The Other Hemingway Solution

Stephen King suggested in one of his books that The Hemingway Solution was putting a shotgun in your mouth and pulling the trigger with your big toe. For writers, I will now propose a much less graphic alternative. If you want to write, well, I would say you can't do better than to follow this man's example, whatever his faults. To paraphrase Francine Prose, his routine hasn't seemed to hurt his career any.

The Hemingway Solution

• Wake up early and work hard once you're up. Don't read anything but the paper, because you don't want to work with all the giants of literature looking over your shoulder. Just write or work until you wear out mentally. This should be a little after lunch, maybe 1:30 or 2 pm.

• Always stop writing when you know what will happen next. If you do that, and let your mind work on the story while you sleep, you will never be stuck.

• Eat lunch, and make it something healthy.

• Physical exercise is next. Wear out your body and make yourself so exhausted that you can't think about your writing. Hemingway would fish and box, among other things. He loved a physical challenge. I run and lift weights, or play tennis and soccer. Anything will do.

• Read literature and catch up on your correspondence. Wait to check your e-mail until late in the day, just before or just after dinner. Find a good book and read it slowly.

• Don't think about the writing when you're not writing. This may be the hardest step. But endless plotting, dissecting, musing, and especially talking (to friends, to lovers, to family) will kill a book. It will shrivel up and die on you. This is not a joke. I've seen it happen many times.
  

• Spend time with that special someone who matters to you. As Hemingway once wrote, "I believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try to make it absolutely perfect; of if not that then wonderful. Then you write for who you love whether she can read or write or not and whether she is alive or dead."

• Go to sleep. Repeat Hemingway's Solution in the morning.