Gonzalo Barr

Here is one way to hack your way through –

Put five completely random words on a piece of paper. Write five more words. Try a sentence. Could be about anything. A block ends when you start making words on a page.

Sit down and write anything for an arbitrary period of time—say, 10 minutes to start. Don’t stop, no matter what. Cover the monitor with a manila folder if you have to. Keep writing, even if you know what you’re typing is gibberish, full of misspellings, and grammatically psychopathic. Get your hand moving and your brain will think it’s writing. Which it is. See?

More unusual ideas.

Sources:  43folders.com

Yesterday, I quoted Peter Mayle, a passage from his excellent book on living well where he, in turn, quoted Hemingway on being stuck.

But what did Hemingway do when he was stuck?

The short answer is that he wrote one true sentence and went on from there. The longer answer is more textured –

…[W]hen I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written. Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing and it was good and severe discipline.

It was in that room too that I learned not to think about anything I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything. …I would read so that I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to do it.

– Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Image:  front cover of the American edition of A Moveable Feast

I’m not stuck.  There are days when I don’t know what to write next, but that is only because I haven’t sat down long enough to think about it.  I’m just putting off writing.  There are days when I would rather be doing something else besides writing my novel.  This is one of them.

Woke later than usual.  Posted about the Fric-Frac Club.  Surfed the Web.  Organized my desk, though it needed no organizing.  Went to check on my dog, Sancho Panza.  (He’s OK.  Says “hi” to everyone.)  Took pictures of the rain.  Sat back down.  Uploaded pictures of the rain.  Started post about being stuck, even though I am not stuck, just wasting time.  Was going to write, “When you’re stuck, go outside and take a picture of the rain…” when I received this email –

Congratulations as we bring to your notice, The Foundazion di Vittorio
has chosen you by the board of trusteesas one of the final recipients
of a Cash Grant/Donation for your own personal, educational, and
business development. To celebrate the 30th anniversary program, We are
giving out a yearly donation of US$500,000.00 (Five Hundred
Thousand United States Dollars) to 10 lucky recipients, as charity
donations/aid from the VittorioFoundation, ECOWAS, EU and the UNO in
accordance with the enabling act of Parliament. which is part of ourpromotion.
To file for your claim you are to fill out below information and send
it to the Payment Remitance Office Via their
email contact address:

The writer then asks for personal information that he claims is necessary to process this outlandishly generous cashgrant/donation in celebration of the 30th anniversary of whatever, which they celebrate yearly.

I used to get emails from some “heir” with a ridiculous name and a title to match, claiming that he was entitled to a multi-billion dollar fortune in Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, etc., which he could collect if I lent him a few thousand dollars to process the inheritance. You see, this “heir” was short of cash, but he wouldn’t be, if I came to his aid.  Get it?  In gratitude, the “heir” would not only refund my loan, he would give me a sizeable percentage of the multi-billion dollar inheritance, just for being a good samaritan.

My public email address daily receives emails offering me pictures of nude women, cheap Viagra, and the opportunity to chat online with some bored sixteen-year-old Russian girl named Yulia who is really some loser named Pavel.

With all these distractions — USD 50,000 here, naughty Yulia over there — it’s a miracle that I can shut everything off and sit down to write.  But write I must.   Because if I don’t, I might end up like Pavel, who is such a loser that the best he can do is try to scam people out of their money instead of making a living legitimately, through hard work, like the rest of us.

So, as I had started to post — When you are stuck, go outside and take a picture of the rain.  Then sit at your desk.  You have work to do.

Photos:  Gonzalo Barr

When you are stuck and you have an idea where you need to go but don’t know how to get there, here is some advice –

STEP ONE:  Stand, open the window, and get some fresh air.  Better yet, step outside, walk around the block, and get some fresh air.  The fresh air feeds oxygen to the brain and gets those neurons firing.  In extreme cases, buy a pair of gravity boots and hang upside down.  (Make sure you can call on someone to get you down, in case you really get stuck.)

STEP TWO:  Pour yourself a glass of wine.  My friend, Ad Hudler, swears by it.  The alcohol suppresses the editor in you and allows the words to flow more easily.  Afterward, if you start writing the best prose the world has ever read, then you drank too much.  Stop.  Go back to Step One.

STEP THREE:  Play music.  You know what kind.  Everyone has different tastes.  Do not play music that requires you to listen to it.  Try something with a beat.  It will energize you. Nothing with lyrics though. No matter how repetitive — There’s a hole in my heart There’s a hole in my heart There’s a hole in my heart Oh, there’s a hole in my heart — the lyrics will inevitably compete for your attention. If you find yourself singing along, humming, or dancing, you picked the wrong kind of music.  Press stop.  Take out your ear plugs.  Go back to Step One.

STEP FOUR:  Stop blogging. That’s right. Sign out of Word Press, exit Photoshop, click off the web browser, and get back to the novel that you were supposed to be working on.  You have three more hours to write today.  Get to it.

Now!

Photo:  Gonzalo Barr