My favourite book – well one of my favourite ones – is I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. Published in 1948, it is the story of Cassandra, 17, who lives in a half castle/half house in the country with her sister, brother, arty stepmother and her father who has had writers’ block for a number of years. Cassandra is an aspiring writer and the book is told through her notebooks.
While I enjoy the story about the family, what impressed me most were the efforts of Cassandra and Thomas, her brother, trying to break her father’s writers’ block. Some years before he had published a best seller but since then, nothing. He reads library books and enjoys all kinds of word puzzles but write a line of his book? Not happening!
How many of us have faced this problem at different times in our writing careers? Usually, we find a way out of it but for his man, nothing is working
Cassandra and Thomas lure their father into a ruined tower on their property and tell him he can’t come out until he writes something – anything. They will bring him food, they have provided bedding, etc., but if he wants to come home, he has to write.
When her father finally gets angry, in desperation Cassandra shouts, “Write anything—write ‘the cat sat on the mat’ if you like. Anything, as long as you write!”
Now as strange as this sounds – this is fiction after all – this eventually works. He starts by writing about the cat over and over and then takes off and writes another novel.
This advice – write the cat sat on the mat – stayed with me all these years. I read the book in high school and acquired a 1948 copy at a church rummage sale and still have it. Whenever the blank page mocks me, I remember Cassandra’s advice to her dad and start typing “the cat sat on the mat” over and over until my writing morphs into my story. And then I’m off to the races – well at least to the writing.
I’ve passed this little tip on to other authors at times. But I always remind them to edit out the first couple of paras or pages about the cat sitting on the damn mat before they submit their work.
Do you have a trick for getting your writing started when you are feeling blocked?
