Talking to Nebula-winning fantasy author John Wiswell about the things he loves is simply a small overwhelming, due to the boundless energy he brings to the table. Whether he’s talking about his 2024 debut fresh Someone You Can Build a Nest In (a cozy fantasy widely featured on best-of-the-year lists, including ours), the another books he loves and helps promote, writing neurodivergent and disabled characters as a way to be seen, or the craft of writing itself, he’s endlessly enthusiastic. After years of trying to get started as a writer, that energy has paid off, with 1 fresh in stores, a second on the way in 2025, and a fast run of short stories published at outlets all over the web, including the Nebula winner “Open home on Haunted Hill” and the Locus Award winner “That communicative Isn’t the Story.” (More links below, throughout this interview.)
Wiswell always seems to have half a twelve projects in the works, so he was a logical individual to scope out to at the beginning of the year, erstwhile people are most reasoning about productivity, fresh projects, and setting goals. Polygon asked him for advice about how to stay focused, finish projects, and beat writer’s block. We were amazed erstwhile he explained that 1 of his biggest tricks was “the Tetris method.”
This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
Polygon: Are you a fresh Year’s resolution person? Do you have a different way of setting goals for yourself?
John Wiswell: I have never been a fresh Year’s resolution person. I think it’s a large form for another people. I tend to have goals that pop up at another times of the year, and then I just effort to stick to them. So I had a goal to print as a novelist, and if that was my fresh Year’s resolution, I certain failed, like for 13 years or something! And I think my first part of advice, frankly, to anybody is: Be ready for it to be OK that you don’t nail it. 100% success is simply a very mean resolution to put upon yourself, and it’s a large way to throw your resolution away. On the first Tuesday of the year, erstwhile you don’t write, Well, I was going to compose all day! I guess the year’s over now! That’s not fair to yourself. And I think we’ve all been there.
We’ve all had that 1 discouragement where you’re like, Ah, I’m never going to be any good! Well, nobody’s good at the violin the first day they choice it up! You practice! We hit the track to get a better time eventually. I surely am not doing my best time on the elliptical right now, but I’m going to keep doing it. So I have things I’m very much looking forward to doing in the next year. I’m most likely going to start writing a brand-new book shortly. I have a bunch of short stories I want to compose next year. I have quite a few people who I want to spend any time with next year, due to the fact that the older I get, the more crucial certain people are to me, and I want them to be a part of my life. That’s a comic thing to make a goal out of, but time gets distant from us.
So be open to revising a goal in a reasonable way: OK, I can’t compose all day. Can I compose all weekday morning? Can I compose Saturdays and Sundays? Or if you’ve never finished anything, possibly a truly good goal is, Well, I’d like to effort to finish something this year, whether it’s finishing a short story, an full novel, or just getting to the end of anything. It doesn’t substance if you think what you wrote doesn’t work: Finishing something for the first time is an amazing achievement.
Most writers don’t get there. You gotta pat yourself on the back erstwhile you do hit any of these things. I feel like in addition to beating themselves up, people frequently don’t give themselves the credit for getting somewhere that’s truly meaningful. The first short communicative I finished was not very good, and I was very mean to myself about it. Now I look back and I’m like, But you don’t get to any of the another ones if you don’t do that one!
I think it’s better to look at a task as, That was another day in the gym. That was another day moving around the track. Give yourself credit for getting out there and trying to do the work. And then effort to give yourself rest! If I had a fresh Year’s resolution, it’d most likely be to pace myself. I have multiple disabilities, and I truly ran myself into the ground with my book launch in 2024. I loved everything I got to do, but I truly physically hurt myself doing it.
And so going into a second year as a published novelist, I’m inactive going to effort to do a lot, but I’m besides going to effort to be a small more mindful of my limits, so I don’t burn myself out besides fast. So I can be there, whether it’s for another book event, or for my nephew after he gets home from school.
You’re very prolific for individual trying to pace yourself! How do you keep the energy to keep jumping into fresh writing projects, to keep pitching and submitting?
The first trick is, I only compose short stories where any character or part of it truly excites me. So if it seems like an crucial thing to write, but it’s not exciting, I’ll put it on the back burner and possibly come back to that thought later and see if it excites me. If I think, I want to compose a communicative about a dragon who runs for mayor, and gosh darn it, that’s just so comic to me, I’ve got to compose that. I truly wanted to compose a communicative in the fairy-tale kind that did lots of time skips, but never had a scene break. I just truly wanted to effort that. And then I got to Someone You Can Build a Nest In — that was very emotional for me, and that was large to explore, so the first draft didn’t take that long, due to the fact that it was all coming out of a period of excitement.
The another thing is, I’ve written so many short stories now that I know my habits. I know I can most likely do 1 in a day or two. Do I have a period in my agenda that’s about that wide to compose a first draft? And what is that gap? If I request to compose half a fresh this month, and there’ll be a two-day gap, and then I’m going to be teaching for 4 weeks; I should take that 2 days off.
You got to take care of yourself. But if there’s a gap in the agenda where I’m not going to gotta do that much — any of us lift ourselves up by writing comedy. any of us get quite a few release from writing truly grimdark stuff. I keep my output advanced by looking for work that will enliven me, or actually aid me settle, and it does reset the mind. Sometimes I’m just looking for shorter projects that will control my head to something else, so I’ll be in a different emotional state than I have been. I guess you’d call that another trick.
My biggest thing, though, is that I just truly love short stories. So it’s not that much of an encumbrance, due to the fact that it’s truly fun to fall in love with another 3,000-word idea. I love the form, I love to read it, and I do love to compose it.
It’s comic that you think my output is advanced — I feel like I’ve been slacking off. I think everybody does that to themselves — I did X, but it should have been X times two. No substance what you did. It’s like, Oh, I got my best time always at the track, but it should have been faster.
Do you always get blocked? And if you do, what’s your strategy?
I don’t think writer’s block is 1 size fits all. I’ve encountered 3 kinds. 1 is burnout, and undiagnosed burnout is the worst kind of writer’s block, due to the fact that you effort to work through it and make it worse. And in those cases, I examine the thought and effort to compose it from different angles. I play with the voice. If I’m like, Huh, nothing here is incorrect with these ingredients, I ask, Is something incorrect with me? Am I emotionally off? Am I just exhausted?
If the problem’s in me, then it’s not in the work. I save all of my notes and I’m like, All right, come back to this later and let’s work on ourselves in the meantime. Sometimes the problem is in the work — I started the story, but it turns out I feel like I’m the incorrect individual to be writing it.
I don’t like to be appropriative. So I’ll possibly put the work aside. another times, something about the work is off — I’m telling it from the incorrect point of view, or I keep trying to make it a comedy and it’s not actually as comic as I thought it was. So I effort engaging with the same thought seriously: Let’s do a drama about this. possibly the blockage is that I am looking at it from the incorrect angle. The last kind of blockage is, you compose yourself into a corner, which quite a few people truly dread. But I kind of love it. I think it’s due to the fact that I grew up playing Tetris: I truly like playing the game of “How do I rotate this game component or this voice until it fits into the story?”
It’s a comic household-chore way of looking at writing. But it truly is like cleaning out the trash bin, or playing Dr. Mario. OK, I’m stuck, but what angle do I request to turn this to for it to make sense? Do I request to flip it around? possibly I make the thing that is simply a problem for me into a problem for the character, and then the drama is them solving it. Or possibly we pivot, and these 2 characters who have been opposed request to become allies in order for them both to get through it, but that’ll make the problems worse for them on the another side.
Solving a writing problem by figuring out the angle, that’s the most fun way to beat writer’s block. So now erstwhile I get stuck, I actually get a small dopamine. I actually get a small excited. due to the fact that I gamified solving game problems — that’s so much easier than getting over burnout.
You’re so active on so many social media platforms — how do you deal with distractions? How do you deal with the desire to spend your full day interacting with fans alternatively of writing?
Yeah, there’s quite a few appeal to being on social media, and to any degree, it feels like your occupation — you gotta go get attention for your work, or you request to establish a brand, which feels disgusting to an artist, right? But there’s a compulsion to be there, and there’s quite a few fun to it. And I could talk to people about my books, or another people’s books, or about storytelling all day. Sometimes I just gotta close the browser, and it’s not allowed to be open again until I get a certain amount done.
Other times I just give myself approval — This is the time of the year where I should be engaging more. The period my next book comes out, I’m going to be on socials more. I think that’s part of the job. And also, man. If people took time out of their day to be like, “I just read your fresh book that came out 8 hours ago, and I’m done, and I love it,” I want to take a minute and be like, “Dude, thank you. You made my day. This is awesome.” I want to both enjoy it and show gratitude, due to the fact that that’s specified a generous thing to do.
So I do tend to block out a small time in my regular agenda to respond to fan email, or to be on socials, and to effort to be affirmative — or constructive, if not positive. I’m besides somewhat outspoken on politics, but I effort to be applicable about “Here’s a thing we can actually do, alternatively than just despair,” due to the fact that we can all despair on our own. What can I do, or what can we do? It feels like an crucial part of a social life. Social media isn’t just there for me to talk about books — it lets me be part of a community. And surviving in the mediate of the woods, that does mean a lot to me.
How do you know erstwhile it’s time to let a task go and decision on?
At the beginning, I didn’t know, and that was disastrous. So I’d hold on to a half-finished book for years and not decision to the next thing. I’m going to finish this! I’m going to perfect this! It’s going to get better! Over time, deadlines helped. I had a large teacher in college who heard about my problems of self-sabotage and self-censorship, and she said, “You request to work at an ad agency, due to the fact that if you can’t turn in 8 pitches by the end of the day at an ad agency, they just fire you.” I was like, “Oh, right. You request deadlines!” So I have tried over time to make habits of “get it to a workable state by the end of the week, or decision on.”
I don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. You can always set a task aside and come back later. Taking time distant from your first draft is besides very helpful, alternatively than tinkering endlessly. I’ll put something I’m struggling with in a folder and I’ll come back in a period and see if I inactive like it. So I’m not in an endless emotional cycle. Putting any systems of distance and deadlines into place — those will change for all person, and will change as the individual develops more skills and habits, but they’re lifesavers. Without them, I might inactive just be staring at the same Word paper from 1998.
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