Something is Better than Nothing

One of my writer friends, who is mega busy, out writes me nine times out of ten. She’s a machine. Her self discipline moves me to try alternative ways of learning and writing.

Inspired by her, I’ve started trying to use “downtime” to write here and there. The software I use for drafting has an online thing. I can log on and write from anywhere. With the new puppy, seven pounds of cute, I’m not always in front of my computer.

I might get a paragraph done in between playing with her. Ok, most of my time with the puppy involves keeping her safe from herself. She’s a one girl demolition crew. But she’d so happy you can’t even get mad.

If she falls asleep, mostly on my lap, I can get the phone out and write for a little while. It’s slower than my typing, but something is better than nothing.

Writers are as superstitious as any other creative person or sports star. We only write when we have our special socks on, our favorite pen and a cup of something delicious. The mind games we play with ourselves are more complex than the plots in the books we’re writing.

If all you have is little five-minute snatches of time while you’ve locked yourself in your bathroom for your own sanity, use those minutes to get closer to a done manuscript. Maybe you only get fifty words written. If you squeezed out eight blocks of time in five-minute segments, you’ll get four hundred words written without all the drama.

Waiting on one of your kids at practice or dance? After everyone has greeted each other, gossiped or bragged about their lives, sit in a corner and write. You might get twenty- or thirty-minutes writing time. Do it on your phone, scratch long hand, or write in invisible ink. Write.

Do you have an arbitrary word count number you’ve assigned yourself every day? If you could get some writing done consistently, you might get closer to your ideal. I say that to be kind. You need to break up with your lofty goals and get down to brass tacks. Write every day. Five minutes in your story will help it stay fresh.

Things happen once you commit to writing more often. I’ll be sitting in the garden listening to the birds and insects and enjoying a cool breeze when I get a good idea. I get plenty of ideas, most of them are marginal. But when I write, read and relax for a chain of days, I’m gifted with a higher level of creative ideas.

If you are binging a show on Netflix, stop between every episode and get a few sentences in. If the show has ten episodes that’s at least eight writing sprints. Four hundred to five hundred words depending on how seriously you dig into your story.

You might write longer than five minutes. Once you start, you may find a bunch of words ready to tumble out through your fingers. See how you go. You'll surprise yourself.

Now, here’s the bottom line of my preaching. Something is better than nothing. If you keep waiting for the perfect time to write you’ll work a few times in a month or maybe entire months where you imagine writing, maybe you take a class to keep your hand in, but you don’t actually write anything but emails.

Stop that shit.

Be realistic. Do you have a train commute? Write. Everyone else has their phone in their hands watching, reading or writing something. You won’t stand out. Listen, no one on the train wants to steal the stuff you’re writing on your screen. You can let that go as an excuse.

It’s the apple. You can’t eat it whole. But you can eat it in small bites.

My prayer for all of you who want to write is that you will believe enough in yourself to work on your stuff in a practiced way. Because every writer I know gets better when they write.

It’s so simple. You can’t muck it up.

Write. Write. Write.

Let me know how you structure your writing time. Everyone has a different rhythm. I love to hear how ya’ll are making it work.