I’m Starting My Next Novel!

Every fiction writer does things differently. Despite some work ethics being more universally approved, I recognize the difficulties with maintaining a productive schedule over the course of years and decades. Most of us will be fortunate enough to have one great idea elaborated into a short story or novel. The more prolific may never stop to the point that no sensible person could read all of their material in a year. Whoever you are, I remain supportive of the very act of putting pen to a pad, fingers to a keyboard, and (even though I don’t understand it) a voice to a recorder for notetaking. There are so many ways to get things moving, and I felt like today was a good day to share something…

I am officially starting my next novel, temporarily titled Novel4! Maybe it’s because I suffer from the paranoia drilled into me by the publish or perish crowd, but since releasing “Apples & Chainsaws”  in 2019, I have been nervous about going too long without a project. Maybe it won’t have a regimented schedule, but there needs to be this sense of my brain remaining overactive. It may be why 2025 featured over a dozen short stories along with hundreds of blog entries. As a writer, I need to stay busy and, while I am not wishing to suggest that what I’m creating is solely to soothe my demons, that includes not sitting without an outline for a novel for too long.

For three books now, I have basically conceived of the next project during the editing stages of my previous' official releases. I don’t know how to say it other than I get stuck in the mindset of, “What if this is it?” I’m aware that I tend to publish a couple of short stories in this time, but do I have it in me to explore a 300-page journey ever again? The answer is, of course, yes, but in that time before something goes from gelatinous to a solid, it’s easy to think that your best ideas are behind you. Brian De Palma once said in a documentary that people only cared about the filmmaker’s work from their 20s and 30s. What are the chances that I fade into irrelevance? I think of those suffering from writer’s block or getting caught up in research to the point that it takes two decades to publish a book (I’m looking at you, James Joyce). As much as I love these writers and think their meticulousness is part of what makes them essential, it scares me to think that a day of writing passes and I only have a paragraph. I can rework or delete it later, but there needs to be a feverish drive, a stream of conscious curiosity keeping me going to know that things are working out. Some days I hit a wall, sure, but I like to think that happens after a bit and not directly at the word “Go!”

Which is all to say that Novel4 seems to be working on a similar timeline to “Lava Lamp.” To pull back the curtain, I had a few setbacks with that one because I was wrapped up in the final year of university, where I was avidly studying Virginia Woolf while making sure to get all of my credits in check. If anything, I realize in hindsight how much “Lava Lamp” speaks to that academic drive because, as emotional as I made it, there’s also some high-intellect corkboard theorizing in there. Without delving too far into Novel4, I’m designing it as a companion piece, albeit in a less heady way. 

In what may or may not be an omen, I also found it difficult to jump from the outline phase to what I’m about to embark on. The idea for outlining is usually to have it done in the shortest time frame. Given that I worked on it for roughly six months in 2025, I believed it should’ve been further along. Instead, it was mostly either working on other projects or just fixating on small moments. Even with the idea that “I’ll get it done in January!” or February or March, it seemed to be stalled in the congealing stage, where everything at least looked coherent. 

I’ve gone forward with novels before without a steady draft, but those often had to be restarted in under 50 pages. “Downtime” is an example where my shift from the opening action to the inciting incident at a train station happened in a quarter of the time. They felt more like caricatures, and I wouldn’t say there was too much pathos at play. I’m not wishing to say I need to know every step my characters take before typing my first word, but I have to understand their identity on an instinctive level. Basically, I know where I want to go, but my mind will latch onto a stray idea and need to expand upon it. I need to have integrity when throwing them into conversations or actions I came up with on the spot… and I plan for that to happen A LOT every time. Even if I’m collecting a backstory that is never used, it can create subtext and mystery that enhances their presence on the page.

There’s no better story for why Novel4 is taking longer to reach a stage I expected for January. I’m not in any university classes that can wash away my excuses. If there’s anything I could fall back on, it’s that I chose to also compile my first short story collection since 2020, based largely on work I’ve composed since then. Given that today is the sixth anniversary of that unceremonious “April Fool’s Day (but it’s also the Pandemic)” release for “Esoteric Shapes,” it feels fitting to say this much: my next collection is currently locked in on 20 stories with a planned release for Fall 2026. I’m hopeful that it will be better received, though that may just be ego talking and my general belief that I’m always a better writer than I was five years ago. A lot of my focus was on rereading and editing potential pieces before settling on the line-up that I believe will make the most sense together. 

So yes, I could say I’ve been a little distracted from completing the outline. Even so, I’m grateful to admit that despite these concerns, it has been helpful to the overall process. At least 15% of the scenes were not yet realized, and most set pieces simply existed without context. It’s true that this tends to make sense of itself when you do a thorough outline, but you become intimidated by what’s not clicking to the point you have to wonder if you’re wasting time. I have thankfully not had that on a novel level yet, but it’s another concern, especially when Novel4 took three extra months to figure itself out. Then again, it allowed me to build character and develop moments that I think are far more endearing than if I had rushed into action. 

This is the fun part. A lot of people will suggest it’s tedious (and it is), but writing the first draft is the point where every piece of excessive ideas gets to fall on the page and create the building block for an eventual final draft. Given that I removed over 120 pages for “Lava Lamp” and 100 for “Apples & Chainsaws,” I’m going to do my best not to take the bloat personally. If anything, this is the point where you shouldn’t be self-conscious about inconsistencies. It’s about getting every idea on the page, whether it makes sense or not. Having something out there makes it easier to clear your head and visualize what you think actually makes sense.

At the same time, I recognize the impatience we all have to get things done. Why write unless you are curious to see what the finished project looks like? To me, the effort is what will always make it feel unique to you, where you can hold it and notice that your years of laboring over a keyboard amounted to something, whether it’s a bestseller or not. For me, it’s less about fame and more about recognizing that there’s another thing that I’ve contributed to the world that lets them know who I was as a writer. There may be more accessible texts circling this very moment, but none are like mine. Ideally, there’s a decent middle ground where people still like my prose, but art is subjective. Sometimes you just have to take pride in tangential things, like releasing a book the same year as Thomas Pynchon. It means nothing, but the coincidence makes me smile, given how much I like his work.

The worst thing about this stage, besides keeping every idea straight, is the trick of your brain mistaking the labor for quality. I think back to “Lava Lamp” and certain passages that took me longer to write. In my head, those were the “boring” parts, the ones that add very little substance to the story. And yet, to reread it within context is to see that you’re maybe thinking about being tired or having a bad day prior to that paragraph. I’m not wishing to suggest everything I wrote in a disgruntled state is still in there, but there’s a need for flexible intuition here, and I think most writers will have it even if they don’t immediately recognize it. 

Part of me has considered expanding this announcement out into a regular column in an effort to connect with audiences. However, I find that my parasocial behavior is at best flimsy, and I don’t have the hustle mentality to always be engaging with people. I tried that in 2020 and found my fragile psyche falling apart underneath it. I do hope to keep myself open to personal exchanges if anyone wants to discuss literature or how to get started writing, but I can’t be out there 24/7. I need to be fixing my outline and getting things done in a timely manner. 

With that said, this next part may be more streamlined than the procrastination I had around the outline. Given that I tend to write a chapter each session (Novel4 is currently scheduled for 31 chapters), I have to imagine that eight months will be enough time to get that first draft into my folder. I’m not making promises, but it has been a reliable measure in the past. From there, I’m going to edit until it makes sense with an ideal release of 2028 or 29. As you can guess, this tends to take a while. I haven’t had anything take longer than five years yet, so fingers crossed on that… though I always wonder if I will one day become the meticulous writer I mock and hold out for better ideas. 

For now, I proudly take to the keyboard and write my first paragraphs. Whether it’s a page or 10, today’s all about starting. It almost doesn’t matter how far along things get because it at least means that I was serious enough to try. Once I start, I have to continue that journey until I recognize the endpoint. Given how clear the path forward looks this time around, it should be happy trails for the foreseeable future.