So someone asked me a really good question. "What N:Era chapter took you the longest to write", but alas I couldn't really give a straight answer.
Writing tends to be a somewhat amorphous process. Chapters aren't usually decided until rather later in the process for most writers, and instead there's a major focus on scenes. This is because scenes are you basic units of action through how the story is represented.
Personally, I lump up scenes based on how related they are and form the chapter. I might even have to assemble what scenes I want to group together, because I might look, and go "okay, well this scene is very calm and introspective about how to achieve alignment with the nine planets while in this scene people are setting off firecrackers in their heinies, so there's a mood shift." You obviously don't want a mood clash.
So with that being said, chapters usually don't even have a fully formed identity until way later.
That being said, a lot of times, some groups of scenes remain together and are less touched, and are more coherently linked. Not every revision completely re-arranges a scene. In these events, however, there's still no clear answer.
So going to how many revisions I go through, I usually do at least seven or so revisions before I get to the editing state. The editing state is a lot easier as all I do is comb through the wrong commas. The revision stage can be intensive because that goes to "overall structure" of the entire story, to structure of several scenes, to structure of a scene, and so on and so forth.
Between each revision, I like to take a small break to cleanse the palate and usually work on other projects. These breaks can last several weeks. And I like to do each revision as fresh as possible, but that usually takes me a couple days to do the rewrites.
Overall, I know each chapter of Call of the Wild took over a hundred days before being ready. This is possible because I work on many chapters at a time, and usually have a rough draft figured out.
Oh right, the question is what chapter took the longest.
I dunno. Call of the Wild's first chapter theoretically took over two years, so that's my best guess.
