Issue #79 – Tuesday, January 6,
2020
Posted by Denny Hatch
How to Avoid Writer’s Block:
The New Yorker's
Dorothy Parker.
Above is a wire to her editor, Pat Covici, at Viking Press.
June 28, 1945
It’s a bitch when you’re staring at a computer screen and the words won’t come to you.
June 28, 1945
It’s a bitch when you’re staring at a computer screen and the words won’t come to you.
I’ll say this at the outset. If I find myself
struggling for thoughts and words, it takes me a few minutes to remember I am
tired—probably from a lousy night’s sleep or not leaving a cork too long in the
bottle lest the contents spoil.
I don’t fight it. I quit and start again when
rested. —Denny Hatch
One day—under tight deadline and with a severe hangover—Benchley was sitting at the little desk in his room at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. He stared and stared at a blank piece of paper in his typewriter. To get started he typed the word "The."
Benchley arose from his
chair, walked to the window overlooking West 44th Street and then glanced
at his watch.
His gang of regulars
was assembling for the splendid daily lunch of booze and bon mots at the
legendary Round Table downstairs. Among them: Dorothy Parker, Groucho and Harpo Marx, George
S. Kaufman, Alexander Woollcott, New Yorker editor Harold Ross,
Algonquin owner Frank Case and others.
Benchley returned to
the typewriter and stared at "The" for a long time. In a burst of
inspiration he completed the sentence.
It read, "The hell
with it."
Whereupon he took the
elevator down to join the party.
From John McPhee’s
Letter To a Distraught Former Student
\
Dear Joel [Achenbach of The Washington
Post]:
You are writing, say,
about a grizzly bear. No words are forthcoming. For six, seven, ten hours no
words have been forthcoming. You are blocked, frustrated, in despair. You are
nowhere, and that's where you've been getting. What do you do?
You write, 'Dear
Mother.' And then you tell your mother about the block, the frustration, the
ineptitude, the despair. You insist that you are not cut out to do this kind of
work. You whine. You whimper. You outline your problem, and you mention that
the bear has a fifty-five-inch waist and a neck more than thirty inches around
but could run nose-to-nose with Secretariat.
You say the bear prefers to lie down and
rest. The bear rests fourteen hours a day. And you go on like that as long as
you can.
And then you go back
and delete the 'Dear Mother' and all the whimpering and whining, and just keep
the bear.
—John McPhee (b. 1934), Draft No. 4, The Writing Life (The
New Yorker)
Ted Nicholas is one of the great entrepreneurs, publishers,
teachers and writers in the world of direct marketing. Here's his advice to
copywriters and, by extension, to all writers:
Clear your mind.
For some persons, this might mean lying down for a few minutes before going to work.
For some persons, this might mean lying down for a few minutes before going to work.
For others, it could
mean jumping in the pool or jogging around a track.
Frolic, spend time with
someone you love or go dancing. Do whatever comes naturally to you in order to
have a clear mind for creative purposes.
Never write when
you're tired. You're not going to try to drive or operate machinery when you're
tired. Don't try to write if you're fatigued.
Never write when you're busy. If there
are other demands pressing on you, tend to them first. I don't think anyone can
write well when watching the clock. Don't try to write if you have appointments
later in the day or errands to run.
Don't write in bits
and pieces. Once you've turned on your creative energy, you need to keep it
flowing. I don't stop until I complete a draft. I try not to stop even for
meals.
—Ted Nicholas, (né Nick
Peterson, b. 1934), The Golden Mailbox
Gene Schwartz and His Kitchen Timer Secret
Gene Schwartz's powerful direct mail copy sold millions
of dollars-worth of books (many published by himself). His Breakthrough Advertising
is must-read for direct response copywriters.
Gene once told me to
get a kitchen timer and set it on the desk next to me.
Then hit 4-4-4-4.
That's forty-four minutes, forty-four seconds. During that period, all you do
is work—write, do research, deal with correspondence, design, whatever.
When the timer goes
off, get up and shut the alarm sound off. Take a break. Walk around, stretch,
get a cup of coffee, clear your head.
When you're ready to go
back to work, hit the 4-4-4-4 button again and dive in.
—Eugene
Schwartz (1927-1995)
Most of us under deadline
do not have this kind of time. However, if you can lay aside a piece of writing
for 12 or 24 hours or longer and then go back to it for edits and rewrites, it
can be beneficial. Hemingway wrote:
I always worked until I
had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen
next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day...
I learned not to think
about anything that 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 hoped; learning, I hoped; and I would read so
that I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to do it.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), A
Movable Feast
The piece about car customizers in Los Angeles was the first magazine piece I ever wrote. I was totally blocked. I now know what writer’s block is. It’s the fear you cannot do what you’ve announced to someone else you can do, or else the fear that it isn’t worth doing. That’s a rarer form. In this case I suddenly realized I’d never written a magazine article before and I just felt I couldn’t do it. Well, [Byron] Dobell somehow shamed me into writing down the notes that I had taken in my reporting on the car customizers so that some competent writer could convert them into a magazine piece. I sat down one night and started writing a memorandum to him as fast as I could, just to get the ordeal over with. It became very much like a letter that you would write to a friend in which you’re not thinking about style, you’re just pouring it all out, and I churned it out all night long, forty typewritten, triple-spaced pages. I turned it in in the morning to Byron at Esquire, and then I went home to sleep. About four that afternoon I got a call from him telling me, Well, we’re knocking the “Dear Byron” off the top of your memo, and we’re running the piece.
—Tom
Wolfe (1930-2018) From an interview with The Paris Review
Now, what I’m thinking of is, people always saying “Well, what do
we do about a sudden blockage in your writing? What if you have a blockage and
you don’t know what to do about it?” Well, it’s obvious you’re doing the wrong
thing, don’t you? In the middle of writing something you go blank and your mind
says: “No, that’s it.” Ok. You’re being warned, aren’t you? Your subconscious
is saying “I don’t like you anymore. You’re writing about things I don’t give a
damn for. ”You’re being political, or you’re being socially aware. You’re
writing things that will benefit the world. To hell with that! I don’t write
things to benefit the world. If it happens that they do, swell. I didn’t set
out to do that. I set out to have a hell of a lot of fun.
I’ve never worked a day in my life. I’ve never worked a day in my life. The joy of writing has propelled me from day to day and year to year. I want you to envy me, my joy. Get out of here tonight and say: ‘Am I being joyful?’ And if you’ve got a writer’s block, you can cure it this evening by stopping whatever you’re writing and doing something else. You picked the wrong subject.
—Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), from the keynote address at the Writer’s Symposium by the Sea.
I’ve never worked a day in my life. I’ve never worked a day in my life. The joy of writing has propelled me from day to day and year to year. I want you to envy me, my joy. Get out of here tonight and say: ‘Am I being joyful?’ And if you’ve got a writer’s block, you can cure it this evening by stopping whatever you’re writing and doing something else. You picked the wrong subject.
—Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), from the keynote address at the Writer’s Symposium by the Sea.
Short Takeaways
• A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work
will die without putting a word to paper.
—E.B. White (1899-1985)
• What I try to do is
write. I may write for two weeks, “the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a
rat.” And it might be just the most boring awful stuff. But I try. When I’m
writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious
and says, “Okay. Okay. I’ll come.”
—Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
• Over
the years, I’ve found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions
when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to
be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious
to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such
valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below; I
will be there to write.
—Norman Mailer (1923-2007), the
Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on writing.
• Don’t get it right,
just get it written.
—James Thurber (1894-1961)
• The one ironclad
rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my
pen every weekday morning.
—Anne Tyler (b. 1941)
• Get it down. Take
chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.
—William Faulkner (1897-1962)
• Ever tried. Ever
failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
—Samuel Beckett (2906-1989)
###
Word count:1738
I loved this piece. Thanks so much for the insight. M. Laucks
ReplyDeleteDenny, thank you so much for this. (Wow, that was a beautiful sentence. I think I'm cured!)
ReplyDeleteRe: Ernest's comments: Yeh, Denny, I booked a bullfight, two seats, (harder and harder to find these days), but no reply as yet to my invitation to that good lookin' Ava Gardner. Then I find out, she's daid! DAID! I just cannot write about it. So try this, "It was a dark and stormy night ..."
ReplyDeleteHey, David Jack G.,
DeleteThank you for taking the time to comment.
Your “Dark and Stormy Night” brings back memories!
www.tinyurl.com/y56whfzk
Do keep; in touch!
Cheers!
I have a new folder on my computer: "Denny Hatch Wisdom." Now back to work.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started to write my own copy, I said to myself, why do I want to do this? I can't write, I can't spell, I lack concentration strength. But I kept ready and learning. My writers block is similar. I stare, nobody's home in my mind. Thank you for this excellent article...
ReplyDeleteI have been in tears and blocked for months. and then I read this: "What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks, “the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.” And it might be just the most boring awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, “Okay. Okay. I’ll come.”
ReplyDelete—Maya Angelou (1928-2014). Thank you!
Thanks Denny ... as was reading this I kept replacing the word 'writing' with 'working' in my mind. These ideas seem apply to a lot of situations! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI had terrible writer's block. Nothing ever helped except deadlines. Self-imposed deadlines didn't work – I knew they were phony. I am reminded of some writer who said, "Writing is easy. I just stare at the paper until drops of blood form on my forehead." Someone said, "Fear of failure::Fear of success." I think that was true too.
ReplyDeleteBest regards!
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