Hi everyone!I've started a flash fiction blog, storyflare.com.
About a month ago my sister-in-law said she wanted to help me get my writing career going. She asked me how much time I could spend a day on writing.
"I used to have two hours," I said, "but now..." I made a long list of excuses.
"It sounds to me like you think you have to have a huge block of time every day if you're going to write at all," she said. "Try this. Tomorrow morning, get up fifteen minutes early, set a timer for fifteen minutes, and write one short story. You can spend all day thinking about it, but you can only write for fifteen minutes. And no revising."
I tried it. It was amazing.
First of all, my word count more than tripled. I used to do 800 words an hour, 1000 was a really good haul. Now I'm pulling 600 to 700 words in 15 minutes every morning. Second, I stopped feeling depressed that I wasn't writing anything. Third, it only took fifteen minutes. I barely even noticed that there was any time missing from my day. Best of all, there's something intensely liberating about being able to move from one idea to the next in only a day, instead of obsessively slaving over the same story concept for years.
Of course I was sending my sister-in-law the daily stories. Once I'd been doing this for several weeks she told me to start a blog. So I did.
Come on over and check it out.
What can you do in fifteen minutes?
Great blog, Rebecca! I feel that way too. Rarely do I get 15 minutes here and there with a little one under foot! whew! :)
ReplyDelete♥.•*¨Elizabeth¨*•.♥
Hi Elizabeth! Thanks for your comment. Enjoy that little one, and here's wishing you some writing time too.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea on the fifteen minutes of writing. I am going to share the link to this post with a few friends who have been stuck feeling that if they don't have at least two hours to sit and write, it isn't worth getting started. They need your article, and it will certainly help me on my bad days. I am now your newest follower, and it's nice to 'meet' you.
ReplyDeleteDeb@ http://debioneille.blogspot.com
Thanks for reading, Debi! It's nice to meet you too! Best of luck with your writing!
DeleteSince I wrote this article I've discovered that somehow, writing for 15 minutes a day helped me get it back on my priority list enough that I was able to find a little more time each day to work on a longer project. Just like magic.
That's a good kind of magic.
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