I was turning out first drafts at a rate of four pages an hour, each page running over 250 words. That meant a little over thirty pages in an eight-hour day, or better than 8,000 words. At that rate, I could finish a 60,000-word story in less than eight days, but I never wrote one that mechanically. Usually I was slow in warming up or took a few too many breaks, so I felt lucky if I got beyond twenty pages on the first or second day. But once the story was rolling, & didn't care about the hours. With a few breaks, _ would work up to ten or even twelve hours a day, hitting as high as forty or even fifty pages.
I generally started around nine o'clock on the morning of the first day but seldom worked steadily until five or six o'clock. I might take the afternoon off and finish my stint in the evening; or go out in the evening and put in a few hours after I came in around midnight. In the latter case I wouldn't begin my second "day" until about noon, which would push the third "day" even further ahead. A few more hours of extra work would push the following "day" still further on, and there were times when I slept so late that I didn't start until early evening but kept going until the following dawn.