Impulse

If you dig around the Recommended Reading sec­tion of this blog, you’ll find links to two good arti­cles on writ­ers block (43Folders, Screenwriters). Both quote Hemingway’s writ­ing method­ol­ogy: “Leave some water in the well”. It’s a great idea: stop work­ing when you’re writ­ing your best and it’s eas­ier to start writ­ing next time. You leave the work excited to return. You only face the dreaded Blank Page in the mid­dle of your writ­ing ses­sion, fresh from a suc­cess. It’s a cool enough idea that I’ve started a lit­tle exper­i­ment adding this dis­ci­pline to my work and to life.

Mixing ink and water
Ok, I mis-remembered the quote. The con­vo­lu­tions of my brain have been remem­ber­ing it as “Leave a lit­tle ink in the well.” (ink — inkwell — writer, get it?) I like my metaphor bet­ter, nat­u­rally, and not just because it’s more apt. Thinking of it as an inkwell, I found the corol­lary, “pour­ing ink in the well”: Namely, when an idea comes to me, tak­ing a lit­tle extra time to flesh it out, leav­ing myself some­thing easy to start with when get around to imple­ment­ing the idea.
I come up with ideas con­stantly, and rig­or­ously write them down in end­less lists. I rarely go back and do any of those things off my list, though. When I look to my lists for inspi­ra­tion, the items seem life­less; like a bunch of empty ink pots. Now, I’m extend­ing the habit to not just writ­ing them down, but really sketch­ing them out: out­lin­ing, draw­ing, or writ­ing ran­dom phrases or scenes that come to mind — really doing a brain­dump of the idea so that there’s some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing to start with. In effect, I’m fill­ing the empty ink pot with ink to later write with.
It works with pho­tog­ra­phy too, but I really do need to learn to draw…
Getting ink all over the place
I’ve been hav­ing so much fun with these ideas that I’ve been apply­ing them in sev­eral places in life:
With friends: When vis­it­ing, don’t stay until we’ve exhausted every topic of con­ver­sa­tion. Leave a few things unsaid for next time — or even for the next per­son (so I don’t feel like I’m rehash­ing the same story for every friend I run across).
In dat­ing: Don’t sati­ate desire; leave a lit­tle lin­ger­ing in the air that you both can savor until you next see together. Anticipation gets the blood boil­ing after all — why use it all up? I’ve been try­ing this and the the past few weeks have been quite fun. No, elec­tri­fy­ing.
With house­work: Don’t try this at home, kids. My lab­o­ra­tory stud­ies have shown that these tech­niques have a neg­a­tive effect san­i­ta­tion: if you stop clean­ing in the mid­dle, you still end up with a bunch of crap around your house. Think before you ink.