Daily Inspiration Quote by John Mortimer

Mortimer’s rule is disarmingly selfish, and that’s the point. “Not to bore yourself” sounds like craft advice stripped of craft, a novelist’s shrug in the face of workshops, outlines, and the pieties of “write what you know.” But it’s also a tough-minded standard: if the person with total access to the story’s engine - the one choosing every turn of phrase - feels their own attention slipping, why should a reader, arriving cold, stay loyal?

The subtext is a quiet rejection of dutiful literature. Mortimer came up through the British establishment (law, courts, broadcast comedy) and knew how much writing can become performance for gatekeepers: cleverness for critics, propriety for publishers, “seriousness” for status. His rule pulls the work back toward the only audience you can’t easily bluff: your own boredom. It’s less indulgence than diagnostic tool. Boredom, here, signals falseness - scenes written because you “should,” characters doing what’s expected, prose padded to sound important.

There’s also an ethics hiding inside the ego. By privileging the writer’s attention, Mortimer is arguing for a kind of honesty: follow what feels alive, what surprises you, what makes you laugh or wince. Especially for a novelist with a comic sensibility, boredom is the early warning system that you’re repeating yourself. The line flatters no one, promises no formula, and that’s why it works: it treats attention as the real currency of art, and insists you spend your own first.