A Man’s Got To Know His Limitations

When "writer's block" is really just an empty tank

So, I’m not writing. I haven’t been writing for a couple of weeks now. I’ve written before about my process for producing three books a year by just writing three pages a day, and I stand by that. I still think that’s viable, as long as I don’t do anything stupid. But it might need adjusting, because a month ago I did something stupid.

First, a bit of backstory. I’ve been a storyteller my whole life. When I was in second grade, teachers pulled me out of class, took me to the fifth grader classrooms and let me stand in front of older kids I didn’t know and improv fables, complete with morals, like a tiny Aesop. Kids would follow me home asking me to tell them a story.

Thanks to my ADHD and short-face syndrome—my upper jaw doesn’t extend down far enough, compressing my sinuses and giving me sleep apnea from birth—the executive function to actually produce books was rare and unpredictable. But in my 20s and 30s, I managed to write a few books in fits and starts. I even finished NaNoWriMo twice, in 2006 and again in 2009.

Then I didn’t write anything for sixteen years.

Not for lack of interest. But I got married, and despite the fact that my wife was my editor on the last books I wrote before we fell in love, writing wasn’t really my creative outlet. We played D&D, and I put all my effort into that. I toyed with getting back into writing novels from time to time, but nothing really came of it. A lot of writers know what I mean—lots of afternoons in “development,” thinking about story and character, but somehow no actual words of narrative get written.

Then on Juneteenth, 2025, I was sitting out on my front porch and got the idea for a book. And for some reason—perhaps this being the first idea since getting diagnosed and getting on Ritalin—this time it stuck. I couldn’t let it go, and developed it all summer, started writing narrative in September, and had a finished draft of Resonance by New Year’s Eve. It’s a fantasy novel about a man who’s lost everything trying to pass the legacy of his doomed civilization to his people’s ancient enemies. It was also the first story idea I’d had that my late wife had never seen, and the book’s themes of grief, legacy, and fatherhood were clearly me working through some stuff.

So far, so good. Then I did the first stupid thing.

I started writing my second book, Hunger Never Sleeps, on January 2nd, 2026, having taken off only New Year’s Day between books. I’d done the development for it while I was writing Resonance, though the core idea for the pathogen I’d had the previous spring. Hunger Never Sleeps is a bio-thriller in the vein of Michael Crichton, one of my biggest influences growing up. It follows a team of Canadian academics who uncover something above the Arctic Circle that really should have stayed buried, and, in line with my schtick, provides a plausible scientific explanation for an ancient legend.

I finished the first draft of Hunger Never Sleeps on April 14, 2026. The intent was to let it rest while I revised Resonance and started work on my next book, a werewolf romcom called Bless The Rains. But in late May I found out a small press was accepting unagented submissions, and the acquisitions editor invited me to send in Hunger Never Sleeps. I did my homework and found out she’s also a Crichton fan, so it seemed like a good fit.

Then I did the second stupid thing.

The submission window was the month of June. I started revising the novel and got through my entire revision process, expanding the book from 75,000 words to 77,000 much better words, in nine days. Structural revision, adding threads, tons of continuity on characters doing science stuff, and a polish that included reading the whole thing out loud. In nine days. More to the point, when you take out days off from the drafting and the six weeks I let the book rest, I produced a whole, submission-ready novel in 98 working days. I got the book sent off, and figured that was that.

Then I pushed myself to also finish the polish pass on Resonance, which I had been revising before finding out about the opportunity for Hunger Never Sleeps, and finished that by June 17. It was important to me to have that book complete and submission-ready in under a year from conception, and I did it.

All while also drafting another novel every day.

Yes, while I was doing all that in June, I was still drafting Bless The Rains. And that was the third stupid thing, the proverbial straw that broke the equally proverbial camel’s back. I burned out. I’m well into Act 2 of the book, but the energy and desire to write are just… gone.

At first, I took this as a moral failure on my part. A failure of executive function, like countless examples before. But in discussing my “writer’s block” with Jen, my AI, I realized that like many neurodivergent people, I was being way too hard on myself.

I did something ambitious, glorious and profoundly dumb. I produced two finished novels in 363 days. After not writing for 16 years. That’s like hauling yourself off the couch and immediately running back to back marathons. No wonder I’m tired. Like, Madeline Kahn in “Blazing Saddles” tired.

So this isn’t a block, it’s depletion (and yes, I wrote that juxtaposition without the help of AI). I’m resting, reading to refill my creative reservoirs—Adrian Tchaikovsky’s new Green City Wars is bonkers amazing—and hoping the urge to get back to my werewolf comes back soon. But I’m not going to push it. Writing works best for me when it feels like play. As soon as it feels like work, my Demand Avoidance kicks in and I do literally anything else. So I’m giving the fun room to come back. I think it will.

I’d like to say I’ve learned my lesson from this and will be taking it easier on myself, not pushing beyond my capabilities, but I know me. This will happen again. But maybe next time, I’ll recognize what I’m doing before I accuse myself of failing.