Noonan Formula

The Noonan Formula is Michael Noonan’s practice of writing two novels in some years, publishing one and storing the other for later. It lets him maintain the expected annual release schedule while secretly accumulating manuscripts—a strategy that turns a publishing routine into cover for a four-year writing crisis.

Definition and Method

The formula responds to an industry expectation that a successful novelist should deliver a book each year. Publishers regard that pace as an optimum: a roughly 380-page novel every twelve months, with a beginning, middle, and end. A continuing protagonist is optional, though preferred, because readers enjoy returning to familiar characters.

Falling behind can harm a publisher’s investment, disrupt a business manager’s handling of credit, and reduce an agent’s ability to plan. A long gap may also cost readers; publishing too frequently, by contrast, can leave them feeling oversaturated. Against these pressures, the formula offers a practical workaround: write ahead, but release the books at the familiar yearly pace.

Michael Noonan’s Use of the Formula

Michael had published a book every year beginning with Being Two in 1984. In four of those ten years, however, he wrote two books, publishing one and putting the other away. The stored manuscript functioned as a reserve against a future year when he could not produce new work.

That reserve enabled Michael to appear reliably productive even as his actual writing faltered. He describes spending four years with his computer reduced, in effect, to an expensive Scrabble board, while a new Michael Noonan suspense novel continued to appear each fall. The public schedule concealed the private impasse: from the outside, there seemed to be no writer’s block at all.

Secrecy and Retrospective Meaning

Michael assumed the stored books were simply a way of saving up work, and he did not remember discussing the arrangement with Jo. Because she never asked about it, he took that silence as evidence that she understood. He says he was having fun, not consciously thinking of himself as suffering writer’s block.

The method’s name therefore carries an irony. What first looks like a clever piece of professional planning becomes, in retrospect, a way to hide the extent of Michael’s inability to write. The formula could keep books appearing on schedule, but it could not make the apparent flow of new work match the reality of his creative life.