WRITERS BLOCK: Even Hemingway got stuck sometimes. How he got UNSTUCK, (and how YOU can)

from A Moveable Feast

Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going…

“Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.

…I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.