The writer was in despair. For a year and a half,
he had been trying to write a script that he owed to a studio, and had
been unable to produce anything. Finally, he started seeing a therapist.
The therapist, Barry Michels, told him to close his eyes and focus on
the things he was grateful for. The first time he did this, in the
therapist’s office, there was a long silence. “What about your dog?”
Michels asked. “O.K. I’m grateful for my dog,” the writer said after a
while. “The sun?” “Fine, the sun,” the writer said. “I’m grateful for
sun. Sometimes.”
Michels also told the writer to get an egg timer. Following Michels’s instructions, every day he set it for one minute, knelt in front of his computer in a posture of prayer, and begged the universe to help him write the worst sentence ever written. When the timer dinged, he would start typing. He told Michels that the exercise was stupid, pointless, and embarrassing, and it didn’t work. Michels told him to keep doing it. THENEWYORKER
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