Pentti Palomäki
Nordic noir novelist. Children's fantasy creator. Poet. Five-project multitasker. AI-augmented planter.
How Pentti Turned Retirement Into a Creative Second Career
What Stood in the Way
After decades in the IT world — progressing from technical work to strategy, process development, and organizational planning — Pentti retired with something he'd never really had before: time to write seriously.
But creative time brought its own challenges: Multiple books across wildly different genres. A hybrid discovery-writing style that needed freedom and structure. Complex character development using the Enneagram that was hard to track across large manuscripts. Frequent moments of doubt ("there's no way out, this is rubbish"). Limited Finnish-language LLM support.
And one more thing: He wasn't writing for fun — he was writing with the goal of traditional publication in Finland.
How Everything Changed
Plotdrive became Pentti's creative operating system: the place where all of his stories, characters, structures, and chapter plans could live together — and evolve together.
He begins every book with deep character work using the Enneagram. Plotdrive helps him articulate wants, needs, fears, and contradictions. Test combinations of contrasting types. Surface interpersonal conflict. Build tension-driven plots.
He's a power button creator. He uses buttons for different types of scenes, chapter generation, adding depth, tightening prose, experimenting with structure, iterative rewriting.
Because Finnish support varies across models, he drafts using GPT-4o, Claude, and Gemini through API keys. "Only a few LLMs speak Finnish very well. With API keys, I get exactly the models I need."
The Numbers
"With Plotdrive, you don't need new books about writing or more courses. You have a team around you — a very good team."
What Pentti Achieved
The Process Transformation
The Craft Transformation
"It doesn't change who they are. It supports who they are — and helps them actually finish the stories they've carried for years."
Other Success Stories
Discover how other authors transformed their writing with Plotdrive
Russell Nohelty
77+ books. $400k/year business.
"I didn't think I'd ever write a book again."Read Story
Adrianne Carley
Fantasy author. Mythology expert. Pantser.
"Plotdrive saves me from the mistakes I used to catch weeks later."Read Story