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Jessica Knoll’s Guide to Writing a Novel Without Losing Your Mind

polyesterzine.com – Friday July 24, 2026

Jessica Knoll knows what it takes to build a life around writing. The bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive and The Favorite has spent years turning complicated stories into page-turners, all while navigating the pressures that come with making writing your livelihood. Now, after moving from LA back to New York, raising her young daughter and publishing her latest novel, Helpless, she’s thinking more than ever about the long game, and how to keep writing without letting it consume you.

Helpless is Knoll’s most ambitious novel yet - an erotic thriller about two exes who reunite at the funeral of their beloved professor, only to find themselves pulled into a dangerous story that forces them to question everything they thought they knew about their past.

When we speak, Knoll is candid about the less glamorous side of writing a novel - the days when a thousand words can take four hours, the weeks when the story won’t cooperate and the difficulty of remembering that your life is bigger than your writing.

Here, Jessica Knoll shares her guide to writing a novel without losing your mind.

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