The technique Hemingway used to get the creative juices flowing is superb to continue working on something you are writing. But what about the blank page, when you have nothing to write on? Because stopping mid-sentence and using this as a starting point is fine when you have something to continue on.

When you find it hard to write in the morning or when you come home in the evening after a long workday at your day-job, the energy needed to write might not be there at all.

One technique which has helped me a lot is to stack projects. The idea is that writing something — anything — will get your creative mind going, and before you know it you are oscillating between projects and are writing on all of them.

The writing can be everything from a new blog post, an article or chapters in a book or transcribing audio notes. When you have more projects going — with one main one and several simmering on the side — you can always switch between them when you get stuck in one.

You will always have something to write somewhere by doing this and is not bound to keep on hitting your head against a problematic passage in one project but are free to switch around between them.

Science writer Steven Johnson calls this keeping a “Spark File”. This is where you store all your research and small tidbits of writings. Things — which is not necessarily about the project you are working on — or small sentences you like the sound of, but which is not fitting for the piece you are writing

“[..] a single document where I keep all my hunches: ideas for articles, speeches, software features, startups, ways of framing a chapter I know I’m going to write, even whole books. [..] There’s no organizing principle to it, no taxonomy — just a chronological list of semi-random ideas that I’ve managed to capture before I forgot them. I call it the spark file. “ — Steven Johnson

How many projects should you be working on? Well, it depends. Crappy answer, I know, but I can’t say “only 5 projects” because it — yes — depends on what type of projects you are working on. If it is blog posts, short fiction or longer non-fiction books.

“[..] every three or four months, I go back and re-read the entire spark file. [..] when I re-read the document that I end up seeing new connections that hadn’t occurred to me the first (or fifth) time around: the idea I had in 2008 that made almost no sense in 2008, but that turns out to be incredibly useful in 2012, because something has changed in the external world, or because some other idea has supplied the missing piece that turns the hunch into something actionable.” — Steven Johnson

Keep It Simple

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

These two methods, Hemingway’s practice of stopping mid-thought to always have something to continue on the next time you sit down to write, and stacking multiple projects to work on, are two helpful ways of ensuring you never get into situations where you have nothing to write.

You will never paint yourself into a corner where the only way forward is to keep writing on the project that has become unwritable. There is always at least a half-finished sentence or a stack of other projects you can flex your creative muscles over. It’s much easier to get to the flow state when starting is not the hardest part.

It is useful because it is simple. There are thousands, if not millions, of complicated methods of fighting of writer’s block and becoming super productive. But I have always found that the most straightforward ways are by far the most effective ones. KISS! Keep It Simple, Stupid! You always have something to write on, and writer’s block will be a thing of the past.