Tag: blogging

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 92

Day 92 – Holidays – Bah, humbug

…

The Blank Page, The Burnout, and the Necessity of Leaving Your Desk

There is a specific kind of romanticism attached to the image of the “tortured writer.” We envision the solitary figure, hunched over a desk in a dimly lit room, surrounded by stacks of paper and empty coffee mugs, finding their ultimate bliss in the quiet hum of creation.

If your ideal scenario—your slice of heaven—is sitting in a silent room with nothing but a blank sheet of paper and a pen, you might be wondering: Is there something wrong with me?

The short answer? No. But there is a danger in confusing “solitude” with “stagnation.”

The Comfort of the Void

For many of us, the blank page is the ultimate sanctuary. It is a space of pure potential, untainted by the messy, demanding realities of the outside world. When the world feels loud, chaotic, or overwhelming, the blank page is the only place where we can impose order. It’s a controlled environment where we are the architects of the universe.

However, that sanctuary can quickly become a cage. When you retreat into the vacuum of your own mind for too long, your writing begins to suffer. It loses its vitality, its texture, and its connection to the very thing it’s supposed to reflect: life.

The Myth of the Perpetual Engine

We feel guilty when we stop. We worry that if we step away from the desk, we’ll lose our momentum, our “voice,” or our discipline. But here is a hard truth every writer needs to internalise: To write about life, you must actually live it.

If you spend every waking hour staring at a blank page, you are not refilling the well; you are just watching the bottom of the bucket. Eventually, the well runs dry.

When you force yourself to stay in that room, you aren’t just risking a “writer’s block” or a mediocre draft; you are risking a breakdown. Writing requires a massive expenditure of emotional and intellectual energy. It is an act of extraction. If you never replenish, you begin to run on fumes. You become irritable, exhausted, and—perhaps worst of all—your writing starts to sound like a rehash of a rehash.

Why You Need to “Get Out”

Taking a break isn’t an act of laziness; it is a vital part of the creative process. Here is why you need to leave the room:

1. You need input to create output. Inspiration is rarely found at the desk. It is found in the way a stranger speaks on the bus, the changing colour of the leaves in the park, the frustrating delay of a train, or the taste of a meal you didn’t have to cook yourself. These experiences provide the “raw material” for your stories. Without them, your writing becomes abstract and hollow.

2. The subconscious needs room to breathe. Have you ever noticed that your best ideas come in the shower or while you’re out for a walk? That’s because your brain is a problem-solving machine that works best when it’s distracted. By stepping away, you give your subconscious permission to connect the dots that your conscious mind was too stubborn to see.

3. Perspective is a cure for perfectionism. When we sit in a room for too long, we lose our sense of proportion. A single paragraph feels like a life-or-death struggle. A week away from the work allows you to come back with fresh eyes, seeing the flaws you were blind to and the potential you had buried under anxiety.

The Holiday is Part of the Work

If you are currently feeling like the “ideal situation” of the blank page is starting to feel more like a prison cell, take it as your sign: Go on holiday.

It doesn’t need to be an exotic excursion. Go to a museum, sit in a crowded cafe, take a hike, or simply spend a weekend completely disconnected from your project. Give yourself the gift of being a person for a few days, rather than a “writer.”

When you return to that desk, you won’t be returning to a cage. You’ll be returning with pockets full of observations, a rested nervous system, and a surplus of energy.

The blank page will still be there. It’s not going anywhere. But it will be waiting for a version of you that has something new to say.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 92

Day 92 – Holidays – Bah, humbug

…

The Blank Page, The Burnout, and the Necessity of Leaving Your Desk

There is a specific kind of romanticism attached to the image of the “tortured writer.” We envision the solitary figure, hunched over a desk in a dimly lit room, surrounded by stacks of paper and empty coffee mugs, finding their ultimate bliss in the quiet hum of creation.

If your ideal scenario—your slice of heaven—is sitting in a silent room with nothing but a blank sheet of paper and a pen, you might be wondering: Is there something wrong with me?

The short answer? No. But there is a danger in confusing “solitude” with “stagnation.”

The Comfort of the Void

For many of us, the blank page is the ultimate sanctuary. It is a space of pure potential, untainted by the messy, demanding realities of the outside world. When the world feels loud, chaotic, or overwhelming, the blank page is the only place where we can impose order. It’s a controlled environment where we are the architects of the universe.

However, that sanctuary can quickly become a cage. When you retreat into the vacuum of your own mind for too long, your writing begins to suffer. It loses its vitality, its texture, and its connection to the very thing it’s supposed to reflect: life.

The Myth of the Perpetual Engine

We feel guilty when we stop. We worry that if we step away from the desk, we’ll lose our momentum, our “voice,” or our discipline. But here is a hard truth every writer needs to internalise: To write about life, you must actually live it.

If you spend every waking hour staring at a blank page, you are not refilling the well; you are just watching the bottom of the bucket. Eventually, the well runs dry.

When you force yourself to stay in that room, you aren’t just risking a “writer’s block” or a mediocre draft; you are risking a breakdown. Writing requires a massive expenditure of emotional and intellectual energy. It is an act of extraction. If you never replenish, you begin to run on fumes. You become irritable, exhausted, and—perhaps worst of all—your writing starts to sound like a rehash of a rehash.

Why You Need to “Get Out”

Taking a break isn’t an act of laziness; it is a vital part of the creative process. Here is why you need to leave the room:

1. You need input to create output. Inspiration is rarely found at the desk. It is found in the way a stranger speaks on the bus, the changing colour of the leaves in the park, the frustrating delay of a train, or the taste of a meal you didn’t have to cook yourself. These experiences provide the “raw material” for your stories. Without them, your writing becomes abstract and hollow.

2. The subconscious needs room to breathe. Have you ever noticed that your best ideas come in the shower or while you’re out for a walk? That’s because your brain is a problem-solving machine that works best when it’s distracted. By stepping away, you give your subconscious permission to connect the dots that your conscious mind was too stubborn to see.

3. Perspective is a cure for perfectionism. When we sit in a room for too long, we lose our sense of proportion. A single paragraph feels like a life-or-death struggle. A week away from the work allows you to come back with fresh eyes, seeing the flaws you were blind to and the potential you had buried under anxiety.

The Holiday is Part of the Work

If you are currently feeling like the “ideal situation” of the blank page is starting to feel more like a prison cell, take it as your sign: Go on holiday.

It doesn’t need to be an exotic excursion. Go to a museum, sit in a crowded cafe, take a hike, or simply spend a weekend completely disconnected from your project. Give yourself the gift of being a person for a few days, rather than a “writer.”

When you return to that desk, you won’t be returning to a cage. You’ll be returning with pockets full of observations, a rested nervous system, and a surplus of energy.

The blank page will still be there. It’s not going anywhere. But it will be waiting for a version of you that has something new to say.

NaNoWriMo – April – 2026 – Day 19

As a result of a sit-down with Chester, who has been keeping an eye on the progress of the project, or at least that’s what he thinks, we’ve decided that there’s going to be a slight change.

Plan or not, writing the story was always going to go the way the characters want to go, and I’ve decided that the two protagonists are not going to have a happily ever after.

They can’t.

It was a pie in the sky notion that they could, given the nature of their professions. But it’s not only that; it comes down to the plans their employer has for them, and it certainly isn’t for them to be together.

So, the way it’s written, they were about to have that intimate moment when common sense took over, and instead of being together, they are apart in her apartment.

She wanted him to stay, he wanted to stay, but there are forces in play that dictate caution.

Then the plot twist no one saw coming.

I’m excited about the next ten days.

Stay tuned

A to Z – April – 2026 – P

P is for – Princess

…

It was a mad dash from the office to the airport, and like most times when it came to personal travel, I just made it, or I was five minutes too late.

Of course, this time, I had a legitimate reason.  Because I had to clear the vacation days, I needed to go home and be with my mother, whose health had taken a turn for the worse, and it meant visiting HR.

And in HR was Adeline, the woman I had met at a staff function the week before and had spent a rather interesting evening.  I had a strict policy of not dating work colleagues, but for some reason, she seemed different.

It was not a date, and we had parted without any commitment to continue, though something inside me told me it might be worth pursuing.

I had to sign the vacation form, and she was the duty officer at the desk.  In the end, I had to run, but she had asked to exchange phone numbers.  I had no idea how long I would be gone, a few days or much longer, given my mother’s doctor wasn’t sure himself.

All I knew was that her time was almost up.  Stage four cancer was as unpredictable as it was relentless.  The only positive is that it has given me the time to get home and spend those last few weeks with her.

My brother and sister were on the other side of the world and wouldn’t be able to make it, though they were trying to get home.  The thing was that our mother was not all that keen for them to return.  It was an odd response and one I couldn’t understand.

Perhaps I would find out when I got there.

…

On a trip that involved two planes, one made at least a dozen times over the past two years without a glitch, was expected, discounting the circumstances, to be equally as easy.

Wrong.

It was like the universe was trying to tell me something.  A surplus bag left behind stopped my outward-bound first flight, delaying it to the point it was scrubbed, and everyone had to return the next day.

That killed the connecting flight, so that when I was finally on the ground, the second flight wasn’t leaving for another eleven hours.

I finally got home two days after I started out.  I was glad she was not at death’s door, or I would have missed seeing her alive and have those last few meaningless words we say to people who are dying.

It was a given that I would automatically ask how she was, knowing she was never going to feel well again.  And yet there was no stopping us because we had been indoctrinated a long time ago with such human concern.

She was propped up in a comfortable chair by the fire, reading a book when I got there, fighting off the beginnings of a snowstorm, and driving an unfamiliar car.

At best, I was expecting to be snowed in.  My mother’s last conversation over the phone while I was waiting for the second plane was upbeat, though I could hear the pain in her voice. She was on regulated morphine shots to manage that same pain.

I dumped my bag at the foot of the stairs and went into the large living space.  In winter, it could get very cold, but it was more the views in spring and summer that made up for the other two seasons.

“How could you read a book when the falling snow is so breathtakingly beautiful?”

In more ways than one.  The intense cold outside could make breathing difficult.  It used to affect me when I was younger.

“Richie, at last.”

I went over and gave her a hug.

Mrs Davis, her carer, came in carrying a tray with tea and coffee.  My mother had never acquired the taste for coffee, perhaps because of her family origins in England. 

She was, she always said, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, that she should have been a princess, and only the thought of all that pomp and ceremony that came with the title had put her off, running away to America and a different sort of life.

And when we asked her what she meant, she would always say, ‘That’s for me to know and for you to find out’.  But it never escaped me that Dad always used to call her his ‘Princess’ with one of his enigmatic smiles, along with their story on how she came second in the Prom Queen stakes and therefore would always be his Princess.

I never understood what he meant, and the others just thought he was simply crazy in love with her.

It was the sort of love I wanted to find, but so far, I had not.

Mrs Davis poured the tea and left us.  I sat in the seat beside her, where Dad always sat.  It was strange that he always called the living room ‘the throne room’.

“You were lucky.  The airport just closed.  The snow is going to set in for a few days.”

God’s will, perhaps.

“Any word from the others?”  I could see the iPad beside her, a sure sign she had been video conferencing with my brother and sister.

“I told them it’s not urgent.  They have obligations and children to consider.  Unlike you, free as a bird.”

It was a blessing and, ironically, it was a curse.  She had hoped that she would have at least one grandchild from each of her children, and I had disappointed her.

There had been several candidates over the years, but I was not what they were looking for, and in the end, I decided not to try.  If it was meant to happen, it would.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.  I’d rather she were perfect for you than second best.”

“You were, according to Dad, and that’s all I ask for.”

“You’re not a second-best sort of person, Richie.  She’s out there. You just haven’t met her yet.”

It was the same every time I came home.  It saddened me that this would be the last time and that it was going to be hard to remain upbeat.

…

Several weeks passed, and it was very hard to watch her slowly decline.  Her bed was set up in the living room, making it easier for her to get from the bed to the seat

A steady stream of visitors showed how much the townsfolk adored her, everyone coming to pay their respects while she had the strength.

Now it was deserting her, so she remained in bed and held court from there.  A different colour dressing gown for each day of the week.

Our conversations were of childhood memories, hers and mine, though there were hardly any of mine that she wasn’t aware of, and a whole swathe of hers I had no idea about.  I don’t think any of us did, Dad included, and it sounded to me like she had another life before this one.  I didn’t believe in reincarnation, but the stories, well, they sounded too real to be just in her imagination.

She had lived a life that was quite literally beyond imagination.

Until…

A few days later, a visitor came.  Not your average visitor, but someone who looked vaguely familiar, someone I’d seen before.

Someone who called her mama.

She sat down opposite my mother and took her hand in hers.  It was like turning on a light switch and watching the brightness of an illuminated globe light up the room.

“Anastasia?”

“Yes, mama.  It is me.  It is your time.”

Mother looked at me with watery eyes and a big smile, happy in a way she had not been for a long time.  “I asked Anastasia to come see you.  I told her you were a good boy.”

Whatever that meant.

She then closed her eyes for so long I thought she had passed, finally content that her time had come, but then she said, with conviction, “You have heard this story a million times, but not quite.”

At first, I thought she was going to tell me one of her fairy tales, but she was not.  She had opened her eyes and was looking straight at me.

“What more could there be?” I asked.

“More than you could ever imagine.”

…

Then, it was like a light went on in my head.  The woman sitting next to my mother, holding her hand, looking angelic.

The Princess Anastasia.  I’d just been reading about her, from some obscure country tucked away in the mountainous region of Europe, a place few knew about and even less could visit.

And then looking between the two, the uncanny resemblance between the two.

“You can see it, can’t you?” Anastasia said.

“You are related.”

“She is my mother, yes.  She was banished many, many years ago, and I have only just found her.  You are her son.  Her dying wish was for you to return to her homeland, and if you honour her dying wish, I will be very happy to take you there.”

My mother looked at me with teary eyes.  “Will you?”

“What about the others?”

“Then need not know, and it would be of little concern to them.  They are not of your blood.  You are the son of a prince and a princess, Richard, and meant for greater things.  Please tell me you will return with Anastasia.”  She reached out for my hand, and when I took it in mine, it felt cold.  Her glow was beginning to fade, and the end was near.

To be honest, I thought she was off her rocker, but the earnestness in her tone, and the fact that I was sitting next to a real, live princess, and apparently my sister.  I think I just nodded dumbly.

With that, she passed, and though I was not to know then, a whole new world awaited me.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025-2026

NaNoWriMo – April – 2026 – Day 18

The problems of the day before are gone, and I get back to the plan.

Today I have concentrated on the side excursion I’d come up with the other day and thought it could wait, but I’m at a point, further on, where I need to have this written to feed into the main story.

I’m in two minds about how this should be written because I had two possible outcomes sketched out two possible outcomes, and one leads to quite a different ending.

The plan, son, the plan!

I edit it as it should be, and the other outcome gets crossed out, and the outline is sent to the ‘to be written sometime in the future’ pile.  It’s a strong enough ending to power its own story.

I might even become a sequel.

Hang on, don’t get carried away.  Get this one finished first.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 91

Day 91 – The writing sprint inspired by an event years before

…

The Myth of the “Overnight” Success: What Jack Kerouac Can Teach Us About Creativity

We love the narrative of the “lightning bolt.” We want to believe that great art—the kind that defines a generation—is born in a flash of divine inspiration.

Take Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. The legend goes that he wrote the entire, sprawling masterpiece in one manic, caffeine-fueled, three-week sprint. It’s the ultimate romantic story for writers: lock yourself in a room, feed paper into a typewriter, and emerge with a bestseller.

But if we stop there, we miss the most important part of the process. We ignore the seven years of gasoline, asphalt, jazz clubs, and heartbreak that happened before the paper hit the typewriter.

The Seven-Year “Incubation”

Before that legendary three-week sprint in 1951, Kerouac wasn’t just sitting around waiting for a muse. He was living. He was riding buses across the American landscape, working on railroads, observing the rhythm of the beatniks, and—crucially—filling notebooks with sketches and observations.

He was conducting a seven-year masterclass in experience.

When people ask, “Is it really possible to write a bestseller in three weeks?” the answer is both yes and no. You can write the draft in three weeks, but you cannot live the life in three weeks.

Kerouac didn’t “write” On the Road in three weeks; he transcribed seven years of accumulated soul-searching. The writing was the harvest; the seven years were the soil, the rain, and the seasons.

Why Your “Sprints” Are Only as Good as Your “Strolls”

Many aspiring writers get stuck because they try to force the sprint without doing the strolling. They want the climax of the creative process without the tedious, often messy work of gathering material.

If you are feeling blocked, perhaps you aren’t lacking “inspiration.” Perhaps you are simply lacking input.

Creativity is a digestive process. You consume the world—people, conversations, nature, failure, thrill—and your subconscious ferments these experiences until they are ready to be poured out. If you try to sprint when your internal tank is empty, you’ll find yourself staring at a blank cursor, terrified.

The Power of the “Controlled Spill”

Kerouac’s three-week sprint was successful because it was a controlled spill. He had spent years thinking about the story, dreaming about the characters, and refining his voice. By the time he rolled that 120-foot scroll of paper into his typewriter, the story was already finished in his mind. He just had to get out of its way.

Here is how you can apply the “Kerouac Method” to your own work:

  1. Stop Trying to Sprint Every Day: You will burn out. Use your “off-days” to experience life. Collect curiosities. Write down fragments of dialogue. Store up the images that move you.
  2. Trust the Incubation Period: The best ideas often sit in the back of your brain for years. Don’t force them onto the page until they feel heavy, until they are practically vibrating and demanding to be let out.
  3. Prepare the Environment: When the time comes to sprint, clear the deck. Eliminate the distractions. Make the physical act of writing as seamless as possible. Kerouac famously used a continuous scroll to avoid the “interruption” of changing pages. Find your version of that.
  4. Accept the Mess: A three-week sprint is not about perfection; it’s about velocity. Leave the editing for a later date. Your goal during the sprint is to capture the lightning, not to organise the storm.

The Lesson

The myth of the three-week bestseller is a dangerous one if you think it means you can skip the hard work of living. But it is an empowering one if you realise that your life is your research.

Every conversation you have, every mile you travel, and every heartbreak you endure is a brick in the foundation of your future masterpiece. Spend your years gathering the material, and then, when the pressure becomes too much to hold inside, give yourself permission to run.

You might just find that you’re capable of writing your own version of brilliance.

A to Z – April – 2026 – P

P is for – Princess

…

It was a mad dash from the office to the airport, and like most times when it came to personal travel, I just made it, or I was five minutes too late.

Of course, this time, I had a legitimate reason.  Because I had to clear the vacation days, I needed to go home and be with my mother, whose health had taken a turn for the worse, and it meant visiting HR.

And in HR was Adeline, the woman I had met at a staff function the week before and had spent a rather interesting evening.  I had a strict policy of not dating work colleagues, but for some reason, she seemed different.

It was not a date, and we had parted without any commitment to continue, though something inside me told me it might be worth pursuing.

I had to sign the vacation form, and she was the duty officer at the desk.  In the end, I had to run, but she had asked to exchange phone numbers.  I had no idea how long I would be gone, a few days or much longer, given my mother’s doctor wasn’t sure himself.

All I knew was that her time was almost up.  Stage four cancer was as unpredictable as it was relentless.  The only positive is that it has given me the time to get home and spend those last few weeks with her.

My brother and sister were on the other side of the world and wouldn’t be able to make it, though they were trying to get home.  The thing was that our mother was not all that keen for them to return.  It was an odd response and one I couldn’t understand.

Perhaps I would find out when I got there.

…

On a trip that involved two planes, one made at least a dozen times over the past two years without a glitch, was expected, discounting the circumstances, to be equally as easy.

Wrong.

It was like the universe was trying to tell me something.  A surplus bag left behind stopped my outward-bound first flight, delaying it to the point it was scrubbed, and everyone had to return the next day.

That killed the connecting flight, so that when I was finally on the ground, the second flight wasn’t leaving for another eleven hours.

I finally got home two days after I started out.  I was glad she was not at death’s door, or I would have missed seeing her alive and have those last few meaningless words we say to people who are dying.

It was a given that I would automatically ask how she was, knowing she was never going to feel well again.  And yet there was no stopping us because we had been indoctrinated a long time ago with such human concern.

She was propped up in a comfortable chair by the fire, reading a book when I got there, fighting off the beginnings of a snowstorm, and driving an unfamiliar car.

At best, I was expecting to be snowed in.  My mother’s last conversation over the phone while I was waiting for the second plane was upbeat, though I could hear the pain in her voice. She was on regulated morphine shots to manage that same pain.

I dumped my bag at the foot of the stairs and went into the large living space.  In winter, it could get very cold, but it was more the views in spring and summer that made up for the other two seasons.

“How could you read a book when the falling snow is so breathtakingly beautiful?”

In more ways than one.  The intense cold outside could make breathing difficult.  It used to affect me when I was younger.

“Richie, at last.”

I went over and gave her a hug.

Mrs Davis, her carer, came in carrying a tray with tea and coffee.  My mother had never acquired the taste for coffee, perhaps because of her family origins in England. 

She was, she always said, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, that she should have been a princess, and only the thought of all that pomp and ceremony that came with the title had put her off, running away to America and a different sort of life.

And when we asked her what she meant, she would always say, ‘That’s for me to know and for you to find out’.  But it never escaped me that Dad always used to call her his ‘Princess’ with one of his enigmatic smiles, along with their story on how she came second in the Prom Queen stakes and therefore would always be his Princess.

I never understood what he meant, and the others just thought he was simply crazy in love with her.

It was the sort of love I wanted to find, but so far, I had not.

Mrs Davis poured the tea and left us.  I sat in the seat beside her, where Dad always sat.  It was strange that he always called the living room ‘the throne room’.

“You were lucky.  The airport just closed.  The snow is going to set in for a few days.”

God’s will, perhaps.

“Any word from the others?”  I could see the iPad beside her, a sure sign she had been video conferencing with my brother and sister.

“I told them it’s not urgent.  They have obligations and children to consider.  Unlike you, free as a bird.”

It was a blessing and, ironically, it was a curse.  She had hoped that she would have at least one grandchild from each of her children, and I had disappointed her.

There had been several candidates over the years, but I was not what they were looking for, and in the end, I decided not to try.  If it was meant to happen, it would.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.  I’d rather she were perfect for you than second best.”

“You were, according to Dad, and that’s all I ask for.”

“You’re not a second-best sort of person, Richie.  She’s out there. You just haven’t met her yet.”

It was the same every time I came home.  It saddened me that this would be the last time and that it was going to be hard to remain upbeat.

…

Several weeks passed, and it was very hard to watch her slowly decline.  Her bed was set up in the living room, making it easier for her to get from the bed to the seat

A steady stream of visitors showed how much the townsfolk adored her, everyone coming to pay their respects while she had the strength.

Now it was deserting her, so she remained in bed and held court from there.  A different colour dressing gown for each day of the week.

Our conversations were of childhood memories, hers and mine, though there were hardly any of mine that she wasn’t aware of, and a whole swathe of hers I had no idea about.  I don’t think any of us did, Dad included, and it sounded to me like she had another life before this one.  I didn’t believe in reincarnation, but the stories, well, they sounded too real to be just in her imagination.

She had lived a life that was quite literally beyond imagination.

Until…

A few days later, a visitor came.  Not your average visitor, but someone who looked vaguely familiar, someone I’d seen before.

Someone who called her mama.

She sat down opposite my mother and took her hand in hers.  It was like turning on a light switch and watching the brightness of an illuminated globe light up the room.

“Anastasia?”

“Yes, mama.  It is me.  It is your time.”

Mother looked at me with watery eyes and a big smile, happy in a way she had not been for a long time.  “I asked Anastasia to come see you.  I told her you were a good boy.”

Whatever that meant.

She then closed her eyes for so long I thought she had passed, finally content that her time had come, but then she said, with conviction, “You have heard this story a million times, but not quite.”

At first, I thought she was going to tell me one of her fairy tales, but she was not.  She had opened her eyes and was looking straight at me.

“What more could there be?” I asked.

“More than you could ever imagine.”

…

Then, it was like a light went on in my head.  The woman sitting next to my mother, holding her hand, looking angelic.

The Princess Anastasia.  I’d just been reading about her, from some obscure country tucked away in the mountainous region of Europe, a place few knew about and even less could visit.

And then looking between the two, the uncanny resemblance between the two.

“You can see it, can’t you?” Anastasia said.

“You are related.”

“She is my mother, yes.  She was banished many, many years ago, and I have only just found her.  You are her son.  Her dying wish was for you to return to her homeland, and if you honour her dying wish, I will be very happy to take you there.”

My mother looked at me with teary eyes.  “Will you?”

“What about the others?”

“Then need not know, and it would be of little concern to them.  They are not of your blood.  You are the son of a prince and a princess, Richard, and meant for greater things.  Please tell me you will return with Anastasia.”  She reached out for my hand, and when I took it in mine, it felt cold.  Her glow was beginning to fade, and the end was near.

To be honest, I thought she was off her rocker, but the earnestness in her tone, and the fact that I was sitting next to a real, live princess, and apparently my sister.  I think I just nodded dumbly.

With that, she passed, and though I was not to know then, a whole new world awaited me.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025-2026

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 91

Day 91 – The writing sprint inspired by an event years before

…

The Myth of the “Overnight” Success: What Jack Kerouac Can Teach Us About Creativity

We love the narrative of the “lightning bolt.” We want to believe that great art—the kind that defines a generation—is born in a flash of divine inspiration.

Take Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. The legend goes that he wrote the entire, sprawling masterpiece in one manic, caffeine-fueled, three-week sprint. It’s the ultimate romantic story for writers: lock yourself in a room, feed paper into a typewriter, and emerge with a bestseller.

But if we stop there, we miss the most important part of the process. We ignore the seven years of gasoline, asphalt, jazz clubs, and heartbreak that happened before the paper hit the typewriter.

The Seven-Year “Incubation”

Before that legendary three-week sprint in 1951, Kerouac wasn’t just sitting around waiting for a muse. He was living. He was riding buses across the American landscape, working on railroads, observing the rhythm of the beatniks, and—crucially—filling notebooks with sketches and observations.

He was conducting a seven-year masterclass in experience.

When people ask, “Is it really possible to write a bestseller in three weeks?” the answer is both yes and no. You can write the draft in three weeks, but you cannot live the life in three weeks.

Kerouac didn’t “write” On the Road in three weeks; he transcribed seven years of accumulated soul-searching. The writing was the harvest; the seven years were the soil, the rain, and the seasons.

Why Your “Sprints” Are Only as Good as Your “Strolls”

Many aspiring writers get stuck because they try to force the sprint without doing the strolling. They want the climax of the creative process without the tedious, often messy work of gathering material.

If you are feeling blocked, perhaps you aren’t lacking “inspiration.” Perhaps you are simply lacking input.

Creativity is a digestive process. You consume the world—people, conversations, nature, failure, thrill—and your subconscious ferments these experiences until they are ready to be poured out. If you try to sprint when your internal tank is empty, you’ll find yourself staring at a blank cursor, terrified.

The Power of the “Controlled Spill”

Kerouac’s three-week sprint was successful because it was a controlled spill. He had spent years thinking about the story, dreaming about the characters, and refining his voice. By the time he rolled that 120-foot scroll of paper into his typewriter, the story was already finished in his mind. He just had to get out of its way.

Here is how you can apply the “Kerouac Method” to your own work:

  1. Stop Trying to Sprint Every Day: You will burn out. Use your “off-days” to experience life. Collect curiosities. Write down fragments of dialogue. Store up the images that move you.
  2. Trust the Incubation Period: The best ideas often sit in the back of your brain for years. Don’t force them onto the page until they feel heavy, until they are practically vibrating and demanding to be let out.
  3. Prepare the Environment: When the time comes to sprint, clear the deck. Eliminate the distractions. Make the physical act of writing as seamless as possible. Kerouac famously used a continuous scroll to avoid the “interruption” of changing pages. Find your version of that.
  4. Accept the Mess: A three-week sprint is not about perfection; it’s about velocity. Leave the editing for a later date. Your goal during the sprint is to capture the lightning, not to organise the storm.

The Lesson

The myth of the three-week bestseller is a dangerous one if you think it means you can skip the hard work of living. But it is an empowering one if you realise that your life is your research.

Every conversation you have, every mile you travel, and every heartbreak you endure is a brick in the foundation of your future masterpiece. Spend your years gathering the material, and then, when the pressure becomes too much to hold inside, give yourself permission to run.

You might just find that you’re capable of writing your own version of brilliance.

NaNoWriMo – April – 2026 – Day 18

The problems of the day before are gone, and I get back to the plan.

Today I have concentrated on the side excursion I’d come up with the other day and thought it could wait, but I’m at a point, further on, where I need to have this written to feed into the main story.

I’m in two minds about how this should be written because I had two possible outcomes sketched out two possible outcomes, and one leads to quite a different ending.

The plan, son, the plan!

I edit it as it should be, and the other outcome gets crossed out, and the outline is sent to the ‘to be written sometime in the future’ pile.  It’s a strong enough ending to power its own story.

I might even become a sequel.

Hang on, don’t get carried away.  Get this one finished first.

A to Z – April – 2026 – O

O is for – Outcast

…

I hated reunions.  My family insisted on one every five years, and the only excuse for missing one was if you were dead.

I tried to pretend that I didn’t get the invitation, but my older sister Elaine flew to the middle of nowhere, as she called it, to take me back.  She even paid for the ticket.

She was so rich I was surprised she hadn’t come down in the family jet.  Yes, they had one, and yes, she could fly it.

I hated her.

I was the black sheep.  I was the one who was always in trouble, married the wrong girl, invested in scams, and ended up in a shack with no one and nothing to show for my life.  Oh yes, and a nothing job as a security guard.  I just had to turn up and go home.

It didn’t matter how many times I mentioned this, Elaine said that it didn’t matter. Family was everything.  I would have accepted that, except for her tone.  It was the same one she used when admonishing me when my marriage fell apart.

It’s not your fault, but who else is there to blame?

Elaine lived in New York, Merilyn lived in San Francisco, Roger lived in Albuquerque, and Sam, the family hero, lived in Washington.  Every one of my brothers and sisters was a high achiever.

My father, joking, he would say, would sometimes ask whether or not my mother had had an affair, and I was the result of it.  She didn’t quite see the joke in it, but I could.  He was happy I was out of sight and out of mind.

Elaine swept into a room, followed by adulation.

I stayed at the door and barely got a glance. 

Until my father saw me.  “James.  I’m so glad you could make it.”  He didn’t move from his seat.

What he meant to say, as he had in the past, was ‘look what the cat dragged in’   It was a surprise he hadn’t.

My mother looked over, and I could see just that momentary sigh, as if it wouldn’t be a bad thing if I’d just stayed away.

Then smiled and said, “James, you made it.  I thought you had something you couldn’t get away from?”

True.  I was using a non-existent conference as an excuse.  “This was more important,” I said

Her look told me it wasn’t. 

Roger and Marilyn had already arrived.  The Star Act, Sam, would make the grand entrance, outdoing Elaine.  It was a competition, and he had no chance, even if he was elected president.

Roger came over.  “You know this isn’t going to end well.  You look well.”  No handshake, no hug, nothing.  It was like we were not related.

“Nice to see you too, bro.”

He winced.  Yes, I can read his mind, ‘don’t call me bro, you asshole, and we’re definitely not related’.

Merilyn was a little better. She gave me a two-second hug.  She was the second-lowest high achiever, one rung above me, and not married yet.

Mother’s looks covered her sentiment, “You’re getting older, and it’s harder when you have children at that age”.

She couldn’t tell her mother she hated the idea of having children, much less bringing them into this horrible world.  Maybe I would.

Now, if I went up to my old room, left as it was the day I stormed out, maybe no one would notice me.

“Jimbo.  You came?”

Alex, Elaine’s husband, had been hiding out back.

“Your wife dragged me here under threat of death.  I had no choice.”  And wait for it…

“Everyone has a choice, Jimbo.”

Jimbo.  The cretin couldn’t even get my name right, or it was his way of treating me like I was nothing.  I’d corrected him for a few months and then given up.  His contempt for me knew no bounds.

He was riding on her coattails, and that was a marriage that was heading for the rocks.  He was a ‘player’.  Snobby pretentious twit.

Elaine was still doing the rounds and had the limelight.  Alex would wait a minute and then attempt to take it away.

My cue to leave.  Before I ran into Angelique, Rogers long-time partner with no wedding date in sight, a pretentious girl with a phony French accent. 

No one knew she had been a Playboy model and a porn actress before she met Roger.

We had a pact.  I wouldn’t tell anyone, and she wouldn’t treat me condescendingly, but that was two years ago.  She’d have to think the secret was safe.

If Sam made the move and started down the presidential path, the skeletons were not going to stay in the closet very long.

“James.”  She had a nice voice and was alarmingly beautiful.

“Angelique.”

“Back for round three?  I saw you arrive with Elaine, so perhaps not willingly?”

“Elaine made a special trip.”

“Then you can bet there’s trouble in paradise.”  She smiled.  “Try not to listen through keyholes.”

In other words, get the gossip; something is going on.  Or not, I could never quite tell what she meant.

The noise level dropped, and everyone was grabbing a seat.  Like musical chairs, the last man standing was the last man standing.

Mother saw me by the door.  “Just grab a chair in the dining room, dear.”

“No need.  I’m going up to my room to sulk.  You lot feel free to talk about me.  My situation hadn’t changed since the last time I was here, so I have nothing to add.”

“Don’t be like that.  You are as much a part of the family as all of us.”

It sounded earnest and welcoming, but mothers all practised that line.  What she was really saying was ‘please go so I can talk to Elaine’.

Dad was thinking, ‘son of the bloody milkman’, and Alex, ‘please leave and don’t come back’.  Of course, without the ‘please’.

I shrugged.  “I’ll be down for dinner.  It’ll give you time to think up some insightful questions.”

Then I left, closing the sliding doors that felt like I was stepping from one world into another.

And bumped into Sam.

Who immediately motioned me to be quiet and follow him into the study up the passage.  Inside, he closed the door.

“What the hell, Sam?”

“I don’t want them to know I’m here yet.”

“Why.  You’re the golden boy, just one step removed from Elaine.  But if you…”

“I’m not.”

“What?”

“Running for office.”

“Why?  Because you have a low-life brother.  I’m sure no one cares.”

“No one does.  No, there are bigger secrets than that that would come out, secrets I’m sure no one really knows about, or if they did, they would have told me.”

“What secrets?”  I hardly thought an ex-porn actress would cause problems because nearly all of the current era presidents were known to dabble.

“That’s what I’m here to find out.  And you are the only one no one cares about. I need your help.”

“I’m a useless security guard.”

“You are the only one who hadn’t got an axe to grind out of that lot in that room.  I’m sure if I asked you to give me a one-sentence description of each of them, it would be caustic but true.”

“I can’t help you.  Haven’t you got staff who do that sort of thing?”

“I can’t trust any of them.  There’s no loyalty, just a paycheck.  But tomorrow, they’d sell me out for twenty pieces of gold.  It’s politics at its finest.  So, are you in?”

“Just you and me?”

“Just you and me.  Shake on it.  Your word is your bond.”

“And you being a politician…”

“I get it.  I do.  But yes.  I give you my word.”

I shook his hand

This had all the hallmarks of a gag they had all thought up before I got here, and it was going to explode in my face.  Sam was the last person I could trust and would.

“Now what?”

“We go in and work the room.”

Why did I feel like this was a setup of the worst order?  They could have just found an old girlfriend to humiliate me, but no, Sam and Elaine were always trying to outdo each other at my expense.

At least when it was over, I could leave.  And this time, I would go where neither of them could find me.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025-2026