Is Writing Good For Your Health?

I am writing this at five o’clock in the morning because I cannot sleep from thinking about it.

At present, my current book takes up most of the space. A paragraph needs changing, two sections may repeat each other, or something I thought finished returns with another problem. Previous publications bring their own questions, usually about what I might have done differently. Future projects then join in, even though they have no immediate claim on my attention.

I can walk away from my laptop, but my mind cannot.

This continues while I eat, go for walks, and do many other unrelated things. At night, when little else interrupts it, things get worse; I wake up each morning exhausted. Being mentally knackered all the time has started to feel normal.

Writing is supposed to be good for me. It gives purpose to my days and requires concentration, memory, imagination and continued learning. These are valuable in later life.

The trouble is that the brain cannot rest.

The NHS description of stress includes feeling overwhelmed, constantly worrying, losing concentration and sleeping too much or too little.[1] Writing may be the subject occupying my thoughts, but the resulting exhaustion is much the same.

Perhaps the simplest diagnosis is that writing has escaped its working hours. It has moved into the time needed for recovery.

Poor sleep affects concentration, memory, mood and judgement. If it continues, it is also associated with depression and physical conditions including high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. Among older people, sleep deficiency may increase the risk of falls and injury.[2] This does not mean that a book causes heart disease, although it does mean that repeatedly losing sleep over one should not be dismissed as harmless dedication.

Some boundaries are clearly needed. At the end of each writing session, I could record where I have stopped, what needs doing next and any problem still unresolved. I could write down an idea that arrives later without examining it immediately.

The idea does not have to be resolved at once.

The final hour before bed also needs to be free from manuscripts, reviews, and plans for books that have not yet been written. Time away from writing must involve something that draws my attention elsewhere, perhaps music, conversation, sitting outside or an ordinary practical task. Moving from the manuscript to aimless browsing is unlikely to give the mind much rest.

If the sleeplessness continues for months or begins to make everyday life difficult, a conversation with a doctor may be in order. Writing may be causing the pressure, adding to another problem or merely giving it somewhere to appear.

Countless other authors will empathise with the narcotic nature of writing. It can provide purpose and satisfaction, then ask for another hour and keep going after the work is finished. I doubt I am the only writer awake at five in the morning because a book has taken possession of the mind.

Perhaps we should take that more seriously.

Is this a mental health issue?

References

1. NHS. “Stress.” Last reviewed 6 March 2026.

2. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. “Sleep Deprivation and Deficiency.” National Institutes of Health, updated 24 March 2022.

The Paranoia of Sounding Like AI

For most of my life, I judged a sentence by whether it said what I meant and belonged with those around it. I considered the words, the rhythm, and how much explanation the reader might need. Recently, another question has begun to interfere with all of these: could somebody decide that the sentence was written by artificial intelligence?

This is not an imaginary concern. A passage placed into one detection program may be declared human, while another identifies supposed signs of AI. Neither program knows who wrote it or watched the paragraph taking shape. It can only examine the finished language and compare its patterns with those it has learnt to recognise.

The writer knows rather more about what happened. I can remember struggling with a sentence, returning to it the next morning and eventually finding the wording I wanted. None of this appears in the completed manuscript. If a detection program produces a confident percentage, the number may seem more reliable to somebody else than my account of having written the passage.

Knowing this has altered the way I work. I sometimes change sentences that I would previously have left alone, although the revision does not always improve them. I try to remove anything that might be mistaken for evidence.

The effect became particularly noticeable with groups of three. I used this construction long before generative AI appeared. Like many writers, I learnt that three related words or phrases could give a sentence a natural shape. The first introduces the movement, the second carries it forward, and the third completes it. I did not deliberately count out each part whenever I wrote. After enough years, the pattern had become one of how I organised a thought.

Groups of three are now regularly included among the signs said to reveal AI writing. Once I became aware of this, I began noticing them throughout my manuscript. A sentence that had previously seemed natural started to look dangerous. I might remove one element, separate the thought or replace the whole construction with something less likely to attract attention.

The sentence remained acceptable, but it was no longer quite the sentence I would have written.

Dashes have caused a similar problem. I never used them constantly. They appeared occasionally when a pause seemed helpful or when a qualification belonged within the sentence without requiring a separate one. There were times when a comma felt too slight and a full stop interrupted the thought too heavily. The dash occupied the space between them—which was precisely why I used it.

I now use dashes so rarely that I sometimes notice their complete absence from several pages. I replace them with other punctuation before anybody has the opportunity to question them. The meaning usually survives, although the pace of the sentence may have changed.

Writers can manage without one group of three or find an alternative to a dash, but these decisions begin to accumulate. Eventually, they reduce the number of choices and begin to interfere with the style developed through years of reading and writing.

Other features of prose have also become suspect. A sentence may appear too balanced, an explanation too orderly, or a conclusion too carefully connected with what came before it. Particular words are circulated online as evidence of AI, even though many were in ordinary use before language models began producing them. Writers who encounter these warnings may start avoiding the words, even if they are the most accurate ones.

Some concern about generated writing is understandable. AI frequently produces prose with repeated structures and explanations that continue after the point has already been made. The same can be true of human writing, which is why a familiar pattern cannot establish who produced a passage. At most, it provides a reason to look more carefully.

The problem will likely become harder because AI did not invent most of the features it imitates. It learnt them from human language. Groups of three, parallel clauses and occasional dashes entered its writing because they were already present in ours. As language models become more capable, they will reproduce a wider range of human styles, including some that currently appear individual.

If every successfully copied feature then becomes another warning sign, writers will be expected to abandon more of what they once used naturally. Avoiding a few overworked phrases may be easy, but there is no clear point at which the process must stop. Almost any recognisable habit might eventually be reproduced often enough to become suspicious.

There is something particularly strange about deliberately making prose less fluent to prove that a human being wrote it. An awkward sentence may satisfy a detection program, though awkwardness tells us nothing about authorship. The writer is left performing what a machine has decided human imperfection should look like.

For an independent author, an accusation can be difficult to answer. Drafts, notes and earlier versions may exist, but few readers will ever examine them. A doubtful remark can be made in a moment, while any attempt to explain how the work was written risks sounding defensive. The safest course may be to remove whatever might arouse suspicion before the question is asked.

The developments of recent years, or perhaps I should call them a revolution, have made me increasingly nervous about my own writing. I find myself waiting on tenterhooks for reviews and comments, wondering whether somebody will accuse me of using AI. Nothing may have been said, yet the possibility is already present while I work. I have become defensive in advance of an accusation that may never come.

Even individual words are now marked as AI-recognisable and treated with suspicion, regardless of being used as part of ordinary written English for generations. I find the exact word needed for a particular sentence, then hesitate because its appearance could be misinterpreted. Leaving it in place can feel like taking an unnecessary risk.

This begins to resemble paranoia, and it has affected much of my creative work. I doubt that I am alone. Other writers must also be looking back over sentences they once considered entirely natural and wondering how those sentences might now be judged by a program or a reader alert for certain patterns. Attention that once belonged to the argument, the language and the reader is diverted towards avoiding evidence of something that may not have happened.

That safety carries a cost. A writing style develops slowly, often without the writer noticing every part of it. Certain sentence lengths become comfortable, particular forms of punctuation suit the way a thought develops, and familiar structures help a difficult idea reach the page. They are among the tools of the trade, and a writer works with fewer tools each time one is set aside through fear.

I prefer to judge a sentence by asking whether it is clear, whether it is accurate and whether it sounds like me. Even writing those three questions now makes me hesitate. Should one be removed simply because three once provided the form that came naturally?

What I fear most is that this interference with established writing practices has only begun. AI will keep learning from human prose, including the habits that distinguish one writer from another. If each successfully imitated feature is then treated as evidence against us, the accepted forms of writing will be invaded still further. More words will become suspect, more structures will be avoided, and more writers will begin altering their work in anticipation of an accusation.

I do not know where this will end. Groups of three have already become something I watch for, and the dash has almost disappeared from my writing. Other familiar practices will probably attract the same suspicion, and I may remove those as well, although each removal leaves me with fewer ways to express what I intended.

Eventually, the argument may still be mine while rather less of the writer remains on the page.

 

What Readers Have Said About The Luck Illusion

Since The Luck Illusion was published, one of the most interesting parts of the whole experience has been discovering what readers actually think of it.

I have now added a review page to this website, bringing together many of the comments from people who have read the book. Some are short observations, others say a little more about the ideas within it, but together they give a much better picture of how the book has been received than anything I could say about it myself.

You can find the page directly from the home page. Look for the link to The Luck Illusion review page, where I have collected a selection of comments and responses from readers.

I have deliberately included different views rather than trying to make the page look like an advertisement. A review is useful because it belongs to the reader, not the author, and I would much rather someone said what they genuinely thought than felt obliged to say something complimentary.

There are also still a few advance reading copies available for a short while.

Anyone interested in reading The Luck Illusion can request a copy here:

https://tally.so/r/A7WlLk

There is no obligation to leave a review afterwards. The copy is offered simply for anyone who would like to read the book.

If you do decide to review it, however, there is only one thing I ask: please make it honest.

Praise is pleasant, of course, but an honest opinion is worth far more.

If you want, I can also tighten this slightly so it reads more like a short Blogger announcement rather than a full article.

 

The Shadow Biography: The Life We Never Lived

 

Most of us have probably wondered how life might have turned out differently.

What if I had taken that job? What if I had stayed? What if I had left sooner? What if I had said yes instead of no?

Sometimes those thoughts last only a few seconds. At other times they remain with us for years and slowly begin to form another version of our life. A version in which the right decision was made, the opportunity was taken, the relationship survived or circumstances somehow worked out better.

That imagined life is at the centre of my forthcoming book, The Shadow Biography.

The book looks at the stories we create about the lives we did not live and asks how reliable those stories really are. When we look back, are we comparing the present with a genuine alternative, or with something that has been quietly improved by hindsight?

A decision made twenty or thirty years ago was made by the person we were then, with the knowledge, circumstances, pressures and possibilities available at that time. Looking back from the present gives us information that person could never have possessed.

Yet it is remarkably easy to forget this.

An alternative life can also become strangely convincing because it has never had to survive reality. It has not experienced the ordinary problems, disappointments, illnesses, mistakes, financial pressures or unexpected events that shape an actual life. We imagine the road not taken, but rarely everything that might have happened along it.

The Shadow Biography is not intended to tell readers that regret is pointless or that we should simply accept every decision we have ever made. Reflection matters. Regret can teach us something. Wishes can reveal what we value.

The question is what happens when an imagined possibility begins to acquire the authority of fact.

Can a life that never happened really prove that another would have been better?

That is the territory I am exploring in The Shadow Biography. Not how to erase regret, but how we construct it, how hindsight changes the evidence, and how easily an unlived life can begin to compete with the one we actually have.

It has certainly given me plenty to think about while writing it.

I hope it will do the same for the reader.

 

Bulgarian Humour by Misunderstanding

‘Pinch, punch, first day of the month’ is something many English children grow up saying. On the first day of each month, the words are accompanied by a light pinch and punch on someone’s arm, supposedly to bring good luck. No one seems certain where the custom began, although one explanation links the pinch with salt, once believed to weaken witches, and the punch with driving them away.

On 1st September, I said the familiar words to my Bulgarian partner while giving her arm the required pinch and punch. I explained that it was an English tradition, after which she copied me and returned both. We laughed, and I assumed that was the end of it.

The following day, I received another pinch and punch.

‘Pinch, punch, second day of the month,’ she said.

I had obviously failed to explain that the custom applied only to the first day. She had remembered everything else and simply changed the words to suit the date, which I found much funnier than the original English version.

I am now waiting to see what the third day brings. If her Bulgarian interpretation continues throughout September, I may well have a very sore and bruised arm by the time 1st October arrives, when the real tradition begins again.

The Luck Illusion in Sofia City Library

I had some very good news today. The Luck Illusion has been accepted into Sofia City Library and is now part of its collection.

I am proud of this, probably more than I expected.

The book has only been published for a month, and when it first appeared, I had no idea where it would go. I was a novice author with a first nonfiction book trying to find its place among thousands of others. The prospects for getting much attention were not exactly encouraging.

A month later, things look rather different.

There are now more than twenty-five positive reviews on Amazon, averaging 4.7 out of 5, along with a 4.4 rating on Goodreads. Reedsy Discovery gave the book a very positive review, and Vagabond magazine followed with a feature that gave it another welcome boost.

It is now in the Sofia City Library.

That means something different to me. Reviews are wonderful to receive, but seeing the book accepted by a public library somehow gives it a permanence that ratings and sales figures do not. Someone can find it on a shelf, take it home and perhaps discover it without ever having seen an advert or heard of me.

Considering where the book started, I find that quite humbling.

None of this means that The Luck Illusion has suddenly become a great success. It hasn't. I am still learning how difficult it is to get a book noticed, particularly when doing almost everything yourself. What has happened, though, is considerably more than I expected after only one month.

It also gives me something I did not have when I began writing my second book, The Shadow Biography: a little history behind me.

When that book eventually appears, it will not be the work of someone publishing for the first time. I will have made plenty of mistakes by then, learned a great deal and, most importantly, already have one book out there finding its readers.

Today, one of the places where those readers can find it is Sofia City Library.

I am rather proud of that.

 

A Book That Stayed With Me

 

There are not many books in my library that I can honestly say I would sit down and read all the way through again. I have never been an avid reader, which probably makes the few that have stayed with me for many years all the more noticeable.

One of them is Upside Down Stories by Donald Bisset.

I found the book many, many years ago and it has been in my library ever since. During my years teaching in primary school, it became one of those books I regularly turned to when reading to a class. I knew the stories well, but that did not matter. Children hearing them for the first time had no idea what was coming next, and that was always part of the pleasure.

There are twenty short stories, each with its own collection of eccentric characters and strange situations. They are funny, slightly rude in places and just naughty enough to make children listen more carefully. Not rude enough to shock, but enough to produce that familiar reaction when a class suddenly realised that the story had said something they were not quite expecting.

That was often when the room became quiet.

Children seem to recognise that kind of humour immediately. Adults sometimes try to tidy childhood up too much, forgetting that children have always enjoyed nonsense, absurdity and things being just a little bit improper. Bisset understood that very well.

The stories are also short, which made them ideal for school. There was no need to spend several days building towards an ending or trying to remember where we had stopped the previous afternoon. A complete little world could appear, become ridiculous and disappear again within a few pages.

I can still remember reading some of them aloud and watching children wait for the next strange turn. There is something very satisfying about reading to a class when you know they are genuinely listening rather than simply being quiet because they have been told to be. A good story can do that far better than a teacher asking for attention.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons the book has remained with me for so long.

Even now, as a considerably older adult, I can pick it up and enjoy it. That is not something I can say about many books. Some belong very clearly to the time in which we first read them and lose much of their appeal when we return years later. Others seem to sit outside age altogether.

Upside Down Stories is one of those for me.

The copy on my shelf has travelled through a large part of my life. It has moved house, moved country and survived the usual clear-outs when other books were given away or forgotten. There was never any particular decision to keep it. I simply did.

Perhaps that says more than any review could.

One day my library will no longer be mine. The books will be divided, given away, sold or simply end up somewhere I could never predict. Most will mean nothing to the person who eventually finds them. They will just be books that once belonged to somebody else.

I hope this one is treated differently.

I would like to think that somebody might take Upside Down Stories from the shelf, wonder why I had kept such an old children's book for so long, and open it.

Perhaps they will read one story.

Perhaps there will be a child sitting nearby.

And perhaps Donald Bisset's strange little characters will make another child laugh in exactly the same way they did in my classroom many years ago.

Good stories have a way of lasting much longer than the people who first read them.

This one will certainly outlast me.