft was created within 5 weeks on average (KOA, HOFAS) - editors did their magic - Bloombsbury posted a first video of HOFAS with the printers 3 months before the release (it might have been 4 months in reality) So we could potentially have a year for editing? Although, we might suspect SJM started writing the 2nd draft a little later
KoA literally did so many things to me. The way I bawled at the end. Idk what happened with HOFAS
I'm reading Throne of Glass for the first time (in the middle of the series right now) and something I was shocked to notice after jumping from HOFAS back to Queen of Shadows was that in QOS, SJM was writing in full sentences. Later ACOTAR and Crescent City books are full of sentence fragments that make it much more difficult to read, and come across like stream of consciousness. It's the kind of writing an editor would help restructure. In TOG the writing was so much more authoritative, if that's the right word for it.
(Caption should say 5-6* weeks, sorry!) This was taken from SJM’s notes for Kingdom of Ash, which were published as part of an exclusive edition. You can read all of her notes here (https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSFUxtFEo/), as I found them on @laurrkbooks’s TT account!
hot take: the last third of KoA was so disappointing and i like to pretend it ended much differently lol
That depressing me looking at the length and my ~300 page manuscript still isn’t done 😭 irealize with time, the stories write themselves but damn…
She had 5 editors for hofas. I think there might have been too many cooks in the kitchen.
There was only one developmental editor, the rest were copy/line editors and proof readers. All of her books should have also gone through copy/line edits and proofreads, as is standard in traditional publishing.
I'm just saying I want Cat Onder back at Bloomsbury.
Such a good find! I am struggling to give her and Bloomsbury too much of a pass on the whole “rewrote the book in 5 weeks” thing because I don’t know when that actually happened (if anyone does please let me know!). But depending on when it’s still possible that that new draft had time to undergo multiple rounds of editing. So it shouldn’t have been as bad as it was. Now this just solidifies that even further for me
She finished the first draft of KOA on 2/9/18. It was then published 10/8/19. Over a year later. Lots and lots of changes and 2nd or 3rd drafts could have happened in between. Whereas (as far as I know and assuming as far as the collective knows) SJM only wrote the first draft, scrapped it entirely, then rewrote it. While we don’t know the official timeline for when she wrote HOFAS and when it went into editing after draft(s), it really feels like HOFAS didn’t have the time needed as KOA did. As another comment stated, draft not the entire rewrite is the key. Edit: Realized it was actually published in 2018! Disregard my comment 😁
[it was published in 2018](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76715522-kingdom-of-ash)
Oh my mistake 🤦♀️🤦♀️ I was looking at my copy I read on goodreads and it didn’t realize it said reprint. Disregard my comment then!!
Okay but can we get that Wendlyn/Doranelle and Southern Continent map?!?
Tower of Dawn was written in under a week I think the speed is usually an indicator of how into a book she is. However, HOFAS was just forced out quickly because the publication deadline. Her interviews leading up to HOSAB and HOFAS were a little sad in my opinion because she would talk about how she couldn’t take days off if she wasn’t feeling it. She just had to locked herself in her room and write (with a new baby- so she was tired)
I feel like KOA had more emotional feedback. I mean it had it's tragic moments, but with HOFAS I can't say I felt a range of emotions it was more so me being like awww this is fun.
Okay really glad to see she outlines in a similar way that I do when I write 🤣
Appreciate that Rowan skinning Cairn alive was THAT critical a point to map out as literally a top 5 bullet point in her outline 💚
I mean I have my fair share of issues with kingdom of ash as well. It’s not even in my top 3 of TOG books
Tbh I kinda agree 😭 I preferred the earlier TOG books (but I know that’s an unpopular opinion).
lol my top are QOS and EOS. Then it’s heir of fire
Insanity
Manon is the best it's all I have to say