can it already

Sayaka Murata’s Japanese publisher offers in-house hotel rooms. Right in the office: a room with a bed, desk, and shower. It's a place for authors to sequester themselves to get a good chunk of work done in isolation. They call it kanzume, or “canning.” You seal yourself off from the world so your stuff has a chance to ferment.

New York publishers, take note. That Penguin Random House building on Broadway could can a lot of authors...

In an interview, actor and writer Eric Bogosian told the truth: “So much of what you do as an artist is outside your control, and you think you know what you’re doing, but you often don’t know what you’re doing.” Scary but liberating. You figure out a process that works, and then, one day, it stops working. Like the Romans at Cannae, you realize after the fact that your unbeatable strategy has gone obsolete. You have to find something else, but thinking isn't much help.

Lady Gaga wrote her hit song "Abracadabra" in thirty minutes: “I started to overthink things sometimes and get nervous," she explained. But creative ruts aren't something you think your way out of. Less thinking is usually the answer: "I stopped doing that and I started just feeling, and allowing myself to just be free. It’s OK to just make mistakes. What does it even mean for music to be perfect? [emphasis mine]”

Saxophonist and poet Alabaster DePlume studies Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and sees a parallel with this counterintuitive work: “If I try to do one of the things I’ve learned to do, it’s a symptom of my failure to be present... When you’re rolling with someone [in Jiu-Jitsu], as soon as you’re trying to do a thing, you’re fucked."

As soon as you're trying to do a thing. Lady Gaga wrote "Abracadabra" in no time, as soon as she stopped trying to do it and just did it.

"What’s the opposite of sleep?" DePlume asked. "It’s trying to sleep.”

Thinking about your writing process instead of writing is like trying to sleep. Expect creative insomnia.

In an interview, abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning was asked for his opinion of Matisse: “He has no -isms," de Kooning replied. "It’s just a painting. That’s what I like about him.” Shrugging, he added: “Just paint a picture. It’s good for me to remember that.”

Make the thing. Write the words. Can yourself if necessary. Sometimes, fermentation is the only way to get things bubbling.