Lessons from My Latest Novel, 2025 Edition

I wrote this one in a burst of inspiration. 

I wrote the novel Ogre Boss in one inspired month of dedicated work.

It’s the tenth novel I’ve written since 2015.

Every time I write a novel, I do so in a different way. 

Sometimes I force it. I start. I quit.

I start again. I quit again. 

I brainstorm new ideas. I crank out loglines for fun. I tell myself I should want to write a certain kind of novel. 

That “should” kills my interest.

I rebel against should.

I remind myself that the process is different every time. 

So I start. 

And I quit.

I finished my previous novel—the ninth, Work Order—last year in May. I’d written most of it in 2023, but I hit a wall. I was burnt out. I took a break for months. I needed time to imagine the final act. When I’d built up enough material, enough notes, enough of the world in my mind until it was bursting to get out, I sat down and wrote and finally finished the first full draft in May.

I needed another break. I took time off. I traveled. I made art. I caught up in my journal. I edited past manuscripts.

I’d left my teaching job in the spring of 2021. I’d told myself I was embarking on a writer’s sabbatical. I’d edit my novels and write new ones. But could I do it? 

Could I be my own task-master and sit my butt in the chair and get to work? 

I didn’t have a week off. I didn’t have a summer off. 

I had a whole year off.

Could I gaze upon the luxury of a free year and resist the urge to gambol upon the open plains?

What if I just took one day off from writing? What’s the harm in taking one week off? Hell, why not a month? I have time, don’t I?

Could I resist the temptations to sleep in, to make another pot of coffee, to binge a show, to try a new recipe, to read just one more book, to go to the gym, to play the drums, to check the news, to post online, to write in my journal, to sketch in my sketchbook—to do all those things I do to put off sitting my butt in the chair and getting to work?

 Turns out, yes, I can. 

I can resist the temptations.

I can sit my butt in the chair. 

I can outline a story on big sheets of paper. I can spend a day naming characters. I can sit at my laptop. I can open the doc on my phone and reread what I’ve written. I can plot out the major beats in a fancy lined journal. I can use colored pencils to gussy up my outline. I can draw an updated outline on a fresh sheet of paper using a ruler and pens and those colored pencils. 

I can lower the bar to entry. If I’m not in the mood for sitting at my desk and opening my laptop—so official, a bit daunting—I can change my circumstances to a more casual setting. I can kick back in a recliner and open my iPad and sneak into the novel manuscript by assuring myself I don’t have to write a whole chapter. I can just type in one sentence, one note, one idea. 

I’m not Writing, with a capital W. I’m scribbling, with a sneaky little s—and the s stands for sweatpants.

So I wrote two novels in 2021, another in 2022, another in 2023-24, and . . . that was pretty good. That was four novels in four years. 

I was productive enough that I extended my sabbatical, which was less about time off from teaching and more about time on for writing. 

(Also, it was less of a sabbatical and more of an unemployment, although it’s weird to say I’ve been unemployed during the years I’ve written five novels and two nonfiction books. I’m self-employed, with the delay in remuneration that artists experience.)

So this year, after finishing Work Order in May, I needed another oasis for my imagination. I needed a break. I slept until ten and made Counter Culture coffee and watched the white egrets tiptoe grandly in the pond. I made art and traveled and visited family. I tried new recipes, and I hit the gym four days a week.

And then I put my back out. 

And then I got sick. I was fatigued and foggy-headed for three weeks. 

And then I got Covid.

I was even more fatigued and foggy-headed, and that lasted two weeks. I tested negative relatively quickly, thanks to Paxlovid, and I made it to my brother’s wedding in Brooklyn in early December.

And then I put my back out, again . . . but after sleeping on the floor for five days, I felt the fog lift.

I had my brain back. 

Let me rephrase that. 

I had my brain back!

I felt fantastic. I was clear-headed. I could think. I could remember. 

I could imagine.

I hadn’t written fiction in over six months. I hadn’t felt like it. During that time, the well had been dry. My brain had been muddy. The chain had come loose off the gear. 

I’d felt the pressure of should, because I was taking this time off, this writer’s sabbatical, and I felt I should always be writing the next novel. Not writing felt like failure. Not writing felt like giving in to all those temptations.

I’d been sick and foggy-headed for so long, cut off, in a way, from my own imagination, that it was like I’d been in hibernation.

I’d been in Imagination Hibernation for over six months.

When I emerged, shaggy and squinting against the light, I was refreshed in such an animated way that I wrote the first act of a novel—nearly 7,000 words—in two days. And I kept going.

Writing this novel was like biking downhill. I stood on the pedals and coasted.

That was the feeling. The reality was I had the tools to write a new novel quickly because I’d had the experience of writing nine novels in the last ten years. I’d been developing my tools, templates, and strategies even more during the four years of my sabbatical. 

So when inspiration struck, I was ready. 

I knew my acts, I knew my beats, and I knew my scenes. I knew my unique DNA as a writer: I write stories about the positive transformation of a self-aware hero, with a twist of fantasy or futurism.

Writing Ogre Boss, I was in my wheelhouse. I was writing a novel about a self-aware hero with twists of fantasy and futurism.

I’d even taken my own recent advice about starting with an antagonist who presents the hero with a daunting task (see “Hero Work,” Parts 1, 2, and 3). I’d envisioned ogremen, handsome giants in velour tracksuits, who were smashing into the institutions of a cartoonishly dystopian America.

It was great fun because I’d been training for this, and I’d had some great time off. I was fired up while it was ten degrees outside—a cold, dreary, snowy Michigan winter. So I kicked back in my recliner and opened my iPad on my desk pillow and started typing, with the glee of a drummer alone in the studio.

I had ten years of experience. I had six months of hibernation. I wrote a novel in one month of inspiration.

Writing a novel is a different process every time. 

And now comes the part that’s the same every time.

The editing.

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