Monday Morning Writing Motivation: Write the Truth

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
— Ernest Hemingway

What does it mean to be "true" in your writing? It doesn't mean only write true facts (unless, of course, you are writing a encyclopedia or a science textbook, in case, I hope everything you write is true). Rather, it means be true to both yourself as a writer and true to the characters you are creating. Everything in your story might be completely made up, but that doesn't mean it can't be true as well. As Ursula Le Guin wrote in her introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, "A novelist's business is lying." But she goes on to say that all the lies a novelist writes are in service to the truth, and it is in that paradox, of writing lies to tell a truth, where the writer lives.

Writing "one true sentence" is no easy feat, for sure. Hemingway described his process in A Moveable Feast. Sometimes it would take him a long while, as he stood in his writing room looking out over the rooftops of Paris, before he found that sentence. But once he did, the writing came along! "So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there." It's like uncorking a bottle or unstopping a drain: Once you get past that initial blockage, the words will flow more easily.

How did he do it? "It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say." That's it. Just start with something you overheard, or something you saw, or something you read. Because the world itself is truth. As the economist Ludwig von Mises once wrote, “Life and reality are neither logical nor illogical; they are simply given.” That means the things that happen in life are true, factual, whether we understand them or not. Starting with real things and going on from there will get your pen writing and the ideas flowing.

So go write your truth today! Start with the truest thing you know, and then work from there. Don't let questions of logic or illogic, plot or outline, character development or message stand in your way. Just start with the truth, and the rest will work itself out.

Hemingway: All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Monday Morning Writing Motivation: Write the Truth

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