Creativity Tip #5

Exercise your brain. One activity that is sure to give your mind a good workout is to write without using a specific letter. Selecting a vowel (like E) makes this even harder. Start with a sentence, then a paragraph and then an entire page.

My apologies to Ernest Vincent Wright. I ripped this idea off from him. Wright wrote Gadsby, which is a story over 50,000 words, without using the letter E.

Here is a excerpt from Gadsby:

Upon this basis I am going to show you how a bunch of bright young folks did find a champion; a man with boys and girls of his own; a man of so dominating and happy individuality that Youth is drawn to him as is a fly to a sugar bowl. It is a story about a small town. It is not a gossipy yarn; nor is it a dry, monotonous account, full of such customary “fill-ins” as “romantic moonlight casting murky shadows down a long, winding country road.” Nor will it say anything about tinklings lulling distant folds; robins carolling at twilight, nor any “warm glow of lamplight” from a cabin window. No. It is an account of up-and-doing activity; a vivid portrayal of Youth as it is today; and a practical discarding of that worn-out notion that “a child don’t know anything.”

http://www.spinelessbooks.com/gadsby/01.html