Wil Leslie spent two years carrying a story in his head. Then he sat down at his computer and finished 80% of a novel in two weeks. Here’s what that journey teaches us about technology, creativity, and the courage to start.

Every day, millions of people sit down at a laptop with something to say. Most of them never quite get it out. Wil Leslie almost didn’t either.

Leslie, the author behind the science fiction novel Time Plan, had been living with his story for the better part of two years. Different versions of it. Different angles. A time-traveling MIT physicist with an IQ of 191, a secret underground lab, and a heartbreaking mission to go back to 1897 and set in motion the plan that would one day save his parents’ lives.

“For a couple of years, I had this story in my mind,” Leslie said in a recent interview. “Different versions of it over time, until I finally decided to sit down one day in 2025 and write it.”

What happened next is something every aspiring writer, and really, every person who has ever sat in front of a blank screen wondering where to begin, should hear. He sat down. He started. And in about two weeks, 80% of the manuscript was done.

The Two-Week Sprint

When people ask Leslie how long it took to write the book, he gives two answers: about 30 days and about two years. The two years were the invisible work, the thinking, the imagining, the living with characters until they feel real. The 30 days were when the laptop became his partner.

This is a dynamic that anyone who works on a computer will recognize. There’s a moment when preparation meets readiness, and the tool in front of you stops being a barrier and becomes a runway. The right machine, fast, responsive, distraction-free, doesn’t write the story for you. But it gets out of the way and lets you write it yourself.

“It actually took me about two weeks to put the words on the screen, but about 80% of the novel had been written in about one month,” Wil Leslie, author of The Time Plan

For writers in full flow, every second of lag, every intrusive notification, every time the battery dies mid-scene is a small interruption of something large and fragile. Sustained creative output is one of the most demanding cognitive tasks a person can perform, and the hardware supporting that work matters more than most people realize.

When Technology Serves the Imagination

Photo Courtesy: Jack Brogan

It’s fitting that Leslie’s novel is itself a celebration of what technology makes possible. His protagonist, Dr. John Brogan, builds a time travel portal from the ground up, designing hardware, writing software, running diagnostics on equipment that no one else in the world has managed to build. The book is, at its core, a love letter to the idea that human ingenuity, given the right tools and enough determination, can do the impossible.

Leslie drew on authors like Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler when thinking about how to structure his story, writers known for immersive detail, propulsive plotting, and the satisfying sense that every technical element has been thought through. He wanted Time Plan to feel real, to put readers inside a world where quantum physics, paradox theories, and 19th-century New York coexist convincingly.

That kind of writing demands research, organization, and the ability to move fluidly between the big picture and the granular detail. A capable laptop with a bright, wide display and reliable performance handles the tab-switching, the document-juggling, the late-night writing sessions that world-building requires.

The Story That Was Already There

One of the most encouraging things Leslie says about his creative process is also one of the most universal: the story was already in him. He just needed to start.

“I’ve always been convinced that everyone has at least one good book in them that they should write,” he said. “It may not be a New York Times bestseller, but it may inspire others in ways that we can’t even imagine.”

This is a sentiment that extends well beyond novel-writing. The project you’ve been putting off. The business plan living in a notes app. The presentation, you know could be transformational if you could just get it out of your head and onto the screen. The tool sitting in front of you is ready. The question is whether you are.

Leslie finished Time Plan. His protagonist crossed 127 years of time to rescue his parents. Both of them did the impossible by deciding, one ordinary day, to begin.