Whale Book

For the past few years, I’ve been working on a novel about 19th century whaling. Since early 2023, after I finished Productivity is Power, this has been my primary writing project. Most days I write 3-4 hours every day: that’s keyboard time, which I track, not thinking, researching, pacing, etc. Because the book is big I’m trying to boost my daily output–the secret to that being, of course, not succumbing to perfectionism.

Because the book requires much research, I aim to spend at least another two hours each day reading and researching. For this book I’m reading everything from Moby-Dick to whaling histories, and books on whale science (biology and culture) and oceanography. Also: histories of political organization and resistance. It’s a great project that is taking me in many different directions.

I’m hoping to finish it by the end of 2024.

This will be my first published novel. I’ve published short fiction in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and elsewhere. I’ve studied fiction writing at the 92d Street Y in New York City and also attended the famed Clarion Science Fiction Writing Workshop, where my teachers included Ursula K. LeGuin, Samuel R. Delaney, the late, great Octavia Butler, and others.

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Thanks for your interest!

— Hillary