Tag: Writing

What I learned about writing – Pet Subjects, or, in other words, writing about what you know.

You will often read in the advice people tend to give budding writers, a section called ‘write about what you know’. It generally follows a rather ambiguous statement that says ‘everyone has one book in them’ and there’s an audience out there if you write about your pet subject.

That assumes we all have a pet subject, you know, something we know all this stuff about, stuff that no one else would care about. Except for other people like us.

But…

Here’s the problem: You have to write it in a way that it is interesting, and if your pet subject is ‘the erosion of sandstone over 20,000 years’, I think you are not going to find a large audience, and your book, though interesting to you, will not necessarily become an instant bestseller.

Not unless you turn it into a thriller where it’s just a passing reference, or a means of escape from the bad guys just before you blow them to smithereens.

Except…

There is a market for every type of book; you just have to do the research and find out exactly what part of your specialist knowledge the intended audience wants.

I could write about mining phosphate on the Pacific Islands at the beginning of the 1900s, which to me was fascinating, but it only appealed to those who were familiar with it. What I was told, however, was that if I wrote a sweeping Gone With The Wind type saga written around the Islands, the minung, the people and the events spanning sixty odd years, I would have a best seller on my hands.

I took their advice, and figured in the end it was going to take three volumes, much like R F Delderfield’s “A Horseman Riding By”, and got as far as almost finishing the first volume, coming in at about 1,300 pages.

That was forty years ago, and I haven’t written a word since.

It will eventually be finished, but there is always something else to do, like my latest pet project, the family history.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 121

Day 121 – Distractions

…

Beyond the Blinking Cursor: How Writers Tame Distraction (and Why It’s Not Always Bad)

We’ve all been there: you sit down with a fresh pot of coffee, a clear idea, and your laptop. Ten minutes later, you’re knee-deep in a Wikipedia thread about 14th-century agriculture or scrolling through a reel of sourdough baking tips.

Writing is a singular act of focus in a world designed to fragment it. For a writer, distraction is the ultimate antagonist. But as we navigate the digital age, the way we handle these interruptions isn’t just about “willpower”—it’s about strategy.

Here is how professional writers build a fortress around their focus, and the surprising reason why some distractions might actually be a good thing.

1. The Sound of Silence (literally)

While some writers swear by lo-fi beats or cinematic scores, music can often become a “productive distraction”—something that feels like work atmosphere but actually competes for your linguistic brainpower.

The Strategy: When the prose gets tough, turn off the music. Silence forces you to hear the rhythm of your own sentences. If you can’t stand total silence, try brown noise or a simple fan. By removing the melodic pull of a song, you allow your internal narrator to take centre stage.

2. Cutting the Digital Cord

The internet is a writer’s greatest tool and their worst enemy. How many times has “checking a single fact” turned into an hour of aimless browsing?

The Strategy: Disconnect from the internet. Whether you use an app blocker like Freedom or simply flip the Wi-Fi toggle to ‘off,’ creating an offline sanctuary is a game-changer. If you realise you need to look something up, simply write [RESEARCH THIS] in brackets and keep moving. Stay in the flow of the story; the facts can wait for the editing phase.

3. Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The smartphone is the world’s most advanced distraction machine. Even having it face-down on your desk has been shown to reduce cognitive capacity because a small part of your brain is constantly “noticing” it.

The Strategy: Silence or hide your phone. Put it in another room or inside a desk drawer. By adding a physical barrier between yourself and those red notification bubbles, you reduce the “frictional cost” of staying focused. If you can’t see it, your brain eventually stops craving the hit of dopamine it provides.

4. Working Against the Clock

The fear of a long, gruelling writing session is often what leads us to seek distractions. If we think we have to write for five hours, we’ll do anything to escape.

The Strategy: Set a timer for breaks. Techniques like the Pomodoro Method (25 minutes of work, 5 minutes of rest) turn writing into a sprint rather than a marathon. When you know a break is coming in exactly 12 minutes, you’re more likely to push through a difficult paragraph rather than giving up.

Can Distraction Actually Be Beneficial?

It sounds counterintuitive, but not all distractions are created equal. There is a concept in psychology called “incubation.”

When you hit a wall—a plot hole you can’t fill or a transition that feels clunky—staring at the screen often makes it worse. This is where a controlled distraction becomes beneficial.

By stepping away to do something “low-leakage” (like washing the dishes, taking a walk, or staring out the window), you allow your subconscious to work on the problem. The “Aha!” moment rarely happens while staring at a cursor; it happens when you’re distracted enough to let your mind wander, but not so distracted (by social media or email) that your brain is overwhelmed.

The Bottom Line

Managing distraction isn’t about becoming a robot; it’s about setting boundaries. By silencing the noise, disconnecting from the web, and using timers to structure your day, you create the space necessary for deep work.

And when the words won’t come? Lean into a constructive distraction. Walk away, let your mind drift, and trust that the story is still writing itself in the background.

How do you handle the urge to scroll when you should be writing? Let us know your favourite focus hacks in the comments below!

First Dig Two Graves

A sequel to “The Devil You Don’t”

…

Revenge is a dish best served cold – or preferably so when everything goes right

Of course, it rarely does, as Alistair, Zoe’s handler, discovers to his peril. Enter a wildcard, John, and whatever Alistair’s plan for dealing with Zoe was dies with him.

It leaves Zoe in completely unfamiliar territory.

…

John’s idyllic romance with a woman who is utterly out of his comfort zone is on borrowed time. She is still trying to reconcile her ambivalence after being so indifferent for so long.

They agree to take a break, during which she disappears. John, thinking she has left without saying goodbye, refuses to accept the inevitable and calls on an old friend for help in finding her.

After the mayhem and being briefly reunited, she recognises an inevitable truth: there is a price to pay for taking out Alistair; she must leave and find them first, and he would be wise to keep a low profile.

But keeping a low profile just isn’t possible, and enlisting another friend, a private detective and his sister, a deft computer hacker, they track her to the border between Austria and Hungary.

What John doesn’t realise is that another enemy is tracking him to find her too. It could have been a grand tour of Europe. Instead, it becomes a race against time before enemies old and new converge for what will be an inevitable showdown.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 121

Day 121 – Distractions

…

Beyond the Blinking Cursor: How Writers Tame Distraction (and Why It’s Not Always Bad)

We’ve all been there: you sit down with a fresh pot of coffee, a clear idea, and your laptop. Ten minutes later, you’re knee-deep in a Wikipedia thread about 14th-century agriculture or scrolling through a reel of sourdough baking tips.

Writing is a singular act of focus in a world designed to fragment it. For a writer, distraction is the ultimate antagonist. But as we navigate the digital age, the way we handle these interruptions isn’t just about “willpower”—it’s about strategy.

Here is how professional writers build a fortress around their focus, and the surprising reason why some distractions might actually be a good thing.

1. The Sound of Silence (literally)

While some writers swear by lo-fi beats or cinematic scores, music can often become a “productive distraction”—something that feels like work atmosphere but actually competes for your linguistic brainpower.

The Strategy: When the prose gets tough, turn off the music. Silence forces you to hear the rhythm of your own sentences. If you can’t stand total silence, try brown noise or a simple fan. By removing the melodic pull of a song, you allow your internal narrator to take centre stage.

2. Cutting the Digital Cord

The internet is a writer’s greatest tool and their worst enemy. How many times has “checking a single fact” turned into an hour of aimless browsing?

The Strategy: Disconnect from the internet. Whether you use an app blocker like Freedom or simply flip the Wi-Fi toggle to ‘off,’ creating an offline sanctuary is a game-changer. If you realise you need to look something up, simply write [RESEARCH THIS] in brackets and keep moving. Stay in the flow of the story; the facts can wait for the editing phase.

3. Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The smartphone is the world’s most advanced distraction machine. Even having it face-down on your desk has been shown to reduce cognitive capacity because a small part of your brain is constantly “noticing” it.

The Strategy: Silence or hide your phone. Put it in another room or inside a desk drawer. By adding a physical barrier between yourself and those red notification bubbles, you reduce the “frictional cost” of staying focused. If you can’t see it, your brain eventually stops craving the hit of dopamine it provides.

4. Working Against the Clock

The fear of a long, gruelling writing session is often what leads us to seek distractions. If we think we have to write for five hours, we’ll do anything to escape.

The Strategy: Set a timer for breaks. Techniques like the Pomodoro Method (25 minutes of work, 5 minutes of rest) turn writing into a sprint rather than a marathon. When you know a break is coming in exactly 12 minutes, you’re more likely to push through a difficult paragraph rather than giving up.

Can Distraction Actually Be Beneficial?

It sounds counterintuitive, but not all distractions are created equal. There is a concept in psychology called “incubation.”

When you hit a wall—a plot hole you can’t fill or a transition that feels clunky—staring at the screen often makes it worse. This is where a controlled distraction becomes beneficial.

By stepping away to do something “low-leakage” (like washing the dishes, taking a walk, or staring out the window), you allow your subconscious to work on the problem. The “Aha!” moment rarely happens while staring at a cursor; it happens when you’re distracted enough to let your mind wander, but not so distracted (by social media or email) that your brain is overwhelmed.

The Bottom Line

Managing distraction isn’t about becoming a robot; it’s about setting boundaries. By silencing the noise, disconnecting from the web, and using timers to structure your day, you create the space necessary for deep work.

And when the words won’t come? Lean into a constructive distraction. Walk away, let your mind drift, and trust that the story is still writing itself in the background.

How do you handle the urge to scroll when you should be writing? Let us know your favourite focus hacks in the comments below!

Another excerpt from ‘Betrayal’; a work in progress

…

My next destination in the quest was the hotel we believed Anne Merriweather had stayed at.

I was, in a sense, flying blind because we had no concrete evidence she had been there, and the message she had left behind didn’t quite name the hotel or where Vladimir was going to take her.

Mindful of the fact that someone might have been following me, I checked to see if the person I’d assumed had followed me to Elizabeth’s apartment was still in place, but I couldn’t see him. Next, I made a mental note of seven different candidates and committed them to memory.

Then I set off to the hotel, hailing a taxi. There was the possibility that the cab driver was one of them, but perhaps I was slightly more paranoid than I should be. I’d been watching the queue, and there were two others before me.

The journey took about an hour, during which time I kept an eye out the back to see if anyone had been following us. If anyone was, I couldn’t see them.

I had the cab drop me off a block from the hotel and then spent the next hour doing a complete circuit of the block the hotel was on, checking the front and rear entrances, the cameras in place, and the siting of the driveway into the underground carpark. There was a camera over the entrance, and one we hadn’t checked for footage. I sent a text message to Fritz to look into it.

The hotel lobby was large and busy, which was exactly what you’d want if you wanted to come and go without standing out. It would be different later at night, but I could see her arriving about mid-afternoon, and anonymous among the clientele the hotel attracted.

I spent an hour sitting in various positions in the lobby simply observing. I had already ascertained where the elevator lobby for the rooms was, and the elevator down to the car park. Fortunately, it was not ‘guarded’, but there was a steady stream of concierge staff coming and going to the lower levels, and, just from time to time, guests.

Then, when there was a commotion at the front door, what seemed to be a collision of guests and free-wheeling bags, I saw one of the seven potential taggers sitting by the front door. Waiting for me to leave? Or were they wondering why I was spending so much time there?

Taking advantage of that confusion, I picked my moment to head for the elevators that went down to the car park, pressed the down button, and waited.

There was no car on the ground level, so I had to wait, watching, like several others, the guests untangling themselves at the entrance, and keeping an eye on my potential surveillance, still absorbed in the confusion.

The doors to the left car opened, and a concierge stepped out, gave me a quick look, then headed back to his desk. I stepped into the car, pressed the first level down, the level I expected cars to arrive on, and waited what seemed like a long time for the doors to close.

As they did, I was expecting to see a hand poke through the gap, a latecomer. Nothing happened, and I put it down to a television moment.

There were three basement levels, and for a moment, I let my imagination run wild and considered the possibility that there were more levels. Of course, there was no indication on the control panel that there were any other floors, and I’d yet to see anything like it in reality.

With a shake of my head to return to reality, the car arrived, the doors opened, and I stepped out.

A car pulled up, and the driver stepped out, went around to the rear of his car, and pulled out a case. I half expected him to throw me the keys, but the instant glance he gave me told him he was not the concierge, and instead he brushed past me like I wasn’t there.

He bashed the up button several times impatiently and cursed when the doors didn’t open immediately. Not a happy man.

Another car drove past on its way down to a lower level.

I looked up and saw the CCTV camera, pointing towards the entrance, visible in the distance. A gate that lifted up was just about back in position, then clunked when it finally closed. The footage from the camera would not prove much, even if it had been working, because it didn’t cover the lift lobby, only what was in the direction of the car entrance.

The doors to the other elevator car opened, and a man in a suit stepped out.

“Can I help you, sir? You seem lost.”

Security, or something else. “It seems that way. I went to the elevator lobby, got in, and it went down rather than up. I must have been in the wrong place.”

“Lost it is, then, sir.” I could hear the contempt for Americans in his tone. “If you will accompany me, please.”

He put out a hand ready to guide me back into the elevator. I was only too happy to oblige him. There had been a sign near the button panel that said the basement levels were only to be accessed by the guests.

Once inside, he turned a key and pressed the lobby button. The doors closed, and we went up. He stood, facing the door, not speaking. A few seconds later, he was ushering me out to the lobby.

“Now, sir, if you are a guest…”

“Actually, I’m looking for one. She called me and said she would be staying in this hotel and to come down and visit her. I was trying to get to the sixth floor.”

“Good. Let’s go over to the desk and see what we can do for you.”

I followed him over to the reception desk, where he signalled one of the clerks, a young woman who looked and acted very efficiently, and told her of my request, but then remained to oversee the proceeding.

“Name of guest, sir?”

“Merriweather, Anne. I’m her brother, Alexander.” I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my passport to prove that I was who I said I was. She glanced cursorily at it.

She typed the name into the computer, and then we waited a few seconds while it considered what to output. Then, she said, “That lady is not in the hotel, sir.”

Time to put on my best-confused look. “But she said she would be staying here for the week. I made a special trip to come here to see her.”

Another puzzled look from the clerk, then, “When did she call you?”

An interesting question to ask, and it set off a warning bell in my head. I couldn’t say today, it would have to be the day she was supposedly taken.

“Last Saturday, about four in the afternoon.”

Another look at the screen, then, “It appears she checked out Sunday morning. I’m afraid you have made a trip in vain.”

Indeed, I had. “Was she staying with anyone?”

I just managed to see the warning pass from the suited man to the clerk. I thought he had shown an interest when I mentioned the name, and now I had confirmation. He knew something about her disappearance. The trouble was, he wasn’t going to volunteer any information because he was more than just hotel security.

“No.”

“Odd,” I muttered. “I thought she told me she was staying with a man named Vladimir something or other. I’m not too good at pronouncing those Russian names. Are you sure?”

She didn’t look back at the screen. “Yes.”

“OK, now one thing I do know about staying in hotels is that you are required to ask guests with foreign passports their next destination, just in case they need to be found. Did she say where she was going next?” It was a long shot, but I thought I’d ask.

“Moscow. As I understand it, she lives in Moscow. That was the only address she gave us.”

I smiled. “Thank you. I know where that is. I probably should have gone there first.”

She didn’t answer; she didn’t have to, her expression did that perfectly.

The suited man spoke again, looking at the clerk. “Thank you.” He swivelled back to me. “I’m sorry we can’t help you.”

“No. You have more than you can know.”

“What was your name again, sir, just in case you still cannot find her?”

“Alexander Merriweather. Her brother. And if she is still missing, I will be posting a very large reward. At the moment, you can best contact me via the American Embassy.”

Money is always a great motivator, and that thoughtful expression on his face suggested he gave a moment’s thought to it.

I left him with that offer and left. If anything, the people who were holding her would know she had a brother, that her brother was looking for her, and equally that brother had money.

…

© Charles Heath – 2018-2025

What I learned about writing – The cliff hanger, and the idea behind writing episodes…

Back in the good old days…

Yes, we have to go way back in time to the days when Charles Dickens and other classic English writers wrote their stories in episodes, and yes, they had to have a cliff-hanger ending for each so the readers would be back to read the next instalment.

It was a novel way to get people to buy newspapers.

It was also a chance for the writers to get income by publishing a weekly instalment in either the newspapers or magazines.

Of course, at that time, a lot of people couldn’t read or write, so there was a large percentage of the population missing out.

Imagine my dismay when I decided to write my stories in episodes and publish them in my blog, thinking it was a really great idea, and then discovering the idea had been around for hundreds of years.

Mine were, and are, a little more erratic, sometimes each day, but other times a week apart. Sometimes it’s difficult to write continuously like that, and three or four different stories. If you want to read some, they are the stories I called ‘The Cinema of my Dreams’, and there’s one about an interlude in WW2, one about a rescue in Africa, one about a Treasure Hunt, one about an aspiring spy, one that starts in Venice, and one in outer space

Imagine what Charles Dickens would have thought of having the internet to publish his stories. He’d get more readers than for all of his novels, whether published in book form or episodes, in his lifetime.

And, of course, when the books were published, it wasn’t just one copy for the whole story; it was published in three, four or more volumes.

Of course, the movie moguls couldn’t let a good idea get past them either, and started making serials in episodes, each with a cliff-hanger ending to run before the main feature, thinking they would get the fans hooked into coming every week.

Notable heroes who turned up in Hollywood serials were Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Zorro, and the Green Hornet, nearly all of comic book fame.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 120

Day 120 – How can a writer be compared to a magician

…

The Art of the Illusion: Why Every Writer is a Magician

We’ve all had that experience: you open a book, and suddenly, the room around you vanishes. You aren’t looking at ink on paper or pixels on a screen anymore; you are inside a character’s mind, feeling their heartbeat, smelling the rain on a distant street, and racing toward a conclusion you didn’t see coming.

When a story works, it feels like magic. But as any professional magician will tell you, the more effortless a trick looks, the more gruelling the preparation behind the curtain was.

The legendary Toni Morrison once perfectly captured this tension:

“[Handle writing] so the reader is only aware of the rabbit that comes out of the hat, and doesn’t see the false bottom—that’s where the hard work is.”

As writers, we are the magicians of the page. Here is why writing is the ultimate sleight of hand, and why hiding the “false bottom” is the most important part of the craft.

The Rabbit: The Seamless Experience

In Morrison’s metaphor, the “rabbit” is the finished story. It’s the emotional payoff, the sharp dialogue, and the plot twist that leaves the reader breathless.

When a reader picks up a book, they don’t want to see the writer’s struggle. They don’t want to notice the clunky sentence that took four hours to fix or the structural gap that required a total rewrite of Chapter Three. They want the wonder. They want the rabbit to appear out of thin air, vibrant and alive.

If the reader starts thinking about the writer’s technique while they are reading, the spell is broken. The “rabbit” becomes just a prop, and the magic fades.

The False Bottom: The Mechanics of Craft

The “false bottom” is everything that happens before the reader ever turns page one. It is the invisible infrastructure of a story. This includes:

  • Structural Scaffolding: Building a plot that feels inevitable but not predictable.
  • The “Ugly” First Draft: Chasing ideas through a mess of bad metaphors and inconsistent pacing.
  • The Editing Grind: Removing every “very” and “suddenly,” killing your darlings, and refining the rhythm of a sentence until it sings.
  • Research: Knowing ten times more about a subject than what actually makes it into the book, just to ensure the world feels sturdy.

This is where the “hard work” Morrison mentions resides. It’s the sweat, the frustration, and the endless hours of refinement. It is the mechanical, often tedious labour required to create an object that looks like it was born, not made.

Why We Hide the Work

You might ask: If I worked so hard on this, why shouldn’t I let the reader see it?

In magic, if the audience sees the trapdoor, the wonder is replaced by logic. They stop feeling and start calculating. Writing is the same. To evoke a true emotional response, the mechanics must remain invisible.

We hide the “false bottom” because we want the reader to believe in the reality of the world we’ve built. We want them to believe the characters are making choices of their own free will, not because a writer is pulling their strings from behind a curtain.

Embracing the Invisible Labour

If you are a writer currently struggling with a difficult chapter or a plot hole that won’t close, remember Morrison’s words. The fact that it feels hard doesn’t mean you’re failing; it means you’re building the false bottom.

The goal isn’t to write something that is easy; it’s to write something that feels easy.

Next time you produce a piece of prose that flows so naturally it feels like it wrote itself, take a moment to look back at the “false bottom” you spent weeks constructing. The reader may never see it, but they will feel the magic it allows to happen.

After all, the best magic tricks aren’t about the rabbit—they’re about the secret the magician keeps to make the world feel a little more wondrous.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 120

Day 120 – How can a writer be compared to a magician

…

The Art of the Illusion: Why Every Writer is a Magician

We’ve all had that experience: you open a book, and suddenly, the room around you vanishes. You aren’t looking at ink on paper or pixels on a screen anymore; you are inside a character’s mind, feeling their heartbeat, smelling the rain on a distant street, and racing toward a conclusion you didn’t see coming.

When a story works, it feels like magic. But as any professional magician will tell you, the more effortless a trick looks, the more gruelling the preparation behind the curtain was.

The legendary Toni Morrison once perfectly captured this tension:

“[Handle writing] so the reader is only aware of the rabbit that comes out of the hat, and doesn’t see the false bottom—that’s where the hard work is.”

As writers, we are the magicians of the page. Here is why writing is the ultimate sleight of hand, and why hiding the “false bottom” is the most important part of the craft.

The Rabbit: The Seamless Experience

In Morrison’s metaphor, the “rabbit” is the finished story. It’s the emotional payoff, the sharp dialogue, and the plot twist that leaves the reader breathless.

When a reader picks up a book, they don’t want to see the writer’s struggle. They don’t want to notice the clunky sentence that took four hours to fix or the structural gap that required a total rewrite of Chapter Three. They want the wonder. They want the rabbit to appear out of thin air, vibrant and alive.

If the reader starts thinking about the writer’s technique while they are reading, the spell is broken. The “rabbit” becomes just a prop, and the magic fades.

The False Bottom: The Mechanics of Craft

The “false bottom” is everything that happens before the reader ever turns page one. It is the invisible infrastructure of a story. This includes:

  • Structural Scaffolding: Building a plot that feels inevitable but not predictable.
  • The “Ugly” First Draft: Chasing ideas through a mess of bad metaphors and inconsistent pacing.
  • The Editing Grind: Removing every “very” and “suddenly,” killing your darlings, and refining the rhythm of a sentence until it sings.
  • Research: Knowing ten times more about a subject than what actually makes it into the book, just to ensure the world feels sturdy.

This is where the “hard work” Morrison mentions resides. It’s the sweat, the frustration, and the endless hours of refinement. It is the mechanical, often tedious labour required to create an object that looks like it was born, not made.

Why We Hide the Work

You might ask: If I worked so hard on this, why shouldn’t I let the reader see it?

In magic, if the audience sees the trapdoor, the wonder is replaced by logic. They stop feeling and start calculating. Writing is the same. To evoke a true emotional response, the mechanics must remain invisible.

We hide the “false bottom” because we want the reader to believe in the reality of the world we’ve built. We want them to believe the characters are making choices of their own free will, not because a writer is pulling their strings from behind a curtain.

Embracing the Invisible Labour

If you are a writer currently struggling with a difficult chapter or a plot hole that won’t close, remember Morrison’s words. The fact that it feels hard doesn’t mean you’re failing; it means you’re building the false bottom.

The goal isn’t to write something that is easy; it’s to write something that feels easy.

Next time you produce a piece of prose that flows so naturally it feels like it wrote itself, take a moment to look back at the “false bottom” you spent weeks constructing. The reader may never see it, but they will feel the magic it allows to happen.

After all, the best magic tricks aren’t about the rabbit—they’re about the secret the magician keeps to make the world feel a little more wondrous.

What I learned about writing – Where banks store money in vaults, writers store snippets in journals

The most important item in the writer’s warehouse – the journal.

Quite often, the journal could be mistaken for a diary. A lot of people keep diaries; in fact, it’s a staple plot item in a lot of movies, that when a character needs to have their life fleshed out, a diary will be found, and read, giving a detailed view of the life and times.

A lot of people keep a diary to write down significant things that happen, sometimes who they met, and if something or someone had an influence on their life.

I know I used to keep one that detailed the stories I was writing, or hoped to write one day, with progress, characters, plot lines and generally how the day worked out.

When I found I did not have an hour to spare that day to write it up, it went by the wayside. I used to have a series of diaries for about ten years, back in the old days when time was not at a premium, but they seemed to have got lost in the moves from before to just after I got married, and yes, became a father and lost all sense of time and perspective.

But..

The journal.

Yes, I have about five or six, one for each project I’m currently working on, and they often receive an update at the end of the day. With children grown up and grandchildren almost past their teens, and in retirement, I have been able to go back to where I started 50 years ago.

If you want an opinion, start and maintain a journal. It helps.

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 119

Day 119 – The relevance of A Confederation of Dunces to downtrodden writers

…

The Patron Saint of the Misunderstood: Why A Confederation of Dunces Still Resonates with Downtrodden Writers

If you are a writer, you have undoubtedly wrestled with the feeling of belonging to a world that doesn’t quite fit your internal architecture. You have likely experienced the sting of rejection, the absurdity of the “literary establishment,” and the creeping suspicion that your work is being ignored by people who lack the intellectual rigour to appreciate it.

No character embodies this specific, agonising brand of isolation quite like Ignatius J. Reilly, the gargantuan protagonist of John Kennedy Toole’s posthumous masterpiece, A Confederation of Dunces.

For the downtrodden writer—the one working a soul-crushing day job while drafting a manuscript in a cramped apartment—Ignatius is both a cautionary tale and a dark, twisted mirror.

“I Mingle with My Peers or No One”

The defining line of Ignatius’s worldview is his famous declaration: “I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no-one.”

On the surface, this is the ultimate expression of solipsistic arrogance. It is the peak of the “tortured genius” trope, where the ego becomes a barricade. However, for the writer who feels alienated, this sentiment hits differently. It speaks to the exhausting search for a creative community.

When you spend your life refining your voice and obsessing over the nuance of a sentence, the standard chatter of the world can feel like a profound waste of time. You don’t want to talk about the weather or the weekend; you want to talk about the collapse of modern morality, the structure of a perfect paragraph, or the decaying state of culture. When you can’t find that depth in others, the instinct is to retreat.

But there is a trap here. Ignatius uses this philosophy to justify his own inertia. He uses his “lack of peers” as a shield to avoid the vulnerability of being judged by the real world. For the rest of us, the lesson is clear: If you wait for your perfect peer group to emerge, you will be waiting forever.

The Tragedy of the Unfinished Manuscript

The irony of A Confederation of Dunces is that Ignatius is a writer—or, at least, he claims to be. He carries around his Big Chief writing tablet, filling it with philosophical rants and incoherent grievances against the “geometrical, theological, and geographical” decline of the twentieth century.

He is a writer who refuses to publish. He is a writer who spends more time correcting the perceived failures of others than completing his own work.

This is the great peril of the downtrodden writer. It is easy to become bitter, to develop a “Reilly-esque” disdain for the marketplace, and to convince yourself that your work is too “advanced” or “pure” for a public that prefers mindless pulp. We often use our high standards as a way to hide from the terrifying possibility that our work might be published and—far worse—dismissed.

Finding Solidarity in the Absurd

So, why read (or re-read) A Confederation of Dunces if you are currently feeling like a failure in the literary arts?

  1. It’s a Reminder of the Danger of Ego: Toole’s novel is a comedy, not a biography, but it serves as a warning. Isolation is a creative desert. You need the grit of the real world—the very thing Ignatius scorns—to breathe life into your writing.
  2. It Validates the Struggle: Toole himself struggled immensely to get his work published. His own tragic story adds a layer of poignancy to the book. He knew better than anyone what it felt like to be a genius without a seat at the table.
  3. The Satire is Necessary: Sometimes, you have to laugh at the absurdity of it all. The world is full of “dunce” establishments, superficial trends, and people who will never understand the blood you pour into your pages. Acknowledging that and laughing at it, rather than letting it turn you into a recluse, is the only way to survive.

The Verdict

Ignatius J. Reilly’s tragedy is that he chose “no one” over the messiness of human connection. He chose the safety of his own mind over the risk of being misunderstood by the masses.

As a writer, your greatest work won’t come from sitting in a room alone, sneering at the world for not being up to your standards. It will come from acknowledging that while you may never find the “perfect” peer who understands every shade of your intent, there is a community of other writers just as broken, just as confused, and just as hopeful as you are.

Don’t be the person who mingles with “no one.” Find your fellow dunces. Share your stories. And for heaven’s sake, finish the manuscript.