Keeping the burner on

If you prefer longer writing sessions (and who doesn’t?), you may wonder why anyone would want to write in ten-minute bursts. And I get it; I would also rather have three hours to spend in Starbucks with my caramel macchiato and WIP than ten minutes fueled by instant coffee before I run out the door for work. But in a pinch, when life gets in the way, I have to take the latter when I can get it—and I’d rather keep myself used to writing in small increments so I can get right back into short writing sessions when I have a really busy week.

Even when I hate what I’m writing, even when I think I can’t possibly sink into my novel in such a small amount of time, even when I fervently wish for an extra couple hours that I know won’t come until the weekend, there are a couple important benefits to writing in short periods of time. The first is pretty obvious, but the second I find much more helpful.

The first is that I can still make progress when I have little time. As I mentioned last week, I have a hierarchy of notes for revision. If I really can’t focus because I have only five minutes, I can make sure I add the missing dialogue tags on page 43. That’s pretty cut and dry, and I can leave more nuanced matters, like whether the dialogue on page 43 is any good, for when I’m not so rushed.

The second has to do with that well-known metaphor about putting something on the back burner. When something is on the back burner, it’s because you’ve turned down the heat and don’t need to do anything with that particular dish for a while. You’re working on whatever’s on the front burner—or setting the table or decanting the wine or whatever else your presumed dinner party needs—as the pot on the back burner works without your direct input. And when you return to the back burner, your dish has changed.

But the important thing to remember with this back-burner metaphor is that you have to keep the burner on. Just setting the dish to the side and hoping something will happen won’t help if that dish still needs to cook. And in the case of using our back burner to cook up a book, you keep things moving by checking in regularly—even if “regularly” can’t mean two hours every day. Doing some work on your book, even if it’s not as much work as you’d like, will keep the book fresh in your mind. Writing regularly may even help you after your writing session is over; you may unconsciously solve problems you’ve encountered while writing.

I’m not a “you must write every day or you’re not a writer” type of person. Writers are those who write; “write-every-day-ers” probably won’t make Word of the Year anytime soon. But I’ve noticed that if I go more than four days without writing, my burner goes out—and it may take a while to relight it. (This is an old-fashioned stove, the kind where you have to build a fire inside it and can’t just flip a switch. And no, you can’t go to Sears and get a modern stove. The metaphor is very particular about this.) What helps me keep my burner lit is to make time—even if it’s just ten minutes—to tinker with my WIP so when I do get those three available hours, I can use them more fully because my book has been with me even when I’m not actively writing.