The Write Theme for 2026

feat. Tolkien and Melville and the secret to great living

Dear Write Way Reader,

Welcome to a brand new year and the first official Write Way of 2026

Last year I wrote two popular pieces as 2025 first crested the horizon.

The Write Resolution for 2025 and the Write Identity for 2025.

WWN36 : The Write Resolution for 2025

WWN37 : The Write Identity

I could reprise those today, after all they’re still relevant. I’m making similar resolutions and holding a similar identity.

But instead I want to dig deeper and consider:

The Write Theme for 2026.

Lemme do a dictionary break and clarify that theme is:

“a unifying or dominant idea, motif, etc., as in a work of art.”

When it comes to writing, theme is key. I think a lot of our procrastination and so-called “writer’s block” arises from the simple fact that our writing is kinda meaningless.

Honestly, half the reason you struggle to write is that you know deep down you’re writing stuff that doesn’t really matter.

If you want to beat writer’s block, choose something worth writing about.

Herman Melville once wrote that:

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.

And the same is true for all writing, not just books.

Choose a mighty theme and you can create a mighty work.

Choose an inferior theme and all the prose pizzazz in the world won’t make it mighty.

But I think it goes beyond books, substacks, and newsletter issues. I think it strikes...

...to the heart of life itself.

What is your theme for the year ahead? What is your “unifying or dominant idea, motif, etc.”?

Let me make no bones about it (I wouldn’t even know where to start with making bones, calcium? Drinking more milk?). This might be the single most important question you answer this year. It sure beats simple resolutions or even the “who am I?” soul-searching that sucks up much of January’s mental processing.

Why?

Well, I’m getting to that.

But let’s circle back to the art part. Theme, if you remember all those paragraphs ago was “a unifying or dominant idea, motif, etc., as in a work of art.”

And any one of you could tell me that gurus and writing coaches and all of them will tell you one thing (if they tell you anything) and that is that

specificity is the secret

be clear not clever

focus on one big idea.

It’s not bad advice. Well, it’s limited advice like all their advice. There’s more to it than that. Digressions can help your point rather than hinder it if you’re thinking long term...

...but I digress.

Part of the “one big idea” emphasis is that it helps you to focus, to cut down on distractions. To avoid the waffle and cut through the noise (ever tried to cut something with a waffle? Thought not.)

It’s the same when you choose a theme.

When you have a theme for your book or your newsletter or your Substack more generally, you don’t sit there throwing ideas at it until the reader is left wondering what the heck you were trying to say.

You focus on the ideas that support your theme. You reinforce that theme with every character interaction, every story, every sentence and phrase.

You take your mighty theme and work hard to explore every nook and cranny of it, but you avoid all those random other themes that have nothing to do with it. You might touch on them in passing, but you’re not going to focus on them.

They might be perfectly good themes, but if they’re not your theme then they’re a distraction from it.

We do need to make an important digression here before we get back to real life though.

A theme is not a point. It’s not a simple moral. It’s not a tight little box that you put everything into. A mighty theme is an all-encompassing thing. It’s big picture meaning that transcends the narrow confines of plot. It’s a unifying idea, a dominant one - not the only idea. That way lies a boring book.

The theme of Lord of the Rings is not “take the ring to Mordor” it is, to take Tolkien himself’s answer, death.

But I should say, if asked, the tale is not really about Power and Dominion: that only sets the wheels going; it is about Death and the desire for deathlessness. Which is hardly more than to say it is a tale written by a Man!

With that there are powerful themes of power both corrupting and wrongly used (the ring) and caring and rightly used (Aragorn’s crown). There are themes of love and sacrifice and the many forms of courage.

But the mighty theme that animates it all is that of Death and the desire for deathlessness.

Which brings us neatly back to life.

What’s your theme for 2026?

I’m doing this exercise myself because I look back over 2025 and I achieved a lot...

...of small things scattered across domains.

Yes, almost all writing related. But my focus was scattered. I did the living equivalent of the waffle-writing that gets lost in the noise.

So these last few days, as the snow has fiercely fallen on Aberdeen, I have sat in my cozy writing cabin and thought long and hard about what I want my unifying idea or motif to be for the year ahead.

Now, when it comes to a theme for a calendar year of my ordinary life, “death and deathlessness” is a little...

abstract and grandiose.

So if I had to pick right this minute as I type these words, it would be laying foundations for the future. Specifically, aiming to buy the house we hope to move to in 2026 that will open a lot of doors for showing more hospitality, giving space for the kids’ educations, letting family and friends spend more time with us etc.

That naturally leads to an ancillary theme of more income to pay for the increased mortgage and all the fees and so on.

Prosaic?

Perhaps.

But I think concrete enough that it actually helps to define and delineate my choices for the year.

I’ll be focusing on creating new courses, growing the Write Way, launching a higher-ticket offer, relaunching the Ghostletter seminars and bringing on affiliates. I’ll not be spending hosts of time on “possible” future projects like fiction and poetry.

(Not that I’ll be doing none of that, but it’s going in the “fun” box and not what I’ll be spending my writing days doing.)

So spend some time thinking this week about what you want your theme to be for 2026.

What will it be?

Whatever it is, may your pipe fuel it and your prose fulfil it!

Yours,

James Carran, Craftsman Writer

P.s. for paid supporters, the Write Way Radio edition of this post is now live. You can listen to it here.