NEW YORK — B.J. Novak says his plan of action following nine seasons of writing, producing and acting on NBC’s popular workplace comedy “The Office” was a bit random.

He decided his next project would be to write, not a film or another series, or a memoir or even a novel. Instead, it would be a book of short stories.

“It sounded like a crazy thing to do,” Novak said in a recent interview. “‘Oh, what are you doing after ‘The Office’? Are you doing a movie? Are you writing a new TV show?’ To say, ‘No, no. I’m writing a book. Just odd little short stories.’ It sounds like you’ve lost your mind and no one’s ever gonna hear from you again. It sounds like, you know, a crazy, old man in a cabin. And I wondered if I was a crazy, old man in a cabin.”

Novak, 34, said the ideas for “One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories” (Knopf), which debuted at No. 4 on The New York Times best-seller list, had been floating around in his head for a while. Still, the guy responsible for writing some of the funniest episodes of “The Office” was apprehensive about sharing those ideas.

“I didn’t know if they would ever be worth anything to anybody,” he said. “But I just really wanted to write them, so at first I would email them out to a friend or two at a time. One story to one friend. One story to another. Very shyly.”

Novak has a deal for another book and says he has “hundreds” of ideas for stories. And he wants to do more acting.

“I read an interview once where a director said that you have to be two things in front of a camera, completely focused and completely relaxed. That sounds like a paradox and the best actors are the ones who can do that. I think that’s why we can all agree I’m one of the best actors alive,” he deadpanned.