Hemingway's Method

From A Moveable Feast 
Ernest Hemingway

It was wonderful to  walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working.  I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next.  That way I could be sure of going on the next day.   But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they would make.  I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "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." So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I stated to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written. Up in that front room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline.

It was in that room too that I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped; learning, I hoped; and I would read so that I would not think about my work and may myself impotent to do it. Going down the stairs when I had worked well, and that needed luck as well as discipline, was a wonderful feeling and I was free then to walk anywhere in Paris.

The "one true sentence" bit comes off a little phony, or so it seems, until you understand that he doesn't mean one sentence that articulates a truth, but rather one sentence that meets his qualifications for what constitutes a "true," solid, real sentence.  In the sense used here, true might be considered architecturally as, square, solid, supportive--and that is borne out by his use of the architectural metaphors of "scrollwork or ornament."

So, for writers--find one true sentence--one sentence that captures the interior architectural notion of the true--one that does not sound phony, does not sound like you trying to sound like someone else--and that may be a solid beginning.  But again, not everyone can adhere to Hemingway's aesthetics or methods of work--for those must be true as well.