Fantasy writer Olivie Blake jokingly tells me that she doesn't know how to write a book. With eight adult fantasy novels and two YA romantic comedies under her belt, including the best-selling Atlas series, it's a little hard to believe. But Blake, a self-proclaimed “discovery writer,” insists.
“Every time it gets done and I tell myself I know how to do it,” she laughs. “But when I'm in the middle of the process, I think: I don't know what I'm doing and we're just working on it. “I have come to this embrace of the unknown.”
Blake is a prolific writer for an author who claims not to know how to write. She originally published her adult novels under a pseudonym, the same one she used for her fanfiction. When The Atlas Six became a viral sensation through TikTok and other social media, he had the opportunity to republish that novel in 2022 with Tor. The publisher also republished its YA fantasy and picked up the rest of the Atlas series. At the same time, Blake published his youthful debut, My mechanical romanceunder the name Alexene Farol Follmuth.
In 2024 he published the last book of the Atlas trilogy, together with Twelfth Knightanother youth romantic comedy. With two new standalone adult fantasy books coming out in 2025 and much more planned for the future, Blake has learned a thing or two about balancing projects, focusing on goals, and figuring out what to work on next. Since the start of a new year is always a time to reflect on setting new goals and considering self-improvement, Polygon reached out to Blake to ask how she stays so productive and discuss the benefits of being “a New Year's resolution person.” New”.
This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.
Polygon: Do you set professional or creative goals as the new year approaches, or do you have different strategies?
Olivia Blake: I am a person who has New Year's resolutions. I like to start the year assuming I'll be my least lazy self and then inevitably be disappointed. But I feel like, within the margin of error, there is still some improvement.
Photo courtesy of Olivie Blake
[For my creative goals]I'm trying to see myself less as an expert and more as […] I'm still trying to get back to the feeling of being a fan. I had a lot of fun when I was a fanfiction writer and there were no expectations. I wasn't worried about creating an audience. I just [thought], Can I do this? EITHER How good would I feel if I got this exactly how I imagined it? And it never happens like that. But I think the feeling of facing something as if it were the first time is to fall in love all over again.
In terms of professional goals, it is very difficult to have a sense of measurement for artistic careers. It's hard to see that you've traveled any distance or ascended in any way. I'm at a point where I've been pretty prolific and part of it is a mix of new things. [and old self-published titles]. We are at a point where I no longer have any titles on the backlist and everything is new.
But I would also like to slow things down so I don't get so tired of promotion, marketing and all aspects of the industry. And to dedicate myself more, basically more time to art, less administrative time, I hope to slow down a little. I would like to write every day, something I haven't done in recent years since my career took off. That means all administrative tasks need to be done as well. All things that are very important to selling a book, but that are less satisfying to me as an artist.
I'm going to try to get back to… maybe we write a little less each day, but we still do it every day. Instead of taking advantage of these windows where this great marketing period becomes, the focus will always be on writing, even if that means smaller amounts each day.
How do you choose between projects or focus on what you want to do next?
I think when you're bowling and you've got your pads on, that's what my editor is to me. I'm like, Here are the ideas I have. Let me bounce this back to you. Which one sounds like the right one? And to be fair, I have a very privileged career, in that I have a long-standing relationship with my editor. She's here for my career. It's one of the ways I always knew I wanted to be published traditionally, because I need to be managed.
I'm the type of creative that has a lot of ideas, wants to cross different mediums and wants to do something new and different every time. That's why it's helpful for someone to say: What if we did this? What if we focus on this? EITHER This is the strongest you've ever thrown. So to some extent I leave it in someone else's hands, which is a big relief for me, because I wouldn't say I have a very good idea of what the market is. Nobody knows: everyone who claims to understand the market is simply selling you something.
The two books that I have to publish in 2025 are Gifted and talentedwhich is something incisive about the technology industry, and then girls dinnerwhich is an interrogation about what feminism is, what contemporary feminism has become. Both are vaguely political books. I wanted the book after that to be a little more… It's an LA Gothic, it's more of a horror romance. I am aware that the things I write in similar periods have similar tones, I think about the same things and solve them. In that sense, it was good to say: Let's take a little break. Let's look at a different aspect of existence or whatever, and then we can shout some more about the tech industry.
How do you handle distractions or the need to move on to another project?
Sometimes if I feel the need to work on something else, I do it. [both] at the same time. I think in terms of artistic efficiency, there are some ideas that if you try to ignore them, they'll just set you back. This idea is what you want to work on, what you need to work on; That does not necessarily mean that it is the only what you're working on and everything else disappears.
Right now I'm working on two projects at the same time that are in different phases, so if I feel like one isn't quite right for the day, I'll do the other. But I'm also pretty aware at this point of what the best idea is. The one I should work on is the one I think about the most, the one I find most interesting.
There are times when I think about maintaining that game feeling or maintaining that fan energy. I'm doing this because I love itSometimes I do something shorter. It is never a loss. That story will become something someday.
I think part of it is knowing what kind of creative you are and playing with those things. Then I identify the priority project. Obviously, having real deadlines is helpful for this: things that really need to be done. But also knowing that sometimes, if your brain just isn't focused or your mood just isn't right, a short break can be helpful. It's like, Let's do this other thing. And maybe that feeling of satisfaction will help you move forward with the other projects.
How do you reset yourself when you get stuck or overwhelmed?
Generally when I feel stuck, when I can't move forward in the project I'm working on, it's because there is a problem in the project I'm working on. Something I just wrote is not right. What it really is is a kind of feeling of I need to cut what I just wrote, but I feel like it will be such a waste that I don't want to do it..
Image: Macmillan
But every time without fail, if it's a feeling of “I can't move forward,” it's because something went wrong behind me, and I need to take ownership of that, change it, and fix it. Because trying to move forward will actually be a more inefficient use of time. But if I'm not feeling inspired, which is a different feeling than being stuck or overwhelmed, that's when I turn to a smaller project, something that's a little smaller.
I'm bipolar, so a lot of the ways I play with my creative issues are similar to the way I deal with my mental health. When you're really depressed, the feeling of satisfaction is even more important, but it's harder to achieve. So my to-do list when I'm depressed is “take a shower” or “clean this up.” I give myself tasks that I know I can do. And then, in the creative realm, it's like, Why don't you come up with an idea today? Just think about something today.
That feeling of being able to cross something off helps you move forward. the feeling of I have achieved something, that is progress. or doing something smaller, you can still feel that Today I flexed that creative muscle.
How do you know when it's time to abandon a project?
That's a good question. I'm trying to think about what projects I've let go of. There are not many that I have left unfinished. Generally if I leave something unfinished it's because I came up with a better version of the idea or because I want to use the characters in a different way. I have an “unfinished” file, but I always have the feeling that I will return to it.
I think what's hard is the feeling that I'm leaving this forever, I just leave it and it's gone. I prefer the feeling that it is waiting somewhere and I can return to it at any time. But usually it's because I'm more driven by the feeling that something else is a better idea, that something else is like, Oh, I really know how to do this.either I can really work on something that is specifically interesting to me.
Most of the things I don't finish are story ideas that are wrong in tone. I tried to write this story. It was meant to be something absurd. It was a demon that manifested itself like Zillow, when they tried to buy your house. But for some reason, the tone still sounded so melancholic. The narrator was very sad. And I was like, This is not right. So I'll come back to it when I figure out how to do it. I think my brain is just working on it in the background somewhere, and however long it takes, it will come back when the time is right.