How I went from a book every three years to three books a year
The first book I ever wrote, Between Heaven and Hell, was written in 1997. In 2000, I wrote Do Over!. In 2003, Mistaken Identity. In 2006, Homeworld. In 2009, Revelation. Then I stopped writing. I got married—to the editor I hired for Revelation—and we moved to playing Dungeons & Dragons for my creative outlet. But in my first writing career, I was remarkably consistent. A book every three years. Maybe not a professional pace (unless you’re George RR Martin), but respectable for an amateur.
My wife died in 2021. I stopped playing D&D, stopped doing anything creative. In 2025, on Juneteenth, I was sitting out on my porch in the sun trying to meditate. And suddenly I had my first story idea that she had never seen. I kind of got obsessed with it, and by New Year’s Eve I had an 83,000 word completed science fantasy manuscript, Resonance. Most of those first few months were worldbuilding and development, with the serious drafting starting in September.
On January second, I started another book, Hunger Never Sleeps, this one a contemporary scientific thriller. I finished the draft in mid-April.
Now I’m writing a third book, a werewolf romcom called Bless The Rains. I expect to have it done late July, early August.
After sixteen years of not writing fiction, how did I go from writing a book every three years to producing three books a year? I changed my relationship with writing.
In the Before Times, each book was a mountain to climb, a project. It became all consuming, and I kept thinking about how close I was to being done. Each book felt like running a marathon. It was intimidating. And when I finished each one—or abandoned them deep in the third act like Mistaken Identity and Homeworld—I felt a massive sense of relief that it was over. I was one of those writers who didn’t enjoy writing, only having written.
This time around, something is different. I don’t view writing as a series of projects, but as a process. In a sense, I don’t actually write books anymore. I write three pages a day, and books are a nice side effect.
That’s it. Three pages a day. No intimidating marathons staring down at me, just a daily walk. I actually average about 900 words a day no matter what I set my goal to, but three pages sits just under that, so I feel accomplished every day.
And that’s just drafting. While I was writing Hunger Never Sleeps, I was revising Resonance. I’m nearly done with that book, and it will go out for querying in August. I’m 10,000 words into Bless The Rains, and will start revising Hunger Never Sleeps in parallel. When I’m done with Bless The Rains, my next book is already waiting in the wings.
Each book probably takes about 9 months from concept to submission. But because they overlap, I produce about three a year, and see no reason why that won’t continue. Even with life lifing at me, I’ll probably still get two. That sounds like a lot, but each day, I’m only worried about getting my three pages, then doing a little revision or development of a different book. I probably spend a couple hours a day writing, and there’s no pressure at all. If I don’t get today’s three pages, I’ll try again tomorrow. I get them more often than not.
I don’t climb mountains anymore. I take a daily walk.
And that has made all the difference.
