Unless absolutely necessary, I basically never take leave. Even when I'm swamped, I'll still carve out time to write two thousand words.
I'm getting old, and my writing efficiency has become extremely low. Other people can write three thousand words in an hour; I can manage at most one thousand. When I have time, I write six thousand words a day and upload four thousand, saving the rest as drafts. When I'm busy, I use those saved drafts so I don't have to take leave.
But often, the saved drafts are gone after barely two days. I'm in my thirties—right when there are the most things to deal with.
For a while, I tried writing three thousand words per chapter, three chapters a day, and keeping one chapter as a saved draft. Before long, I couldn't keep writing anymore, because I didn't even have time to draft the detailed outline for what came next. I was just forcing myself to write according to the basic outline, and it turned into a complete mess. I was exhausted every day, too.
Four thousand words is the best. On average, that means about four hours of writing a day, one hour of revision and voice-input corrections, then another hour spent refining the detailed outline for the upcoming plot.
The detailed outline for this book is really grinding me down. The protagonist's position is what it is, and only now do I understand why leveling novels are always about fighting monsters and killing people. They really are easy to write that way—you can kill whoever you want, and it's both satisfying and easy to write.
That's all. I really don't like writing these little explanatory essays.