Speaker 1: I guess what will? What's that? Mango? So when I
Speaker 1: was in high school, I went and I met this
Speaker 1: relative who was in advertising, just to learn more about
Speaker 1: it and to see if I wanted to be a copywriter.
Speaker 1: And he warned me that the most terrifying thing I'd
Speaker 1: have to face every day was a blank page. Like
Speaker 1: the hardest part of the job is coming up with
Speaker 1: fresh ideas every single day. And at the time, you know,
Speaker 1: I was cocky and I just kind of laughed. But
Speaker 1: if you've ever suffered from writer's luck, you know how
Speaker 1: daunting just starting a new project or coming up with
Speaker 1: new ideas can be. Oh definitely. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think about somebody like Harper Lee, of course from my
Speaker 1: home state. Not everything has to be about your state
Speaker 1: of Delaware on the show Mango. But you know, after
Speaker 1: writing to Kill a Mockingbird, she had such a hard
Speaker 1: time writing, and it was it was almost like she
Speaker 1: was looking for distractions. And I found this great quote
Speaker 1: from her. I had not seen this before, but but
Speaker 1: she says, I found I can't write. I have about
Speaker 1: three personal friends who keep dropping in for a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee. I've tried getting up at six, but then
Speaker 1: all the six o'clock Risers congregate. I mean, if you've
Speaker 1: got three friends coming over for a coffee, like, don't
Speaker 1: make coffee, make a smaller pot. But you know, writer's
Speaker 1: block is really hard, and I've always been amazed by
Speaker 1: like the people who can just crank out copy, like
Speaker 1: Jerry Seinfeld, Like do you know his trick? I don't
Speaker 1: think so, what is it? So? Jerry's a prolific writer
Speaker 1: and he was asked how he stayed so productive, and
Speaker 1: in this one interview he confessed he actually hates writing.
Speaker 1: It's just that he used to keep a calendar on
Speaker 1: his wall. Oh that's right. Yeah, I think I have
Speaker 1: heard this story before, but yeah, I keep going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And every day he'd right, and he'd marked this big
Speaker 1: X on the calendar, and his motivation for ruining the
Speaker 1: next day was just that he wanted to draw another
Speaker 1: X and he didn't want to break that chain. But
Speaker 1: that made me wonder, like, what are the tips other
Speaker 1: geniuses have used to stay productive? Like can smells or
Speaker 1: different clothing or certain tricks helped nudge you into finally
Speaker 1: writing that great American novel you've always wanted to write?
Speaker 1: Like what are the funniest ways to beat writer's block,
Speaker 1: and us for today's show is all about let's dive in. Yea.
Speaker 1: Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 1: Will Pearson and is always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 1: friend Man Guesh had Ticketer and sitting behind the soundproof glass,
Speaker 1: just furiously working on his latest manifesto. He is one
Speaker 1: motivated dude. He is. That. That's our friend and producer
Speaker 1: Tristan McNeil, So Mango, part of the reason we did
Speaker 1: this episode was that you were telling me about how
Speaker 1: some of the folks in Hollywood used to deal with
Speaker 1: writer's block, right, Yeah, So I was on this website
Speaker 1: where someone had pasted an interview from the Hollywood Reporter
Speaker 1: with Joel and Ethan Cohen, the Cohen brothers, and uh,
Speaker 1: they were talking about this Hollywood producer named how Roach,
Speaker 1: who's apparently a legend. I didn't know about him, but
Speaker 1: he did Larel and Hardy and Little Rascals and a
Speaker 1: bunch of famous movies and shows. And one of his
Speaker 1: tricks was when the writers were running out of ideas,
Speaker 1: he brings someone called a wild ye into the writing room.
Speaker 1: And what's a wild e? Exactly? So it turns out
Speaker 1: a wild e is someone roach for recruit, either from
Speaker 1: like a mental institution, or it could be just like
Speaker 1: a drunk off the street, and he'd bring them in,
Speaker 1: put them at the writer's table, and when things were
Speaker 1: getting stagnant, like at a table reader a story meeting,
Speaker 1: these people would just blurt out these wild phrases or
Speaker 1: comments or sometimes just full stories whenever they felt like it,
Speaker 1: which feels ridiculous, but it also provided this like complete
Speaker 1: non secutor And as the Cohen Brothers pointed out, like
Speaker 1: sometimes a good idea is a good idea no matter
Speaker 1: where it comes from or who it comes from. And
Speaker 1: I also think there were a lot of bad ideas
Speaker 1: blurt it out by the Wilds. Cute, but I have
Speaker 1: to imagine. But you know, speaking of the Cohen's, they
Speaker 1: like to beat their writer's watched just by starting another project.
Speaker 1: So while they were trying to write and complete Miller's Crossing,
Speaker 1: which is a fabulous film, they actually switched to working
Speaker 1: on Barton Fink, and then they just switched back and
Speaker 1: forth until they had two scripts instead of just one.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's such an interesting way to beat writer's blog. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I kind of like the idea that like,
Speaker 1: if you can't finish one script, just finished two, right,
Speaker 1: So where do you want to go from here? All right? Well,
Speaker 1: a very different direction. How about Dan Brown, who you
Speaker 1: of course know, is the author of the Da Vinci Code,
Speaker 1: and and it was reading about some of the ways
Speaker 1: that he would deal with writer's block. So just to
Speaker 1: keep his blood pumping, he would set an antique hourglass
Speaker 1: for every half hour, and when the sand would run out,
Speaker 1: he would do a bunch of push ups and stretches,
Speaker 1: which actually feels pretty normal, like an interesting way to
Speaker 1: deal with it. But when he's really out of ideas,
Speaker 1: he does something a little bit more strange. So he
Speaker 1: slips into a pair of gravity boots and just hangs
Speaker 1: upside down bat style in order to work through the problem.
Speaker 1: I told you this was a different kind of idea,
Speaker 1: but it's actually more complicated than that. So he was
Speaker 1: giving this speech at a New Hampshire Public Radio event
Speaker 1: and he described how he does this. So apparently he
Speaker 1: has this specially designed table where he straps himself in
Speaker 1: and then the table rotates around so that his head
Speaker 1: is where his feet should be, and his toes are
Speaker 1: pointing to the ceiling, and apparently the guy's been doing
Speaker 1: this for a while and it actually helped him come
Speaker 1: up with, you know, all those anagrams he's used in
Speaker 1: his books. That is so weird, And I honestly feel
Speaker 1: like like having that much blood rush in my head
Speaker 1: would make me less inclined to come up with a
Speaker 1: good totally. That would be the only thing I could
Speaker 1: think about is how uncomfortable I was. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess how you braised him as pretty personal, you know.
Speaker 1: I I've read a bunch of people's bios, like um,
Speaker 1: Louis Bunwell, the director, He had this chapter in his
Speaker 1: autobiography where he uh talked about how like a certain
Speaker 1: type of corner booth in a dark bar, and like
Speaker 1: a certain type of martini with a very specific vermouth.
Speaker 1: I think it was normally pratt. He would say those
Speaker 1: were the things that you need exactly for breaking through writing.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, you read his description and you think, like,
Speaker 1: this is so romantic and it feels like such a
Speaker 1: thing to do in the city, and you can see
Speaker 1: how ideas just flow to him in the setting. But
Speaker 1: for someone like me, like I hate writing when I've
Speaker 1: had even like a sip of alcohol. It does not
Speaker 1: work from me at all. Yeah, I would say the
Speaker 1: same thing. But um, you know, well, one thing that
Speaker 1: might work for you if you're looking for zero distractions
Speaker 1: is to follow edgar Allan Poe and also Jack Carrolla's
Speaker 1: advice for writing on scrolls mango scrolls. Yeah, neither of
Speaker 1: them thought that it was smart to get up from
Speaker 1: your seat and have to go get another piece of paper.
Speaker 1: Now why they couldn't just keep a bunch of paper
Speaker 1: near them, I'm not really sure. But anyway, they felt
Speaker 1: like getting time. Yeah, but but they felt like getting
Speaker 1: up to get more paper would spur these other distractions.
Speaker 1: So Poe would actually attach pieces of paper together to
Speaker 1: make these long spools, and then he just used some
Speaker 1: wax to seal it up. And that's actually how he
Speaker 1: delivered work to his editors. Can you imagine this. I
Speaker 1: would be so pissed to someone turned into scroll to
Speaker 1: me and uh and what about Jack Carroak, Well, it
Speaker 1: was kind of the same thing. So he always said
Speaker 1: that stopping to get more paper broke his concentration. So
Speaker 1: on the road that was actually scrawled out on a
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty foot roll of paper. I mean
Speaker 1: that feels like it should be in a museum or something, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's pretty incredible. You know what My favorite Caroac fact is?
Speaker 1: What's that? So this is from when we did the
Speaker 1: swimsuit issue for Mental Flass and we found a picture
Speaker 1: of him in a bathing student and it just threw
Speaker 1: some facts next to it. But it's that he skipped
Speaker 1: his high school graduation to read Leaves of Grass, which
Speaker 1: I just think it's so amazing. Meanwhile, I'm sure I've
Speaker 1: told you this before, but like I was forced to
Speaker 1: attend my high school graduation and the superintendent of our
Speaker 1: school read out all the lyrics too, and I swear
Speaker 1: this is true. What he referred to as the classic
Speaker 1: song from the movie Space Jams. What what is the
Speaker 1: classic song from the movie Space cham I believe I
Speaker 1: can fly? Of course, So we were stuck in our
Speaker 1: seats and and he treated like every word was so meaningful,
Speaker 1: like he was like, I believe I can fly, God,
Speaker 1: I believe I can touch the sky. It was it
Speaker 1: was really inspirational, and we all left the school and
Speaker 1: became pilots. Of course you did, all right, Well, back
Speaker 1: to the facts. What fact do you want to go
Speaker 1: with next. Well, one thing I think could be a
Speaker 1: cause of writer's block is when you're too comfortable. My
Speaker 1: mother in law actually has the story of when she
Speaker 1: was in college one summer and she was selling vacuum cleaners,
Speaker 1: and she said, like, on the weeks when she was
Speaker 1: particularly hungry or she needs something specific, like on those weeks,
Speaker 1: she'd somehow sell four vacuum cleaners, and when she wasn't,
Speaker 1: she just sell two or three. And I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of the same with writing. And there's this great
Speaker 1: story from Sherwood Anderson in nine six he quit his
Speaker 1: job to focus on writing, and his publishers, who were
Speaker 1: kind to betting on him, sent him these weekly advanced checks,
Speaker 1: but he was having total writer's block, so he actually
Speaker 1: asked him to stop. And when they asked him why,
Speaker 1: he said, quote, it's no use. I find it impossible
Speaker 1: to work with security stirring me in the face. Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: that's pretty wild. I think I would find just the
Speaker 1: opposite in that situation, you know. I I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's pretty interesting. Well, so, one thing I've read
Speaker 1: about is how people love to find the perfect writing spaces.
Speaker 1: So Roald Dahl had his you know, his writing shed
Speaker 1: where he walked to and he throw a blanket on
Speaker 1: his legs and right from an easy chair like that,
Speaker 1: to me seems like a little bit more of a
Speaker 1: good spot to do your writing. And there was some
Speaker 1: writer was trying to I want to say it was
Speaker 1: Colin McCann, who has this tiny space on the floor
Speaker 1: between a bookshelf and the wall where he sits and types.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of like a little nook there. But
Speaker 1: one of the most unusual spaces I've come across is
Speaker 1: George Bernard Shaw's. And in many ways his Writer's Help
Speaker 1: was full of distractions, like it had electricity and a
Speaker 1: telephone and a bell so people could ring for him.
Speaker 1: And but one thing like it had this advantage of
Speaker 1: being one or two minutes away from the house, so
Speaker 1: when visitors would come over, his wife could answer the
Speaker 1: door and actually honestly tell them that he was out
Speaker 1: even though he was just you know, a minute away
Speaker 1: or so. But one of the most important things to
Speaker 1: Shaw was good lighting. And his heart was actually pretty
Speaker 1: ingeniously built because it was like this giant lazy susan,
Speaker 1: so he could actually spin it and follow the sun
Speaker 1: as he wrote, which seemed like a pretty cool setup.
Speaker 1: That's ridiculous, but I like it. Okay, So I know
Speaker 1: we've got two more facts to go. But before we
Speaker 1: get to those, let's take a little break. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to part time Genius. We're talking writer's blocked now, will
Speaker 1: I know I can struggle with writer's block sometimes, But
Speaker 1: do you actually ever deal with it? Oh? No question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's definitely frustrating when it happened. So what what do
Speaker 1: you do to deal with it? So? I like doing
Speaker 1: my research ahead of time and getting all the books
Speaker 1: and things I need. But when it comes to actually writing,
Speaker 1: sometimes I have like a super hard time getting started
Speaker 1: if I don't feel like I have a good enough idea.
Speaker 1: But then I'd say, like five or six years ago,
Speaker 1: I read this thing that Peter Kafka is this legendary editor.
Speaker 1: He he told his writers and he said, just write
Speaker 1: out some beginnings. And you know, the idea is, just
Speaker 1: start something and write a beginning, and then write another
Speaker 1: beginning to that story, and then another, and even if
Speaker 1: you have to stop and all you have is a
Speaker 1: page of beginnings, isn't that a beautiful thing? And I
Speaker 1: love that quote so much, and somehow that works for me,
Speaker 1: like just you know, you start three or four things
Speaker 1: and pick one that you like and then just let
Speaker 1: the words flow from that until they don't. But that's
Speaker 1: sort of my trick, even though we're not here to
Speaker 1: talk about my trick. So, well, what's your final fact
Speaker 1: going to be for this? That's still a pretty good trick, though,
Speaker 1: I don't think you've ever told me that, But or well,
Speaker 1: how about something about Salvador Dolly, who perfected the power nap?
Speaker 1: So I love napping, so go on. Well, Dolly was
Speaker 1: obsessed with that dream space between falling asleep and being awake,
Speaker 1: so he tried to figure out how to put himself
Speaker 1: into that space for inspiration. So he had a little
Speaker 1: trick for this. What he would do is he would
Speaker 1: sit in a chair and put a tin plate on
Speaker 1: the floor and then fall asleep holding a spoon, like
Speaker 1: pretty specific so you know, or you know, maybe have
Speaker 1: some keys over the plate or something like that. But
Speaker 1: when the object that he was holding dropped from his
Speaker 1: hand and onto the tin, he'd get startled awake, and
Speaker 1: and his hope was that he'd have this new wonderful
Speaker 1: idea in his head when he woke up. So that
Speaker 1: sounds like the worst way to wake up, Like it
Speaker 1: feels like you're almost falling asleep in his comfortable chair,
Speaker 1: but it's not really a nap. But I am kind
Speaker 1: of amazed. So so did it work well? He swore
Speaker 1: by the method. In fact, in his book Fifty Secrets
Speaker 1: of Magic Crap Aftsmanship, he he actually writes here's the quote.
Speaker 1: He says, the moment the key drops from your fingers,
Speaker 1: you may be sure that the noise of its fall
Speaker 1: on the upside down plate will awaken you. And you
Speaker 1: may be equally sure that the fugitive moment, when you
Speaker 1: had barely lost consciousness, and during which you cannot be
Speaker 1: assured of having really slept, is totally sufficient, inasmuch as
Speaker 1: not a second more as needed for your physical and
Speaker 1: psychic being to be revivified by just the necessary amount
Speaker 1: of repose. So I don't I can't say that I
Speaker 1: know exactly what that quote means, but it just sounds
Speaker 1: weird and fascinating. Yes, yeah, I mean. Dolly was also
Speaker 1: afraid of trains, and he used to sit in the
Speaker 1: front of the train because he thought it got into
Speaker 1: places faster. He used to make his own cologne out
Speaker 1: of fish glue, so I can't say that I trust
Speaker 1: all his ideas. I mean, those seems smart to me. Well,
Speaker 1: my last fact is about Charles Dickens, who needed a
Speaker 1: few simple things on his deskins firearms, so wherever he
Speaker 1: went and he often wrote from the road, he needed
Speaker 1: five bronze animal statues, a paper knife, a green vase,
Speaker 1: a desk, calendar, blue ink, and only blue ink, and
Speaker 1: some quills. So if you're really struggling to write something,
Speaker 1: it's probably because you don't have enough quills or bronze
Speaker 1: animal statues watching you as your right. I imagine its
Speaker 1: sounding a little bit like the Steve Martin scene in
Speaker 1: The Jerk where he just needs the ass tray and
Speaker 1: the land. But I'm curious that why blue ink, Like,
Speaker 1: was he o c D about writing or what? Uh? Maybe,
Speaker 1: but you know, I've actually read it's more because he
Speaker 1: realized blue ink at the time dried faster, So it
Speaker 1: was this trick he used to keep himself moving and
Speaker 1: not smudging or having to block the pages as much.
Speaker 1: M that's interesting. Well, you know, I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: you had the best facts today, but you definitely had
Speaker 1: the best story about a terrible graduation speech, and it
Speaker 1: made me feel a little bit bad for you. So
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna give you the trophy this week, a
Speaker 1: pitty trophy. I like it. You know. I believed I
Speaker 1: could fly, and today I did flies. Thank you, I
Speaker 1: changed my mind. That's it for today's episode from Will
Speaker 1: gave Tristan and the rest of us a part time gunius.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. M