Tip: A Writing Minimum That Works for Me

It's hard for all of us to find time to write. But it can also be a trap to think that you need a huge chunk of time for writing, and that you can't get anything done if you don't have that. You can spend your whole life waiting to suddenly become independently wealthy so that you have "time to write."

If you've been reading this blog you know about my philosophy of doing a little at a time, according to what fits into your schedule. Here's something in particular that works for me:

Every day, write for one hour, and finish one page.

Now doesn't that sound manageable?

You can write one page in one hour. Sure you can.

A couple of caveats:

1. It can truly be a terrible page. That's okay. You can fix it later.
2. You can put in placeholders if you need to check a fact or decide on a name or something like that later.
3. If you are dry on one section of your project, you can skip ahead and write a page that you are energized about.

I am an "organic" writer, that is, I see where my writing takes me and work without an outline, at least at first, so I just write one page after another. If you work with an outline, you can still use this method: just write one page of your outline, or a one-page chapter outline for each chapter to being with. Then begin writing the body of the work.

This doesn't sound like much, but think about it. In 250 days, a little over 8 months, you can have the rough draft of a standard-length novel. Take almost 4 months to revise and pull together query letters and a synopsis. That means you could have a quite workable manuscript of a novel (or short story collection, or narrative nonfiction, or whatever) in one year. Many professional writers take one year to finish a novel. If you're a screenwriter, you only need 90 to 150 pages, so hey, you're done even sooner.

Add to this that sometimes you will find that you have written more than one page in your one-hour time page - a page and a half, two pages! Good for you, get yourself an extra latte.

Try it, see if it works for you, and keep writing!