How to Make Real Writing Progress in 15 Minutes a Day

Struggling to make any real writing progress in your busy life?

Writers dream of having uninterrupted months to attend solely to writing. If you’ve ever managed to grant yourself an extended weekend or even a week or two to write, however, you may have noticed—it doesn’t make it easier to get the writing done.

Many times the more time we have the less writing we complete.

“[T]he world of publishing does provide an interesting lesson: People who quit their day-jobs to write books usually end up with half a manuscript buried in a drawer,” writes Gordon, the White Paper Guy. “But every year, thousands of books are published by people who continue with their regular lives and write in their spare time.”

Parkinson’s law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” which means that the more time you have to write, the more time it will take you to write.

Flip that around and you have: “The less time you have to write, the less time it will take you to write.”

I’ve tried this myself and found it to be true over and over again. There’s something about having less time that sharpens your focus and encourages you to get past all the things that hold you back—self-doubt and perfectionism, for example—so that you succeed in getting words on the page.

It’s time to stop complaining about not having time to write. You can make significant progress on your story by carving out only 15-20 minutes a day. Everyone has that much time somewhere in their schedule.

The trick is to be prepared for those small bursts of time so that nothing stands in your way.

5 Tips to Real Writing Progress in Short Bursts of Time

1. Have Your Tools With You

Short bursts of writing time can show up at odd times of the day: at the doctor’s office, while waiting for your child to finish piano lessons, in the car after work before you head home, or in the morning before anyone else in the house gets up.

If you’re prepared for these cosmic gifts, you can easily churn out a few hundred words in that time. If you’re not, however, you’re more likely to browse the Internet or check your phone—completely wasting that time.

Tip: Have your laptop, a pen and paper, a phone note app, or some sort of tool with you at all times that allows you to write.

Writing Progress Tip 2. Learn to Dive In Immediately

I’ll admit to having a preparatory routine I go through most days before I write. It helps me quiet my brain so I’m ready to take the deep dive into my fictional world. It lasts only about 5-10 minutes, but when I have only 15-20, I can’t afford to do it.

That’s when I have to just sit down and start writing, cold turkey so to speak. We can lead ourselves to believe that we simply can’t write this way. It’s sort of like doing a workout without warming up. But we’re only fooling ourselves.

Sure, it’s nice to have that preparatory time, but it’s not required to get the writing done. You can train yourself to snatch up your notebook and start writing immediately if you do it often enough.

Tip: Practice picking up your computer or notebook and writing immediately, without any preparation. Do this at least once a week. The more you do it, the easier it will become.

3. Refuse to Judge Your Work

Often what holds a writer back from diving immediately into writing is the quality control officer living in every writer’s brain. This officer thinks you must have just the right cup of coffee first, or at least 10 minutes to daydream before you begin typing. Otherwise, the officer says, your writing won’t be any good.

To take advantage of quick bursts of writing time, you absolutely must ignore the quality control officer and withhold judgment about anything that flows out of your fingers. This is easier said than done. Even after writing for over 20 years, I still encounter that resistance when it’s time to write. I can feel it like a block in my chest: You aren’t up to it right now. You’re tired. It won’t be any good.

I still have to say to myself, “It doesn’t matter. Just get something down. You can fix it later.” Then inevitably once I get into the writing, it tends to flow and I always end up with raw material I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Here’s another good thing—the more you practice writing in short bursts of time, the better you will become at ignoring doubting thoughts. You simply can’t afford to indulge them when you are so pressed for time!

Writes The Whitepaper Guy:

“Me? I love writing in 10-minute bursts. Not only does it allow me to get ideas out of my head and on paper when they’re fresh, it also gives me a big payback down the road. That’s because when I go back to the report, letter, or article, I often discover my work is much further ahead than I’d realized. And best of all, I’m not facing a blank page. It’s a great feeling.”

Tip: Tell the inner editor or quality control officer or whatever you want to call it to shut up. Refuse to listen to anything it has to say. Just write. You can worry about the quality later.

Writing Progress Tip 4. Maintain Some Sort of Planning Method

If you’re a plotter or you’re writing non-fiction, an outline does wonders for short bursts of writing. You can quickly check what part of the book you’re supposed to be working on and dive in.

If you’re a pantser, on the other hand (like I am when it comes to fiction), this can be more difficult to do because you probably don’t have an outline. You may be used to wasting precious time reviewing what you wrote the day before you can start writing.

Pantsers can save themselves this time by simply jotting down a sentence or two at the end of each writing session that provides clues as to what will happen next. I do this all the time. When I have to shut down a writing session, I’ll write something like, “John goes to see his advisor and finds out the disturbing news,” or “Ellen goes to the records department and finds out what Ben has been hiding,” or whatever.

Then when I sit down to write the next time, I immediately remember where I was going and I can start writing right away.

Tip: Give yourself some sort of clue as to what comes next on your writing project—a few sentences, an outline, notes on a phone, or whatever works for you. When it’s time to write, review your notes quickly and dive in. Make sure these notes are accessible to you wherever you may have an opportunity to write.

5. Block Out All Distractions

Often, 15-20 minute blocks of time occur in distracting environments. If you’re in the doctor’s office, for example, on the subway, or at home amidst what sounds like a rock party in your teen’s bedroom next door, you’re going to be subject to a variety of noises and interruptions unless you take deliberate action to eliminate them.

Of course, there’s always the temptation to check your Facebook and Twitter feeds, too.

The more you can block out these distractions, the faster you can focus and drop into the dream world of your writing.

Tip: Always have earplugs or headphones with you to block out noises, and get used to putting your phone out of sight and out of reach during your short writing bursts.

To Make Writing Progress, Develop the Skill of Writing in Short Bursts

Here’s another fact that may surprise you: The more you write and the more successful you come, the less time you may have to write.

We think it will be the opposite—that once we reach a certain level of success, we will have more time. But the pros say that’s not true.

“I think it’s fair to say that writing time shrinks for most of us as our careers advance,” says Gregory Semenza, Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut.

As we become better writers and publish more works, we have more marketing and platform-building tasks to complete and they can take up more and more of our time. Learning to write in short bursts of time is a wise idea for your career. Get used to it now, and you’ll be able to use it whenever necessary to keep your writing flowing.

How do you get the most out of your short writing bursts?

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