Writing in ten minutes

Thank you for stopping by to read the first post of my blog. On this page, I’m going to delve into the subject of how to write effectively in the small pockets of time that often come up during even the busiest days. Most of us have several of these each week, but they seem too small—fifteen, ten, even five minutes—for us to be able to use them for anything that is both productive and creative. We much prefer a longer stretch of time: an hour, an afternoon, a day. And some of us have those, but others, not so much.

When I was a kid, I loved to write. I’d occasionally scribble (literally—I was four years old) a short story or a children’s book, and when I started school, I earned an award for excellent handwriting because—get this—it didn’t occur to me that writers don’t actually hand-write all their published books, and hey, if I was going to be a writer, I had to get that neatness thing down.

Once middle school started, I was churning out novellas like there was no tomorrow. Being a precocious kid, I’d blow through my homework in half an hour, and the rest of the day was left for writing. (I was also an introverted kid. Who needs human friends when you can make your own character friends?) When one was done, I’d sit my younger brother and sister down and read them my new book. It was great fun—yes, even for my siblings, so they say—and I showed no signs of stopping. I could sit in front of my computer for two, three, four hours and end up with five to twenty-five pages by the time I had to go to bed.

And then I became an adult.

Of course, that didn’t happen overnight, but eventually I earned two degrees, began working full time, married a pretty cool guy who loves this crazy writing thing I do, and decided real humans weren’t too bad to be friends with, even if they don’t have superpowers. This gives me a lot to be grateful for but not always a ton of time for writing.

And I suspect you’re in a similar situation. Maybe you’ve been writing for years, and a major life change—a baby, an illness, a new work schedule—has required you to give up your usual writing time. Maybe you’ve just graduated from your MFA program and are wondering how you’re going to keep this writing thing going without your peers and mentors around. Maybe you’re googling MFA right now because you don’t consider yourself a writer, just someone who’d like to write but hasn’t started yet. Whatever your situation is, you want to write more often but aren’t sure how to make it fit into your life.

I’m right there with you. So every week, on Fridays, I’m going to share what I’ve learned about my ongoing use of those ten-minute pockets of time: what has and hasn’t worked for me, the kinds of writing that lend themselves well to very short sessions, how I’ve gotten focused on my writing for such a short length of time (and refocused onto the next activity once my ten minutes are over), and how I feel about what I’ve written when I go back to it during a longer writing session. Feel free to say hi in the comments and let me know what kinds of things you’d like to hear about in relation to my ten-minute writing experiment. I wish you all the best in your own writing—and in your own writing-life balance.