How I Wrote Eight Novels in a Year: And Why I Suggest You Shouldn't Try

 

How I Wrote Eight Novels in a Year: And Why I Suggest You Shouldn't Try

Writing eight novels in a year sounds like an impossible feat—and honestly, it probably should be. What started as a challenge fueled by curiosity and AI-assisted brainstorming turned into an all-consuming obsession. I found ways to optimize my writing speed, eliminate writer’s block, and make creativity feel automatic. But I also pushed myself to the edge of burnout.

Here’s what I learned along the way:

• Find your system and optimize it. A structured routine, a reliable keyboard, and tracking word counts kept me on pace.
• Use AI as a tool, not a crutch. ChatGPT helped with plotting and logistics, but it couldn’t replace my voice.
• Turn writing into a game. Treating my novels like puzzles and tracking my progress kept me engaged.
• Burnout is real—pace yourself. Chasing high word counts at all costs led to months of mental exhaustion.
• Work on multiple projects to stay unstuck. When one book stalled, another kept me moving forward.

If you want to write more—and better—without hitting a creative wall, keep reading. I’ll break down exactly how I did it, what worked, what didn’t, and why I’ll never do it again.

Let's Get Started

Look at that tagline. It sounds pretty unbelievable, right? Eight novels in 365 days (350 actually, but who's counting?) Am I bragging? Not really. When I reached five and saw my projections, yes, I wanted to brag. The most I'd ever written was just over one in a year. Even though I could finish a novel in two to three months, getting another done from idea creation to plotting to research felt impossible. Many people think writing consists of brainstorming and typing. But that's only about 60% of the work. The other forty is what needs to be streamlined and perfected if you want to write more than one book in a year. So, how did I do it? It was a multi-faceted approach that changed the way I worked in every aspect of my life.

After finishing the eight novels, I can tell you it's a fantastic accomplishment but one I won't ever do again. I border on obsessive with work and numbers and accomplishments so this endeavor took over my life in some ways. It was borne out of a dare and curiosity and a burst of work creativity I might never experience again. I also broke my brain near the end and am still dealing with the after effects a few months out. Still, I learned a lot about productivity and what works for me in terms of workload. Read on to see if you can score a few tips that turn on your creativity and productivity machines and get those ideas on paper. I think this strategy works for any sort of writing; you may only need to move the priorities around a little.

Eight Books in a Year: The Genesis

It all started with the explosion of generative AI. The first LLMs (those are the chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini) were impressive but they didn't threaten creative writing. They could write but it was clearly not human and pretty awful. Then, in early 2023, models could craft a decent story when prompted correctly. I wanted to see the abilities and limitations so I tinkered with using AI to help me edit a novel that had gone stagnant. Like most drafts, the first edits from ChatGPT looked great. I went through that whole novel and 'fixed' what was wrong and found the plot progression I'd lost. 

Then I reread the novel. It became clear ChatGPT was not ready. The scenes 'edited' by the chatbot stood out, and not in a good way. The ideas worked, the delivery did not. And the writing? Oof. It sounded like a teenager mimicking Chandler on a bad day. Despite my requests to avoid noir, the GPT writing dripped with it. It was worse than 'It was a dark and stormy night' at every turn. I stepped away for a bit, editing that novel here and there on my own, going back to the draft before any GPT additions. I used ChatGPT for mapping things out and plot logistics, but only sparingly.

When the next model came out, I tried again. I'd read this one had enhanced writing and reasoning capabilities. Frustrated with my stagnant writing and curious about this new model, I embarked on a few quests. The first was a screenplay. I created my own custom GPT and fed it some scripts, instructing it to only look at conventions and structure. Since I never intended to publish any of the scripts I wasn't worried about copyright so much, looking at this as akin to my reading scripts as texts for a college scriptwriting class I took in graduate school. The results were...better. The new model followed my instructions more closely and the writing felt more like my own. Through this process I didn't just take ChatGPT's writing and put it into the screenplay. I edited about 50% of it, maybe more. Despite the improvement, this project ended near the middle.

Then, one day, I decided to co-write a novel with ChatGPT. This was October 2023. I wanted to write a dual-narrative novel with my main character and his wife as narrators. I'd never written from the wife's perspective before so I tasked ChatGPT with those sections. Work progressed quickly. In two weeks, I'd finished half the novel (word count-wise). I decided to read through it. And, to my happy surprise, I wrote far better than ChatGPT did. And reading its sections helped me find Pauline's voice. I told myself that not only could I write better than a chatbot, but I could write faster than I had before. I felt like Paul Bunyan. I could beat the machine (with a mix of quality and speed since no human can beat a machine's speed) and write better than I had before.

Finding the Right System

In the middle of writing The Lies That Bind Us, the dual-narrative I started with ChatGPT, I found a groove. I wrote at roughly the same time each day, for about an hour a day. I switched keyboards to one that felt faster and my words per minute steadily increased. I wrote the novel and comments on student writing and a proposal for a new major at my school all at the same computer. I counted my words per day on anything that required creativity (the novel, blog posts, website updates) and strove for an average of 1500 words a day. When I had a mix of a little extra time and a creative urge, I wrote more. The goal of 10k words a week pushed me to max out my good days to allow for a bad one. One day, I broke 4000 words. That meant I could take a day off and still meet my quota. Of course, I didn't. In my first month, I averaged around 2700 words a day. I did the math. That meant almost a million words a year, and about 750,000 would be for my novels. That's seven books a year.

I constantly thought about that, the ridiculousness of it. Sure, I could tap out the words when the ideas flowed but what about writer's block? What would happen when I hit a wall plot-wise like I always did? I needed a plan and a partner. I found the solution in the very place that served as inspiration, ChatGPT. I had a multi-pronged strategy to keep me writing. First, I'd use ChatGPT to map out future books while I wrote one. The ideas were mine, the outlining ChatGPT's. Most of those outlines ended up much different, but they provided a path. Second, I'd use ChatGPT for logistics like police procedure. I didn't trust it fully but it saved me at least half of my research time. Third, if I hit a wall and the writing stopped one day, I had ChatGPT write the next scene for me, roughly 500 words. Sometimes I used it, sometimes I edited heavily, and most times I threw it away, inspired to write it better. It killed writer's block. It helped me achieve my number for the day. Lastly, I had ChatGPT read my chapters and provide feedback. When I felt good, I had it be critical. On bad days, I asked it for a pick me up by highlighting the good stuff. In those first two months, I had maybe three days with no output at all. My average went down slightly to about 2400 words, but the stories progressed. That's right, I said stories.

The Multi-Story Approach to Never Getting Writer's Block

When I say I wrote eight novels in a year, I don't mean going from finishing one to writing the next and so on. I wrote more than one novel at a time. I also wrote both a treatment and four episodes of a TV series. I continued an old sci-fi novel I hadn't worked on in five years. I started a new novel in a different genre and scrapped it. I finished not only the proposal for my major, but the entire major itself. It sounds scatterbrained and sure, there's an element of that, but it helped me progress and keep writing. It all started with a thought while driving to work, my best brainstorming spot. Like most of my ideas, it came to me while listening to a song. It was about thinking of the past, the people we miss, the lives we lived. It gave me a thought that lingered.

A retro series based on my detective's early career came out of it. I imagined what his first case entailed and how he became so cynical. I realized he once had a positive outlook and the dreams common to young people. The result was the projection of a six-book series chronicling the cases before the one in his first novel, Soft Case. In that book, he's already jaded and sarcastic. But what led to that? That's what I mapped out. I had loose outlines for the first three books, character sketches, plot ideas and possible endings, all organized with the help of ChatGPT.

As I finished The Lies That Bind Us, I envisioned what would happen next. My character ruffled a lot of feathers in the government in Lies. I decided to map out the next two books, Ghosts of Days Gone By and The Takedown. Without spoiling anything, I knew there had to be ramifications for his actions. I had my goalpost for the main series. And the retro series helped in two ways. First, I could write the basics of the first retro book and seed the current series. It worked in the reverse too. My character might reminisce in the current series, giving me an idea for the retro novel. In that old novel that took forever to finish, the one I first had ChatGPT help me with, my character gets offered to do a TV show based on his career. So, I made each episode the topic of a novel in the retro series. The episodes play out in the current series and their genesis comes from the retro.

So, about three months in, with two books finished and momentum building, I found a key element to my system. Writer's block persists with nearly every writer. Much of it comes from doubt about finishing, the quality of the writing. If it crept in on Ghosts I turned to the retro series. If both failed me, I started the first chapter of a new novel I mapped out or edited the outlines. When that didn't work, I worked on a side project or a blog post. The best blog posts focused on the writing of a particular novel I was stuck in. That fostered ideas for breaking through the wall. At my high point in January 2024, I had several days of 5000 words or more. I averaged 3200 words that month, all while teaching three intersession classes, working on a research article, and grading sixty assignments every other day. I say that to highlight that my writing went on autopilot. I found time even when I didn't have time.

We Have the Technology

There is a lot of talk about the intrusion of tech. I wholeheartedly agree most people doom scroll or whittle away precious hours consuming nearly brainless content on their phones and tablets. But these devices can enhance our lives if we let them. Though my computer keyboard (now worn to a point where six or seven keys are blank) serves as my most productive device, I used others. I tapped out two or three hundred words on my phone at a restaurant while waiting to be seated or snuck in a hundred or so dictating to Google Docs while walking the dog. When student papers frustrated me (you see the same thing six times in a row and you might end up harshly grading the seventh) I opened up a Google Doc and tapped out a few hundred words for a scene. Years ago, I wrote an entire novella on a phone with a physical keyboard while riding a bike at the gym. So, I did something similar when I worked out at home. These little additions added up. Maybe I didn't write, per se, but instead jotted down ideas on my tablet about the next scene so when I sat down to write, I had a catalyst. That's what's important. If you block off an hour a day to write, you need to write for that hour, not think so much. 

And yes, ChatGPT helps here too. NotebookLM is another. I fed these chatbots my work and asked for ideas when I felt dry. I had them read my work and offer criticism. One of my favorites was to have the chatbot write a NY Times book review based on my draft, emphasizing the need for honesty, and saw where my strengths and weaknesses might be. I'd then go to work on the next scene or chapter with some direction either through suggestions for plot or criticism by my 'reviewers'. I have to say, it worked. 

Going into March 2024, I had almost four novels finished. I slowed down a bit in terms of progression as the due date for Lies' release loomed. For all the tech and strategies, there is no shortcut for final editing. I tried to have the chatbots help but they fabricated errors that didn't exist. I still haven't found one that can serve as a reliable copy editor. But I was ahead of my seven book/year pace and could afford days where I only wrote a thousand new words. I edited Lies and wrote some of Second Time Around, the (shockingly) second book in the retro series. Things moved well into the spring.

A New Path Revealed

When I finished editing Lies, something nagged at me. I had the next two John Keegan novels mapped out. But the ending of Lies pointed to a need for Pauline to be heard. Sharing narrative duties with John only created a larger demand. So, I created a spinoff, To The Bone, where Pauline stands on her own. I'd found her voice and it needed more attention. I now had three concrete paths for my writing and another option when two failed to produce results. On top of that, I decided to make Ghosts and To The Bone exist concurrently. Even though John and Pauline are far apart physically, the small amount of overlap between the two stories allowed me to push past blocked areas with shared content. I had a mini-universe from which to write and it made productivity blast through obstacles I'd normally get stopped from.

Pauline had a lot to say. She'd been around John for decades and was a police officer herself. Her dabbling in undercover work unleashed a desire for purpose beyond her ordinary life. She felt compelled by the ideals of her generation, of putting family first, an unfair burden. Her novel represented both a revolt against those pressures and an acceptance of what parts of her life fit and which didn't. Many people attributed John's early chauvinism to my own beliefs but Pauline's struggle better represents my views. In essence, I'm in the middle. I say that only because I cannot claim to be a feminist warrior by any means. Nor does Pauline's book set out to be such a thing. I find it just a representation of one person's experience living through the turn of the century and into our present mindset. 

Writing from another perspective enhanced my security with the original one. I knew John through and through but areas of his life needed new angles. Telling it from Pauline's perspective shed new light on the character and both novels benefitted from this. It all felt fresh and I'd wake eager to move forward. Writer's block disappeared as I did not have fear about where to go next. I had more ideas to write about than I had time to write. I had (technically) three perspectives to write from: present John, past John, and Pauline. I had side projects to keep the juices flowing when my main ones refused to bear fruit. Luckily, this rarely happened.

A Small Trick for More Productivity

Many of us benefit from treating work like a game. I do this all the time with my main career as a professor. But gamifying work is not gaming, it's not leisure. It's work. My writing, however, I treat as a hobby in some aspects. Sure, I do the work in terms of actual writing, editing, and promoting. But the plotting becomes a bit of a game. I want to know where the story is headed and how my character will deal with what's to come.

So, I made writing my leisure. I could make it whatever I wanted. I lived in an alternate reality much like an RPG game. It was new and exciting and didn't feel like work most times. Just finding out where the plot went felt like leisure akin to watching a movie, only I directed the action. On the bad days where words came with difficulty, that felt like work. But six out of seven days a week, I had fun doing it. I felt a sense of accomplishment too, much like when we build something for the home or fix an appliance. That feeling of standing back and looking at what we create can keep us moving forward. I suggest you try this. Don't make writing an obligation or feel like work all the time. Make it fun, make it an adventure rather than a burden.

Getting to the Finish Line

The next three months blew by and three novels were finished. I had just shy of seven with two months to go before the year was up. So far, I'd finished Never Look Back, The Lies That Bind Us, The First Cut, Second Time Around, Third and Long, Ghosts of Days Gone By, and To The Bone. I finished the treatment, outline and first three episodes of a live action/animated family series called Whispers. I started Fourth Gear and The Takedown. I finished my major proposal and the creation of six new courses. I learned to type faster than I ever had before. 

I spent the last two months of my year-long experiment editing novels for publication and finishing Fourth Gear. In total, I wrote over a million words in 350 days. If I count blog posts and other writing, it may be 250,000 more. And, to my pleasant surprise, most of it was quality writing. I needed to edit but mistakes were much lower and plotlines stayed fairly true. I did have my usual continuity issues but that's just how my brain works. In the end, I had eight finished novels, three either a quarter or half done, two more mapped out, and I'd completely edited four earlier, previously-released novels. One was a different series called Time Stand Still. It was my favorite book to write but the writing itself was, well, terrible. I made major changes. My publisher at the time wanted the main character to be dislikeable because my editor thought those scenes brought out something better. I changed all that and make the book I always wanted to write. I could say I finished nine books because Time  was nearly completely rewritten. I felt I righted some major wrongs there.

Why You Shouldn't Do This

Simply, it's nuts. About a month after, something broke. Between all the writing and thinking and teaching way more classes than anyone should, side grant projects, pushing my major through the approval process, writing a new research article, and a bunch of other things, my brain revolted. I suffered a bit of burnout. I decided to take a break. It helped but it took about four months to get back to somewhat normal. Working on three or four novels at a time among other things is just too much multitasking. And I am sure I am forgetting other things I wrote/did during that year. 

It became an obsession, a need to hit my word count goals and even surpass them. I started off wanting to write three novels in a year. That turned to four, five, six. It ended at over eight. I thought about the next year and writing ten. I had the ideas. I mapped out John's new career and the first novel in his new series, Promises to the Dead. I had a new series for Pauline with two book ideas. My children's series, The Dream Fighter Chronicles, had three different branching paths with new novels written in each. I could easily map out ten books. But what next, fifteen, twenty? When would it stop? My brain told me when, December 2024. 

My burnout wasn't complete. I needed to focus on other things. I needed leisure time outside writing. I'm still searching for a fix to that. I take a day off completely from life every ten days or so. I hadn't really done that in years. So, my mistake actually led to progress. It just took a while.

Five Key Takeaways from Writing Eight Novels in a Year

1. Find Your Writing System and Optimize It
   Writing at the same time every day, using a comfortable keyboard, and tracking word count helped me maintain momentum. By setting a goal of 10,000 words per week, I could push myself on good days and allow for slower ones. Experiment with schedules, tools, and techniques until you find what makes you most productive.

2. Use AI and Technology to Support, Not Replace, Your Creativity
   ChatGPT and other AI tools were useful for brainstorming, outlining, and providing feedback, but they couldn’t replace my voice. Early AI-generated edits were stilted, and AI-written scenes felt off. Instead, I used it to map out books while writing others, kill writer’s block, and provide critique when I needed an outside perspective.

3. Treat Writing Like a Game to Stay Motivated
   I gamified the process by tracking daily word counts, treating my novels as puzzle pieces to fit together, and letting the mystery of my characters’ stories drive my curiosity. Instead of forcing myself to write out of obligation, I made it a challenge I wanted to solve, which helped me stay engaged and prolific.

4. Beware of Burnout—Pacing Matters
   Writing eight novels in a year broke my brain. I pushed so hard that I eventually had to take months to recover. The obsession with hitting word counts became unhealthy. Writing should be sustainable—take breaks, recharge, and don’t let productivity overshadow enjoyment. If I could go back, I’d set a more reasonable pace.

5. Writing Multiple Projects Prevents Writer’s Block
   Jumping between projects kept me from getting stuck. When one novel stalled, I switched to another—whether it was a different book in the Retro Series, a blog post, or even outlining future stories. This constant movement forward meant writer’s block never had time to settle in, and I always had something to work on.

Final Thoughts

I hope this helped. Writing begets writing. We've all heard that. But getting started is the hardest step. I did have the benefit of having an existing series to build on. Still, many of these strategies can work. For instance, many people say to finish one novel before starting another. In some cases, this is true, especially if you are extremely new. Focus certainly leads to better results. But, if you struggle with writer's block, having a multitude of outlets can ease it. The same goes for gamifying. If you're new, don't add pressure even from trying to make it fun. Find a natural pace before you try to optimize it. Get fifty thousand words into a novel and then tinker.

If you have any questions, please comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts.