Jeez some of you write fast. I can do about 1100 words, maybe 1200 in 40 mins and thats alright for me, but I was slower on Friday I guess because of the exam booklets.
The length of your words makes a lot of difference as well. My creative was 1000 words but because I had lots of "I" and lots of shorter words compared to my essay, it only took 30 mins to write out, and my essay which was ~1300 took 45-50 mins.
I'm amazed at people who can write 1500, but a 1000 word response can get a band 6 so me writing 1100 words in 40 mins is decent. Its unfortunate the english exam is like this. It'd be much better off, imo, giving you like 4 hours (leave early if you want) and write a response 1000 words or less. Much more balanced all around, markers have an easier time reading and people aren't just gonna spew out everything they think of onto the paper, but spend time choosing whats most important.