Today’s post is written by Ali Luke of Aliventures.
Most of us don’t have all day to write—or if we do, that doesn’t happen often. Even finding a solid hour to write might be next to impossible. Between the demands of a day job, family life, and household chores, there just isn’t much time (or energy) left over.
The good news is that you don’t need hours available in order to write. Just 15 minutes is long enough—and you could even write for 5 or 10 minutes, if that’s what you have available.
My Experience of 15 Minute Writing Sessions
I first starting experimenting with 15 minute writing sessions when I had a baby and a 2-year-old, a decade ago. My 2-year-old had nursery from 12:30–3:00 and the start of this time slot overlapped with my baby’s nap in the pram. I’d write (or edit) for 15 minutes in a nearby McDonald’s.
Was this an ideal time or place for my writing session? No! Heading into a noisy McDonald’s at lunchtime with a baby who’ll be waking up soon probably isn’t anyone’s ideal writing ritual. But it was definitely better than not writing at all.
Fast forward the best part of a decade and I now have a 9-year-old and an almost 11-year-old. I’ve got a thriving freelancing career, working on client pieces while the kids are in school. I’d like to have more time to write fiction, but fitting it in around family life is tricky, especially as my husband works away some of the time. So right now, most of my fiction time is in 10–15 minute daily sessions, usually in the early mornings.
Maybe your life is similarly hectic. Whether you’ve got little ones who need your hands-on attention almost all day, or older kids who need shuttling to after-school clubs, or a busy and draining day job, or caring responsibilities, it may not be realistic to have an hour or even half an hour to write.
But most of us can find 15 minutes. What matters is using that time as effectively as you can.
Step 1: Know Exactly What You Want to Accomplish in Your 15 Minutes
My own goal is to write 250 words (or more!) every day in 2024. That’s what I focus on in my 10-15 minutes of writing each morning.
Your goal might be completely different. Perhaps you simply want to write something each day. You might use Monday to try out a writing prompt, Tuesday to write about a memory, Wednesday to explore a short story idea, and so on.
What matters is that you have a clear goal for your 15 minutes—ideally, one you’ve thought about ahead of time.
Step 2: Work Somewhere You Won’t Be Interrupted
If you’ve only got 15 minutes, you don’t want to lose 10 of them to someone interrupting you to chat. And the thing about 15 minutes is that people really can manage without you for that long. If you’re writing at home, head to a room that’s as far away from the rest of your family as possible. Chances are, they won’t wander by just to chat.
Other good options, if you do get interrupted a lot at home, are to:
- Do your 15 minutes of writing at work. I used to write in my lunch hour during a summer job as a student—or another option might be to stay a little later at work.
- Write while everyone else in the house is asleep. Getting up an hour early to write is unrealistic and unsustainable; getting up 15 minutes early is probably achievable.
- Figure out a time of day when you’re less likely to get interrupted. When my kids were younger, I always wrote from 5:15-5:45 (yes, I got a whole half hour!) as my husband was almost always home from work at that point, and it fitted neatly between the kids’ teatime and bathtime. Everyone (kids included) got used to that writing schedule.
Step 3: Stay Focused During Your 15 Minutes
The great thing about a short writing session is that it’s easier to stay focused than when you have a full hour or more. If you know you’ve only got 15 minutes, you won’t be so tempted to stop halfway through to make a coffee or check your phone.
Even so, you want to make sure you’re avoiding getting distracted. If you get a text message and spend just 3 minutes reading and answering it, that’s 20% of your writing time gone.
Some of the things that help me focus are to:
- Silence my phone and/or put it out of reach when I’m writing
- Put headphones on and listen to instrumental music (helps me block out any household noise)
- Set a timer so I can see exactly how long I have left in my writing session
You might want to give these a try—or there may be a different technique or habit that helps you stay focused, like reading over some affirmations before you begin, or starting your writing session by taking 10 slow deep breaths.
[Editor’s note: A strategy I’ve used in the past is to block my internet or particularly distracting websites for a set period of time, using programs like Freedom and Self-Control.]
Step 4: Leave Yourself a Note for Next Time
When you’ve only got 15 minutes to write, you’ll often be stopping right in the middle of a scene or section of whatever you’re working on. Even if you’re writing a 500-word short story, you’re probably not going to finish it in 15 minutes.
Chances are, you feel like you’ve got plenty more words in you. Your mind will have carried on ahead as you were writing, and you’ve got a clear picture of what’s coming next.
You need to write yourself a note to capture that. (Charlie Gilkey calls this a breadcrumb trail.) Otherwise, you’ll come to your writing after a day or two and you’ll likely have no idea what you were going to write next. Taking just a few extra seconds to jot down a note means you’ll be able to pick up the thread and carry on easily.
I wish I could wave a magic wand and give you (and me) all the time in the world to write, without any other part of our lives being affected. But learning to write in small, focused chunks of time is also a type of magic. It means you can fit a surprising amount of writing into your life, without compromising on anything else that matters.
When you’ve got a little window of time, it may feel like it’s hardly worth writing for 15 minutes. You’ll have days when it’s so tempting to skip writing altogether. Fight that urge!
If you can write 150 words in 15 minutes (that’s a speed of just 10 words per minute) and you write every day, then that’s 54,750 words in a year: enough for a short novel.
Even if you only wrote for 15 minutes twice a week, that’s 15,600 words in a year—which could give you 5–10 complete short stories.
Start with 15 minutes today, and keep adding to those 15 minutes as many days as you can. In a year’s time, you’ll be amazed when you look back to see what you accomplished.