Day 12

Hemingway called it leaving water in the well. You don’t go and go and go until you’ve drained yourself: you stop when you’ve still got a little left.

How do you leave water in the well? My students thought some of the ideas we talked about were bananas. Leave off a sentence halfway through. Write the next step to yourself as if it’s a homework assignment you’ll pick back up the next time you sit down.

Hemingway’s deal was that he wanted to have an idea where he’d go on from. Then, it would never be a challenge to sit back and keep at it. If anything, he acted like staying away was the harder thing.

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Writing prompt: What’s the easiest thing for you to fall back into?

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