Hemingway got stuck the same way every writer does, staring at a blank page in a room in Paris, and he built a specific trick for getting past it that had nothing to do with waiting for inspiration.
The Method, in His Words
A Moveable Feast wasn't published until after his death in 1961, and it's a looser, more personal book than most of what Hemingway put out during his lifetime. One of its most quoted passages describes exactly what he'd say to himself when a story refused to start.
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.
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
The trick works because it shrinks the task. Write a good opening is vague enough to be paralyzing. Write one sentence you know is true is small and specific enough to actually do. Once that first sentence exists, Hemingway wrote, the next one tended to follow from it, because a true sentence usually implies the sentence that comes after it.
Why 'True' and Not 'Good'
The word choice matters more than it looks like it should. Hemingway didn't tell himself to write a good sentence or a clever one. Those standards invite the part of your brain that judges and second-guesses, which is precisely the part that causes the stall in the first place. True is a lower and more answerable bar. You either know a fact about the story, a detail, an observation, or you don't, and you can usually locate at least one thing you know is accurate even when you can't yet see the whole scene.
This connects to a habit covered elsewhere on this site, his rule about never emptying the well and stopping each session while he still knew what came next. The two techniques solve different sides of the same problem. Stopping mid-sentence prevents you from facing a blank page in the first place. Writing one true sentence is what you do on the days a blank page shows up anyway, whether from a bad night's sleep, a broken routine, or just the ordinary friction of starting.
For the rest of how he worked through a session once it got going, see the full Ernest Hemingway writing routine.
What You Can Steal
- Shrink the task until it's achievable. One true sentence is a smaller ask than one good paragraph.
- Aim for true before you aim for good. Accuracy is a lower bar than quality, and it's usually enough to get moving.
- Locate one fact you're certain of. Even a small true detail can unlock the sentences around it.
- Pair a starting trick with a stopping trick. Hemingway used one method to avoid blank pages and another for when he hit one anyway.