Break writer’s block with one true sentence

Ernest Hemingway is one of my favorite writers. He’s surely influenced my sparse style. If it doesn’t move the story along … get rid of it! He also offered me a fool-proof method to break writer’s block.

I recently re-read A Moveable Feast. a fascinating account of his early years in Paris and beyond. It re-introduced me to one of the all-time best quotes about creating content, and I wanted to share it with you. Hemingway writes about his sure-fire way of breaking through writer’s block:

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.

I like this idea because everyone should be able to name at least one true sentence, right?

The way this works for me is simple. There is so much that is untrue on the internet, and specifically in the marketing world…