300 Pages, No E, And That Was The Easy Way

Permission to Think is $7 for the days the blank page wins, and it’s about clearing enough room in your skull to catch one thought worth writing down.

If your old posts are just sitting there, Posts to Products is the $7 one on turning them into something people pay for.

THE TIP. In 1969 Georges Perec put out La Disparition, about 300 pages with no letter e. Not once. He built the whole book around the hole.

Everybody figures that’s writing on hard mode. Bullshit, fam. Perec was Oulipo, and he picked the rule himself.

Stare at a blank page. Every word is allowed, so every word is a coin toss, and you sit there losing while the page waits, patient as a loan shark.

Hand yourself a rule and the tosses stop. Can’t use that word, so you go find the better one.

Can’t go long, so the fat goes. (Yes, I mean this one. Perec got three hundred pages. I get three hundred words, and I’d be a goddamn mess without the ceiling!)

So pick one dumb rule for whatever you’re making today. No blue. Just bass till the two-minute mark.

Then go see what crawled out of the hole.

What’s the dumbest rule you ever gave yourself that actually worked? Hit reply. I want to know. ~ J.D.