Writers aren’t always the most sociable bunch. Their job, after all, requires them to spend a lot of time alone. But not every writer manages to turn alone time into an art form. The reclusive behaviour of those that do – J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, Thomas Pynchon – attracts almost as much attention as do their novels. There’s a certain glamour to turning your back on the world while writing brilliantly about the world; little wonder that the figure of the recluse has inspired so many strange and marvellous characters, zines and websites. And when better to get in touch with your own inner recluse than the post-NYE slump? Here, we’ve found ten of the best to help you on your way.

THE NARRATOR OF BEN LERNER’S 10.04

The writer-narrator of 10.04 is an averagely sociable guy, living in Brooklyn and deciding whether or not he should have a child with his best friend. Then he goes on a writer's residency in the Texan desert and starts sleeping through the days and working through the nights, making excuses when anyone suggests hanging out. After a while he cracks and goes to a house party where he takes what he thinks is coke but what turns out to be ketamine. He spends the rest of the night comforting a vomiting, weeping teenager and wishing he could leave.

RECLUSE JOURNAL 

Recluse Journal is a zine and tumblr created by Melbourne photographer Kingsley McLean, full of muted colours and empty spaces: tunnels, rooftops, skate parks. Where there are people, they are usually alone, sitting half-naked on a windowsill, deep in thought with chin on hand, climbing railings or spray-painting a dead pigeon sky blue.

ELENA FERRANTE 

Elena Ferrante has been one of Italy's most celebrated contemporary writers for more than a decade. Over the last couple of years, with the English translations of her Neapolitan Novels and the novella The Days of Abandonment, she has become the obsession of the New York and London literary scenes. But until very recently almost nothing was known about her, other than that she was born in Naples and that her name is not Elena Ferrante. Fans speculated that she might be a man, a couple or an already-famous writer publishing under a pseudonym. Last month she gave her most substantial interview yet, via email, to the New York Times. She revealed that she studied Classics and has children; she dismissed the idea that she was a man. Beyond that, the mystery remains. 'I chose absence,' she says, and she's sticking with it.

LYLE FROM INFINITE JEST

Lyle is the ‘oiled guru’ who spends his days sitting in the lotus position on top of a towel dispenser in the weight room of the Enfield Tennis Academy. He likes to lick the sweat off the Academy students and to offer them cod-Biblical pieces of wisdom. No one knows who he is or where he comes from. Despite this, and despite the licking and the Bible stuff, most of the students find their way down to the weight room at some point to seek Lyle’s advice. Sometimes he can be seen levitating, just a couple of millimetres.

JULIAN OF NORWICH

An anchoress (male: anchorite) is like a nun to the power of ten: locked in a stone cell, usually attached to a church, she passes her life in solitary prayer and reflection. Julian of Norwich (c.1342-c.1416) was an anchoress, mystic and the author of Revelations of Divine Love, the first text written in English by a woman. In it, she describes a series of visions she experienced while ill. God appears to her as both father and mother; Jesus stands before her and shows her a hazelnut in his palm; she sees the ‘marvellous high mystery hid in God’ and knows that ‘all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well’. It’s very intense and totally amazing; the most gregarious soul would consider the life of an anchoress if she could be guaranteed Julian’s visions.

BROWN RECLUSE ZINE DISTRO

When Nyky Gomez got sick of the whiteness of dominant zine culture, she set up BRZD, a project collecting and selling zines by people of colour. Each issue of each zine featured on the site comes with a description by Gomez herself, so you feel like you’re looking through the personal collection of someone much cooler than you’ll ever be. Highlights include Cats Hate Cops (“the only zine about cats I will ever carry”), They Are Here With Us and Please Tell Me More About Myself.

BILL GRAY FROM DON DELILLO'S MAO II

Living in the countryside with his devoted assistant, novelist Bill Gray works obsessively on a book he shows no signs of finishing. When he briefly rejoins society and learns that people are now more interested in terrorism than literature, he abandons his solitude and dedicates himself to securing the release of a fellow writer held hostage in Beirut.

KAMO NO CHŌMEI 

It's safe to say that if 12th-century Japanese poet Kamo no Chōmei were around today, he wouldn't have much time for the party season. 'This year falling into decay and the next built up again, how often does the mansion of one age turn into the cottages of the next?' he writes in Hōjōki or An Account of My Hut. In middle age, Chōmei left the Japanese capital, where he was a priest serving at a Shinto shrine, and became a Buddhist hermit, living alone in a hut in the hills. “Like a drifting cloud I rely on none and have no attachments,” he says. 'How can you understand unless you experience it?'

THE RECLUSE

You have another few months to wait for the next issue of The Recluse, a poetry magazine published each June by the New York-based Poetry Project. In the meantime, shut yourself away with its previous issues, available here; the most recent featured poems by such luminaries as Eileen Myles, Anselm Berrigan and Erica Kaufman.

HELEN MACDONALD 

Following the death of her father, Helen Macdonald decided to train a goshawk, one of the fiercest hawk species. Woman and bird lived alone together, Macdonald immersing herself in the bird’s world until she forgot how to speak or interact with others, herself becoming more bird than human. She describes this transition in the beautiful, disturbing H is for Hawk: “The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life.”