Lack of thought seems to be at least half his problem, really.

The other half is lack of restraint. One of my ways to improve To Sleep is to cut a bunch of things. Especially some of the characters. Trig is a nonentity, and eventually his "plot" just takes up time. Nielsen and Sparrow could be combined. We don't care about the crew redshirts anyway. Use that time to make some of the Jellies actual characters.