Atlas Six author Olivie Blake on what it’s like to make “a New Year’s resolution.”

Fantasy writer Olivie Blake jokingly tells me she doesn’t know how to write a book. With eight adult fantasy novels and two YA romantic comedies to her credit, including the best-selling Atlas series – it’s a little hard to believe that. But Blake, a self-proclaimed “discovery writer”, emphasizes.

“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 through it. I have come to this embrace of the unknown.”

Blake is a prolific writer for an author who claims he can’t write. She originally self-published her adult novels under a pseudonym, the same name she used for her fan fiction. When The Atlas Six became a viral sensation through TikTok and other social media, she was given the opportunity to republish that novel in 2022 with Tor. The publishing house also republished her adult fantasy and picked up the rest of the Atlas series. At the same time, Blake published her YA debut, My mechanical romanceunder the name Alexene Farol Follmuth.

In 2024 she published the last book of the Atlas trilogytogether with Twelfth Knightanother YA rom-com. With two new standalone adult fantasy books due in 2025 and many more planned, 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 for reflection on setting new goals and considering self-improvement, Polygon reached out to Blake to ask how she stays so productive, and to discuss the benefits of being ‘a good resolution for the new year’.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Polygon: Are you setting professional or creative goals for yourself as the new year approaches, or do you have other strategies?

Olivie Blake: I’m a New Year’s resolution person. I like to start the year thinking I’ll be my least laziest self, and then inevitably be disappointed. But I feel like there is still some improvement within the margin of error.

(For my creative goals) I try to see myself less as an expert and more as (…) I keep trying to bring myself back to the feeling of being a hobbyist. I had the most fun when I was a fanfiction writer and there were no expectations. I wasn’t worried about building an audience. I just (thought). Can I do this? Or How good would it feel if I got this exactly how I imagined it? And it never happens like that. But I think the feeling of approaching something like it as if it were the first time is falling in love again.

In terms of professional goals, it is very difficult to measure artistic careers. It’s hard to see that you’ve come a long way or risen in any way. I’m at a point where I’ve been quite productive and some of it is a mix of new (and old self-published titles). We’re at the point where I no longer have any backlist titles and everything is new.

But I would also like to slow things down a little bit so that I don’t get so tired with the promotion and marketing and all the industry aspects. And so to give myself more, actually more art time, less administrative time, I’m hoping to slow down a little bit. I would like to write every day, which I haven’t done in recent years as my career has taken off. This means that all administrative tasks also have to be done. These are all things that are very important when selling a book, but which give me less satisfaction as an artist.

I’m going to try to get back to – maybe we’re writing a little less every day, but we’re still doing it every day. Instead of using these windows where it becomes one big marketing window, 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 of it as when you’re bowling and you have the bumper protectors on, that’s what my editor is to me. I’m like, Here are the ideas I have. Let me bounce this off you. Which one sounds like the right one? And to be honest, I have a very privileged career, in that I have a long-term relationship with my editor. She’s here for my career. It’s one of the ways I always knew I wanted to be traditionally published, because I actually need to be managed.

I’m the kind of creative who has a lot of ideas, wants to cross the media and do something new and different every time. So it is useful if someone says: What if we did this? What if we focused on this? Or This is the strongest thing you’ve thrown. So to some extent I leave that to someone else, which is a huge relief for me because I wouldn’t say I have a very good sense of what the market is. Nobody does that; anyone who says they understand the market is just selling you something.

The two books I am releasing in 2025 are Gifted and talentedwhich is quite astute about the tech industry, and then Girls dinnerwhich is an interrogation of what feminism is, what contemporary feminism has become. They are both vaguely political books. I wanted the book after that to be a little bit more of… It’s an LA Gothic, it’s more of a horror novel. I’m aware of the things I write in similar periods that have a similar tone, thinking about and working through the same things. In that sense it was good to say: Let’s take a little break. Let’s look at some other aspect of existence or whatever, and then we can shout some more about the tech industry.

How do you deal with distractions or the urge to jump to another project?

Sometimes when I feel the need to work on something else, I will do (both) at the same time. I think in terms of artistic efficiency there are some ideas that just slow you down if you try to ignore them. This idea is what you want to work on, what you need to work on – that doesn’t necessarily mean this is it only what you’re doing, and everything else goes away.

Right now I’m working on two projects at the same time that are in different stages, so if I feel like one isn’t quite right for the day, I do the other. But I’m also quite aware of what the best idea is at this point. The topic I should be working on is the topic I think about most, the topic I find most interesting.

There are times when I think about keeping that sense of play or keeping that hobbyist energy I do this because I enjoy itI’ll do something shorter sometime. It is never a loss. That story will become something someday.

Part of it is knowing what kind of creative you are and gaming those things, I think. So I identify the priority project. Obviously, having actual deadlines helps with this: things that actually need to be done. But also knowing that sometimes a short break can be useful when your brain just isn’t doing it, or when the mood is just not right. It’s like, Let’s just do this other thing. And maybe that feeling of satisfaction will keep you busy with the other projects.

How do you restart yourself when you get blocked or overwhelmed?

When I feel blocked, when I can’t move forward in the project I’m working on, it’s usually because there’s a problem in the project I’m working on. Something I just wrote is wrong. What it really is is a kind of feeling of it I should delete what I just wrote, but I feel like this will be such a loss that I don’t want to do it.

But every time, when it’s a ‘can’t go on’ feeling, it’s because something went wrong behind me, and I have to face that and change it and fix it. Because trying to keep moving forward will actually be a more inefficient use of time. But if I’m feeling uninspired, which is a different feeling than blocked or overwhelmed, then I would move on to a smaller project, something a little more bite-sized.

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 are really depressed, the feeling of satisfaction is even more important, but harder to achieve. So my to-do list when I’m depressed is “take a shower” or “clean this one thing.” I give myself tasks that I know I can accomplish. And so creatively it’s something like: Why don’t you just come up with an idea today? Just think of something today.

That feeling that you can cross something off helps you move forward. The feeling of I have achieved something, that is progress or do something smaller that you still feel like doing I flexed that creative muscle today.

How do you know when it’s time to let go of a project?

That’s a good question. I’m trying to think of which projects I’ve let go of. There aren’t many that I left unfinished. If I leave something unfinished, it’s usually because I’ve come up with a better version of the idea, or I want to use the characters in a different way. I have an “unfinished” file, but I always feel like I’m coming back to it.

I think the hardest part is the feeling of letting this go forever, I just drop it and it’s gone. I prefer the feeling that it’s just waiting somewhere, and that I can come back to it at any time. But usually that’s because I’m more driven by the feeling that something else is a better idea, that something else is something like: Oh, I really know how to do thisor I can really work on something that is specifically interesting to me.

Most of the things I don’t finish are short story ideas where the tone is wrong. I’ve been trying to write this one story. It was meant to be a bit absurd. It was about a demon that manifested itself as Zillow when they tried to buy your house. But for some reason the tone kept sounding so melancholy. The narrator was so sad. And I was like, This is not correct. So I’ll get back to it when I figure out how to do it. I think my brain is working on that somewhere in the background, and no matter how long it lasts, it will come back when the time is right.