Words, words, words. That's what we're made of. Herewith some of my thoughts on what we're doing with them.

Dry spells: Everybody has 'em. What to do when the blank page on your computer begins to haunt you? It depends on you.

We all work differently. One person prefers to write in a WYSIWYG parser. Another finds that the highway to writing hell. At least one dedicated h2g2er still uses a pen or pencil, or coloured crayon for her ideas. Me, I have to have a Word program in front of me, so I can make the text big enough to see. Think of it as a form of negotiation with your brain: as the Peace Studies people say, find something you can agree on, even if it's only when you'll break for lunch. Go ahead and line up all the junk on your desk in alphabetical order, if it helps.

A scientist won an Ignobel Prize for noting that we often avoid doing something important by finding something urgent to do instead. He's right. If you want to write, but find yourself cleaning the oven instead, you're in avoidance mode. Cut it out. Do the necessary, and then go back to work. I mean it.

A word of advice: Stop trying to write about what is closest to your heart. That way madness lies. That's one of the reasons for writer's block. Think about it: No matter what subject you start with, you'll end up talking about what you feel most strongly about, anyway. Our unconscious minds are much like Charles Dickens' Mr Dick:

In fact, I found out afterwards that Mr. Dick had been for upwards of ten years endeavouring to keep King Charles the First out of the Memorial; but he had been constantly getting into it, and was there now.


'I say again,' said my aunt, 'nobody knows what that man's mind is except myself; and he's the most amenable and friendly creature in existence. If he likes to fly a kite sometimes, what of that! Franklin used to fly a kite. He was a Quaker, or something of that sort, if I am not mistaken. And a Quaker flying a kite is a much more ridiculous object than anybody else.'   –  David Copperfield

Whenever Mr Dick's memorial ended up at King Charles' head, you see, Mr Dick made a kite out of his manuscript, and he and David went off to the Cliffs of Dover to fly it.

Go and do likewise. As soon as you've reached King Charles' head, go fly a kite. Then come back and write something sensible.

Stop searching for a subject. Take just any old thing and try it out. Run it up the kite string and see how it flaps in the wind. We will take as an example the King Charles' Head of h2g2 (at least, until this time next year:

This website is going to natter on and on and on about the 2012 Olympics until the last running shoe has worn out in London. Why? Because Not Panicking, Ltd¹ need the copy for nefarious purposes of their own, related to SEO and other bits of business talk that need not concern us mere content providers.

In case you haven't noticed, content providers are the lowest of the low – the Bob Cratchits of the online world, to borrow another character metaphor from Mr Dick...ens.

So you hate sport as much as I do? Good for you. So the Olympic Ideal doesn't make your heart beat faster? Amen, brothers and sisters. Write about the darn thing, anyway. Find a subject. Find a hook. Add your two cents' worth to the coders' beer fund.

A word in your shell-like ear: Whatever you write about it will be unique. It will have your stamp upon it, your insight, and your angle. It will be something nobody else ever thought of. That's why you're a writer, not a participant in the 10,000th whiny forum thread on 'What I'm Doing Right Now, and Aren't You Sorry You're Not Me?'

Approach the unfamiliar subject like Mark Twain's hero, the 19th-century fellow who ended up back in the Middle Ages:

– 'and so, Sir Knight, said Sir Marhaus, I have well felt that ye are a passing good knight, and a marvelous man of might as ever I felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, and therefore it were a pity to do you hurt, for I feel you are passing feeble. Ah, said Sir Gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the word that I should say. And therewith they took off their helms and either kissed other, and there they swore together either to love other as brethren – '


But I lost the thread there, and dozed off to slumber, thinking about what a pity it was that men with such superb strength – strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensome iron and drenched with perspiration, and hack and batter and bang each other for six hours on a stretch – should not have been born at a time when they could put it to some useful purpose. Take a jackass, for instance: a jackass has that kind of strength, and puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world because he is a jackass; but a nobleman is not valuable because he is a jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should never have been attempted in the first place. And yet, once you start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what is going to come of it.




When I came to myself again and began to listen, I perceived that I had lost another chapter, and that Alisande had wandered a long way off with her people.   – A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain

You see? Twain put his own indelible stamp on medieval literature. And he wasn't even there when it happened.

A final word about subject matter. If you wait until the people who write comments happen to like what you've picked, you'll wait a long time (says someone who had an entry sitting in solitary splendour in Peer Review for a solid week). Write for the person you know is out there waiting for it – the one who wanted you to say this².

Even if you don't hear from them, they're out there. Trust me on this.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

07.11.11 Front Page

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