Jessie Mihalik: On the Benefits and Drawbacks of Writing a Novel Without an Outline

Jessie Mihalik has a degree in computer science and a love of all things geeky. A software engineer by trade, Jessie now writes full time from her home in Texas. When she’s not writing, she can be found playing co-op video games with her husband, trying out new board games, or reading books pulled from her overflowing bookshelves.

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In this post, Jessie shares the benefits and drawbacks of writing her novels without an outline.

Name: Jessie Mihalik
Literary agent: Sarah Younger, Nancy Yost Literary Agency
Book title: Capture the Sun
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Release date: June 20, 2023
Genre/category: Science Fiction Romance
Previous titles: Hunt the Stars, Eclipse the Moon, the Consortium Rebellion series, and the Rogue Queen series.
Elevator pitch for the book: An intergalactic thief must join forces with the charming teleporter who stole her last job—and may now be her only hope for saving her former crew.

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The idea from the series originally came to me while I was watching the first season of The Mandalorian. Mando was such a solo character, even though he had friends spread throughout the galaxy, and I wondered, what if he had a whole crew he had to look out for? How far would he go to protect them?

I spun it so my bounty hunter captain was female, and Hunt the Stars was born, full of found family and the bonds that tie us more tightly than blood. Each subsequent book follows another crew member, and Capture the Sun features an intergalactic thief who’s tired of war and death, but she gets dragged back into it because her crew is in peril, and she would do anything for her captain.

Then I added romance in each book because we all deserve some happily ever afters!

I sold the original trilogy idea in April of 2020, and the first two books came out in 2022, so almost two years later. For Capture the Sun specifically, I started writing in October 2021 and finished in June 2022, which is longer than most of my books take to write, but after two years of pandemic, my brain needed the extra time.

And yes, the idea changed during the process. I don’t plot ahead, so every book is a new adventure. When I sold the trilogy, I only had the vaguest idea of what book three might be, which included the main characters and a general feeling that it would be two tricksters falling in love. All of the other plot, including wrapping up the overall trilogy arc, happened as I was writing the book.

The release date was pushed back a couple of months due to printer scheduling. Printing books isn’t something most people spend time thinking about—books just magically appear in stores, right?—but printing is more complicated now thanks to closures and pandemic supply chain issues that led to cascading problems.

There are always surprises when writing without an outline. I discover the book as I write, which I adore. But that also requires a lot of creative energy, and though the pandemic was starting to improve in late 2022, two years of stress had taken a toll, so writing this book took far longer than the previous two books in the series.

This whole series is filled with the things I love: found family, hope, joy, action, adventure, and romance. I hope that reading it is a pleasant escape from the real world for a few hours, to a place where readers know the book is going to end happily, so they can let go of their worries and burdens and just enjoy. Stories are magic, and I hope I’ve captured a tiny piece of that.

Publishing is an industry that requires patience and persistence. If you want to be a published author, keep writing. Every book you write is a learning experience, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Keep reading, keep honing your craft, and most importantly, don’t give up.

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