Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes I am stuck for a word while writing. Experience has taught me to put “thing” in the blank and move on. The right word will come later.

There we were, writing a proposal. Three of us were gathered around the keyboard, one typing the words, the other two contributing the words. We were flowing, moving, thinking, talking, putting words on the screen, a good proposal appearing in front of us.

Then it happened – we stopped.

We had a concept, something important, but we didn’t have the right word for it. We stuttered, hemmed, hawwed, grunted, and waved our hands all about (you know the kind of things guys do). We couldn’t find the word. What is worse is that all forward progress halted. Several minutes later, we didn’t have the word we needed and we were sitting there staring at one another and the screen.

This wasn’t the first time in my life that the search for one perfect word killed the flow of work. If I remember my own advice, it may be the last or at least it won’t occur often.

A solution:

Call the concept a “thing” and move on.

Yes, literally type the letters t h i n g and move on. You are progressing, you are working, your mind is clicking. Don’t stop. Continue putting words on the screen. The word you seek will come later. Perhaps the word will come in five minutes or five hours or five days, but it will come. If you stop writing and search for it now, there will be thousands of other words that do not come.