How can we handle questions asking, “how long will it take to write X?”

Question

We've had a few questions asking for an estimate of how long it'll take to write so many words, or a novel. Clearly, if an exact duplicate is asked, we'll close it as such, but I don't think questions of this nature are really all that helpful. But maybe others do?

There aren't that many yet, but I suspect they'll continue to accumulate.

• Are these good questions? How should we answer them?
• Should we come up with a tag for these?
• At what point do we consider these duplicates? Should we encourage more general answers that explain how to estimate the time it'll take to generate text?

Answer 1

These are practically the definition of Your Mileage May Vary. It's a question which can't be answered. Even the same writer is not going to turn out equal-sized books in the same period of time; book 1 will be harder, book 2 may be easier, book 3 may take twice as long as book 1 because the plot changed.

They should be closed.

Answer 2

This kind of question looks way too broad to me.

Each person is different, each story is different.

If you are passionate you may write a romance in 2 weeks, if you write half a page per day in a year, the answerer cannot really tell without reading the asker's mind.