If fans, readers imagine that I write my novels in a candlelit attic in Bruges, accompanied only by a quill, a goblet of something medieval, and a melancholic lute player, I regret to inform you that the truth is both more mundane and significantly more absurd.

This “writing process,” as experts insist on calling it, is less a process and more a constellation of rituals, derailments, caffeinated improvisations, and minor existential negotiations with myself. And since transparency is fashionable these days — perhaps even fetishized — I shall reveal the inner machinery of how my writing comes into being.

Of course, please remember: honesty is a spectrum, and a writer is professionally obligated to lie with grace.

I. The Idea Phase (also known as The Panic)
It begins innocently enough. A line overheard in a train station. A memory of a strange summer in Namur. A terrifying news headline. Someone breathing too loudly. Suddenly, it sparks: “What if the world was on fire in the year 2050 and somehow this person — this distracted commuter — was the only one who knew why?”

The idea rarely arrives as a noble creative visitation. More often, it feels like a mildly intrusive thought that refuses to leave until I turn it into 600 pages of fiction. Some people wrestle with angels; I wrestle with plot twists.

II. The Research Phase (also known as Falling Down Twenty Rabbit Holes at Once)
The research era is generous. It begins with noble intentions, such as: I must learn precisely how long a Dutch seawall can withstand catastrophic climate collapse.

But soon enough I am reading:
scientific articles written in languages I do not speak,
obscure 19th-century travelogues about the Wadden Sea,
three different geological surveys of coastal Friesland,
and, inexplicably, watching videos about medieval rope-making.

Somehow this all becomes relevant. Or at least, that is the lie I whisper to myself when my notes begin to resemble a multilingual conspiracy board.

III. The Writing Environment (a study in contradiction)
I write best in absolute silence — unless, of course, I have music on. I like darkness — except when I desperately need sunlight. I work well at a desk — unless I am lying sideways on the floor, which is apparently the perfect place for writing dialogue.

My desk (when I admit to using it) is a temple of chaos: half-drunk tea, pens that no longer work, tablets, laptops, gadgets, hastily scribbled ideas on supermarket receipts, multilingual dictionaries, a notebook filled with phrases that seemed brilliant at 3 a.m. but now read like prophecies delivered by a delirious nutjob.

Writers have “a system,” they say. Mine is more of a weather pattern.

IV. The Characters Arrive (uninvited, impolite, impossible to ignore)
Characters do not politely wait to be written. They crash through the door, fully formed, and make extravagant demands. Inmy soon to be released dystopian/utopian thriller trilogy, Diaspora, protagonist Christophe appears first, of course — contemplative, stubborn, allergic to authority, full of dangerous tenderness. Then Fiel the fascist gazillionaire in all his restless intelligence, Bruno, Christophe’s sexy husband, with his tragic gravity, Lydia with her Germanic weirdness, and POTUS Arnold J, Dreck swaggering in like a malfunctioning demagogue.

I do not write them. They write themselves. Mostly they argue with me. Often they win!

V. The Actual Writing (chaos disguised as discipline)
This is the moment when I sit at the keyboard and realize the book refuses to follow the outline I crafted so carefully. Entire scenes go rogue. Characters decide to survive when they were meant to die, or die when they were meant to merely worry.

I write in long, breathless silos of energy: five hours without noticing, followed by three days of staring at a single sentence, convinced it is either genius or the worst thing mankind has produced.

Then comes the dialogue that feels too real. The descriptions that feel too sharp. The scenes where I almost feel like I am merely transcribing something already happening in the world, somewhere just beyond reach.
This is the part of writing that feels supernatural — or, depending on the day, slightly neurological.

VI. The Revision Phase (a heroic act of self-doubt)
After finishing a chapter, I read it and wonder who wrote such elegant prose. Ha! Then I read it again the next day and wonder who allowed me near a keyboard unsupervised…

Revision is not the killing of darlings; it is the mass internment of them. I remove adjectives with the zeal of a surgeon. I cut entire subplots I once loved. I rein in my own linguistic flourishes, then sneak them back in two paragraphs later.

VII. The Final Stage (an unholy mix of relief and grief)
Finishing a book feels like burying a time capsule and walking away from it knowing it will live longer than I will. The moment is bittersweet. I send it out into the world, where it no longer belongs to me, but to readers who will argue with it, love it, misunderstand it, highlight suspicious sentences, and try to guess which real politicians I was referencing.
I pretend not to enjoy that part. I absolutely enjoy it.

VIII. And Then I Begin Again
Because the world is, sadly, not finished breaking, and neither is my imagination. Every ending is a beginning disguised as exhaustion. Every book gives birth to the next whisper, the next spark, the next ghost of an idea that refuses to leave until I turn it into living words on a page.

This is not a process. It is a cycle. It is a labyrinth. It is a slightly unhinged ritual. And, most truthfully, it is a strange form of joy.

If you’ve read this far, welcome to the back room of my mind. Take a seat — gently — and don’t touch anything with glowing runes.