I cured my writer’s block with the greatest writer’s retreat in the world.
Good news: you already qualify. Bad news: You might get seasick.
Two years ago I sat here in my writer’s cabin, fearfully confronting my laptop. I had done intensive research into ancient writers and modern neuroscience and had conducted a painful yearlong experiment on myself. My agent had sold my book proposal for a good advance to publishers in America and the UK.
Now I had to write the damn book.
Having previously published five books and ghostwritten another two, this wasn’t my first belletristic rodeo. Yet now I was staring into the Microsoft Word abyss and muttering the three most deadly words of authorship:
I got nothing.1
But that wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was that I was supposed to be writing a book on self-persuasion. I had promised to show how the principals of rhetoric—which had inspired the likes of Shakespeare and enabled democracy—could be applied to yourself. Those tools had helped me to lose 28 pounds, overcome a crippling hip problem, run my age up a classic mountain, and uncover a source of boundless joy.
But now I couldn’t persuade myself to write a book on how to persuade yourself.
Naturally, I fell back on the favored technique of every professional author: procrastination. I spent hours on travel websites, poring over every place on earth that was not my writer’s cabin.
And then my browser presented me with a miracle: A last-minute voyage in the worst room on the Queen Mary 2 from Brooklyn to Southampton, England. The price: just $208 dollars a day, meals and tips included! “Go,” my wife said, looking relieved. And I went, as joyous as a literary Leo DiCaprio.
Each morning I awoke at 4:30 ship time. (In experimenting for my book I had already created my own time zone, Jaylight Saving.) I made myself coffee in my room and wrote until a steward brought me a full English breakfast at 7:00. Then I continued writing till 10 a.m.
For the rest of each day I experienced the delights of a big ship on the North Atlantic, reading Emily Wilson’s delightful translation of the Odyssey, sipping Champaign2 by a big window in the Champaign Bar, stuffing myself at the lavish afternoon tea, and grabbing a digestive nap before dinner.3 By the time the ship docked in England I’d written three draft chapters, a quarter of the book, and had established a pre-dawn writing habit that continues to this day.
What exactly got me unstuck? Here are a few guesses that might be useful to any blocked writer:
1. The ship reframed my ethos.
I went from blocked loser to voyaging author, a regular Benjamin Franklin or Henry James. This made my writing feel positively romantic. I’d already discovered in my research for the book that reframing constitutes one of the most powerful tools of self-persuasion. Now it was working to level up my own character, at least for a week.
2. The voyage made an especially dramatic form of procrastination.
Some authors seek avoidance by cleaning obsessively or going for a run. My usual procrastination entails shooting baskets with a foam basketball. When this stops working, it’s time to take to the sea—metaphorically or literally.
Follow Ishmael, ye landlocked litterateur!
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
—Herman Fricking Melville
3. I had nothing else to do.
My room on the Queen Mary 2 was perfectly nice but lacked a window. I had nothing worthwhile to do at 4:30 in the morning except write, hypo-free. The best writing retreats take you away from smartphones and streaming and daily obligations. The very best take you to the middle of nowhere. In my case, utopia4 was an ocean. (Insert metaphor here.)
After disembarking, I visited friends in London and boarded a flight that cost $20 and a ton of frequent-flier miles. The whole trip cost less than a week of Day’s Inns and Appleby’s.
Some months and many tossed nerf basketballs later, I finished the draft of Aristotle’s Guide to Self-Persuasion.
Which leads me to my greatest discovery:
Those tools of persuasion, which connect you to what Aristotle calls your “soul,” don’t always need much effort on your part. Just keep going back to Cunard’s website for transatlantic voyages in search of a deal, or seek your own temporary utopia.
Meanwhile, create your own time zone. This requires reading that book I finally wrote.
When I feel like a loser, grammar goes out the window.
Champagne was one of the few things that cost extra. Worth it.
Fortunately, I knew I had the rhetorical tools to lose the several pounds I happily gained on that ship.
Greek for “nowhere.”
This exercise helps combat writer's block: Deliberately try to write the WORST possible draft imaginable. Often it'll come out as hilarious. It's very freeing to try to be the worst writer in the world. Because if it turns out to be crap, by golly, you suceeded!
I have never had writer’s block. My brother Steve, who has worked for decades in the Senate, told me that when he had a difficult phonecall to make, he would contemplate his discomfort while actually dialing the number. And then suddenly he was in it and moving through the difficulty. Whenever I have trouble starting an article or making a drawing, I get over it by writing the first sentence or making the first scribble. Both will need improving, but the mere act of beginning makes the ending inevitable. No ocean cruise necessary! But I’d love to do that particular cruise, anyway. Maybe I’ll fake writer’s block and see if Claire will ship me off.