When it comes to our goals, many of are felled not by laziness but by ambition, by our own grandiosity. We don't exercise for ten minutes because we don't have the hour we believe we should spend. We don't say no to the one little pizza slice because we're just about to go on a great big diet. We don't put our one just-used coffee cup in the sink because we really need to clean up the whole ten-room house.
And we don't write for fifteen minutes because in our mind, our writing sessions should be two hours and we should have them every day. We can't find that two hours most days, much less every day, and so we write little or not at all. This is completely natural. I fall into this trap a lot, and most other writers do too. But it's also two other things. First, it's idiotic. Would you refuse to take a snapshot of your kids at Thanksgiving because you should really be filming the whole thing?
And second, it's totally counterproductive. It trains your creative brain to see writing as some big hairy deal, rather than as a natural outgrowth of your interest in the story or project you're working on. It trains you to wait to write until perfect conditions are achieved for writing, and ignores the reality that perfect conditions are almost never available.
If you're bedeviled by this problem, here's a possible solution.
Decide on a place to write. Your desk, your dining room, your garden. Put your basic writing tools there, ready. Basic: laptop, pen and paper, pencil and notebook. You won't need your Compact Oxford English Dictionary or the rough draft of the seven hundred pages you've already drafted for this exercise.
Set the oven timer for fifteen minutes. I say oven timer because just about everyone has one. But you could use your microwave timer, iPhone timer, or any other clock you want. The point isn't the mechanism, it's the precision of the fifteen minutes.
Now sit down at your spot and write. Keep your hand(s) moving the whole fifteen minutes. It doesn't matter if what you write is illegible crap or genius worthy of Shakespeare. Just write. And when the timer goes off, stop. Even if you're having fun and channeling Shakespeare. Stop. You can finish your sentence, but that's it. Stop. Get up. Do something else.
Do this every single day for fourteen days, at more or less the same time if you can. But if you can't, do it anyway: some time, some place, but every single day, and for no more and no less than fifteen minutes.
Congratulations. You have now trained your brain to believe that (a) you do have time to write and (b) you can be trusted not just to write but also to stop and (c) you have plenty to say and would actually enjoy sitting down and writing more often.
If you want, you might try the optional follow-up: using the same basic structure and rules, write exactly thirty minutes, four days a week. But don't try this until you've done the first challenge.
Whether or not you ever do either exercise, here's the point. A page a day that you actually write is better than five pages a day that you never get to.
The way to accumulate writing is to write one page regularly, not write a whole book never.
And we don't write for fifteen minutes because in our mind, our writing sessions should be two hours and we should have them every day. We can't find that two hours most days, much less every day, and so we write little or not at all. This is completely natural. I fall into this trap a lot, and most other writers do too. But it's also two other things. First, it's idiotic. Would you refuse to take a snapshot of your kids at Thanksgiving because you should really be filming the whole thing?
And second, it's totally counterproductive. It trains your creative brain to see writing as some big hairy deal, rather than as a natural outgrowth of your interest in the story or project you're working on. It trains you to wait to write until perfect conditions are achieved for writing, and ignores the reality that perfect conditions are almost never available.
If you're bedeviled by this problem, here's a possible solution.
Decide on a place to write. Your desk, your dining room, your garden. Put your basic writing tools there, ready. Basic: laptop, pen and paper, pencil and notebook. You won't need your Compact Oxford English Dictionary or the rough draft of the seven hundred pages you've already drafted for this exercise.
Set the oven timer for fifteen minutes. I say oven timer because just about everyone has one. But you could use your microwave timer, iPhone timer, or any other clock you want. The point isn't the mechanism, it's the precision of the fifteen minutes.
Now sit down at your spot and write. Keep your hand(s) moving the whole fifteen minutes. It doesn't matter if what you write is illegible crap or genius worthy of Shakespeare. Just write. And when the timer goes off, stop. Even if you're having fun and channeling Shakespeare. Stop. You can finish your sentence, but that's it. Stop. Get up. Do something else.
Do this every single day for fourteen days, at more or less the same time if you can. But if you can't, do it anyway: some time, some place, but every single day, and for no more and no less than fifteen minutes.
Congratulations. You have now trained your brain to believe that (a) you do have time to write and (b) you can be trusted not just to write but also to stop and (c) you have plenty to say and would actually enjoy sitting down and writing more often.
If you want, you might try the optional follow-up: using the same basic structure and rules, write exactly thirty minutes, four days a week. But don't try this until you've done the first challenge.
Whether or not you ever do either exercise, here's the point. A page a day that you actually write is better than five pages a day that you never get to.
The way to accumulate writing is to write one page regularly, not write a whole book never.
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