‘Balancing Output with Input’: Margaret Rogerson on Writing Fantasy, Taking Breaks, and Balancing Inspiration and Hard Work

When a reader opens the pages of a fantasy novel, they might relish in anticipation of entering a new, imaginative world and a thrilling and delightful reading experience. But, what does writing fantasy novels look like? What is the journey and the daily routine of an author who creates these fantastical universes, traveling between foreign places from one novel to another?

While such questions might seem abstract and difficult to answer, sitting down and talking to the authors who have experienced them offers exciting insights. This column, “The Daily Desk,” strives to answer these questions: What is an author’s daily routine, and what can we learn from their writing experiences?

“A hug in book form”

A New York Times and internationally bestselling author, Margaret Rogerson began her career with the young adult fantasy standalone “An Enchantment of Ravens” in 2017, continuing with “Sorcery of Thorns” in 2019 and “Vespertine” in 2021.

Rogerson was a reader before she was a writer. She has always loved reading, and the hobby became especially important for Rogerson when she was a teenager.

While suffering from severe depression, she credits reading as one of the things that helped her get through the difficult period. In particular, “Beauty” by Robin McKinley — a Beauty and the Beast retelling that she read during her sophomore year of high school — especially impacted her.

“When I finished the book, I actually hugged it through my chest, and I thought, ‘I want to make other young people feel the way that I felt when I read this book,’” Rogerson said in an interview with The Crimson.

Balancing spontaneous inspiration and hard work, all in one day

When it comes to her daily life, Rogerson considers herself fortunate to be a full-time author. Writers adapt differently to the demanding yet rewarding profession. The most important thing, as Rogerson notes, is to set a solid foundation.

“Every writer has a different routine, and the important thing is to just have a routine and stick to it, and that's going to look completely different for every writer,” Rogerson said.

For Rogerson, though, her writing routine tends to shift and change with every book that she writes.

“Lately, I found that for the current manuscript I’m working on, I’ve been waking up really, really early in the morning and doing the majority of my work between the hours of, like, 6 in the morning and 10 in the morning, which is not something I’ve ever done before,” Rogerson said.

With writing often regarded as an expression of unbridled creativity, it can feel as though one must always be inspired to be a good writer. Rogerson reveals that this is not always the case.

“I believe there’s this idea that writers are writing from a place of just inspiration and creative passion all the time, and that’s actually not really true,” Rogerson said.

Writing can be a very exhilarating, cathartic, and spontaneous activity. However, it is important to acknowledge that there is also a more straightforward, perhaps less pleasant, portion of the process that involves actually getting words down on the page.

“The more important thing about finishing a book is just putting in the time, and if you wait for the inspiration to strike, you will never get that book finished because it is just a matter of hard work and dedication,” Rogerson said.

What can further complicate the process is that in order to write, you have to find inspiration in the first place. For Rogerson, she has to be consuming creative things and relaxing in order to write, which inadvertently takes time away from actually writing.

“I would say one of the biggest struggles that I face as an author is balancing output with input,” Rogerson said.

While organizing one’s writing routine can become a pervasive challenge, sometimes an even bigger hurdle must be overcome: Am I a bad writer? This question may feel all too familiar, and it is one that Rogerson asks as well. She recounts many moments of lacking inspiration and feeling that the act of writing is “hard.”

“I think it’s really important for those aspiring authors to know that that's actually completely normal. It does not mean they're a bad writer. That’s the experience that probably all of their favorite writers always have every day,” Rogerson said.

Writing doesn’t emerge in a vacuum, though it might require solitude

Rogerson’s environment has influenced her work and routines as well. Isobel, the main character from her first novel, “An Enchantment of Ravens,” is a painter, and the act of painting itself is a major pushing factor of the plot.

This close connection was inspired by Rogerson’s mother, an oil, watercolor, and acrylic painter. As Rogerson grew up around someone always doing artwork and painting, she became familiar with the smells, textures, and supplies, and it became a point of inspiration for writing a novel “centered around the idea of art.”

Though Rogerson is artistically influenced by the people around her, the process of incorporating them into her work might look much more solitary. When one thinks of writing, an image that comes to mind is that of the author hunched over their desk, laboring over words in quiet seclusion. For Rogerson, who considers herself to be a secretive writer, the image holds true.

Fantasy and routines have more in common than one would expect

Rogerson has spent her career thus far writing fantasy and exploring complex magic systems, large casts of characters, and various fantastical creatures, from fae to possessed spirits. Still, as a degree holder in cultural anthropology from Miami University, Rogerson likes to think of fantasy as the original human literature, grounded in the human experience.

“I love fairy tales and I love myths, because I think they sort of hold these truths or these themes that we have been telling each other since the dawn of time, and it’s just fun to play around with those ideas,” Rogerson said.

For Rogerson, the novels she has written so far are all fantasy standalones. As such, Rogerson crafts new worlds and characters and discovers how they interact, a creative process that remains one of her greatest joys of writing. At the same time, fantasy standalones pose their own set of logistical challenges.

“On the flip side, it does mean that with every single book you write, you have to make up a whole new world and whole new characters and a whole new magic system and world-building and all of that stuff, which is one reason probably why I’m a bit of a slower writer than a lot of other authors, and I don’t produce books as quickly because I do have to spend a lot of time developing those worlds,” Rogerson said.

A writer should be always writing… right?

It can often be easy to glamorize the life of an author. However, when writing becomes your job, and you become part of an industry, setting boundaries to relax or refill the creative well can become difficult.

“It can really consume your life. And I think publishing is, in some ways, a little bit oriented around the idea that you will literally pour your lifeblood into your work,” Rogerson said.

There is also the worry that, in order to secure a livelihood, a writer will have to monetize their creativity and push their writing into more lucrative directions.

“The tricky thing and the unique thing about writing is that you’re taking, for most writers, the thing that you love most in the world, and you’re turning it into your job that you have to do to support yourself,” Rogerson said.

With a job as flexible as writing, placing working hours can become a challenge, and even lead to the creation of unhealthy feelings.

“I find that the idea that I could be working at any time creates, at times, this sense of just guilt, where, if I’m relaxing, there’s this little voice in the back of my brain that’s always saying, ‘You could be working right now, you could just open your Google Docs tab and do some more work,’” Rogerson said.

Rogerson also takes care to intentionally carve out some time away from writing, with this balance making her a better writer.

“Oftentimes, in the evenings, I have to just tell myself, you are taking a break now, you are stopping working, and you are just going to read a book or watch a documentary or just relax, and there’s no more work,” Rogerson said.

“The important thing about routines is simply to have one”

Time management becomes an integral part of maintaining a healthy relationship with something one is extremely passionate about, something like writing.

As for the perfect writing routine, it all comes down to a balance between planning and intuition. A perfect routine may not exist, and each writer may have to create their own, but what matters is just to write, at one’s preferred pace.

“The important thing about routines is simply to have one, no matter what that means for you,” Rogerson said. “If that means writing 300 words before breakfast every morning five days a week, or if it means sitting down on Friday nights and busting out 2,000 words at a time, as long as you stick to it, that’s the important part. Your routine does not need to look like other people’s routines, as long as it works for you. What is truly important is just dedication and putting in the time.”

By Leshui (Jade) Xiao

—In her column “The Daily Desk,” Erlisa Demneri ’27 focuses on the daily and writing routines of various authors, and how they each view productivity in writing. She can be reached at erlisa.demneri@thecrimson.com.