"No! It Wouldn't Be Funny At All."

me fr

Challenge: Write for 10 Minutes Every Day for a Week

It’s a common misconception that a daily writing habit takes a huge amount of time and effort to maintain. It doesn’t.

With the right tools and systems in place, it can be as leisurely as a walk in a park. You don’t have to lose sleep over it. You don’t have to chain-smoke cigarettes. You don’t have to quit your job and move into the woods to do it.

I’m not sure what is causing this sentiment — perhaps memories from when you joined NaNoWriMo and tried writing thousands of words daily (or a similar push to hit a crazy deadline). While it can work for some, most writers don’t write thousands of words every day like that.

This week, I want to challenge you to write for just ten minutes every day. There’s no daily word count goal. If you sit there for ten minutes and nothing comes out, that’s a success too.

From Dreamer to Writer

Hang on a second. How can you get anything done with just ten minutes per day? I’m glad that you asked!

If you stick to it, you’ll write for just over an hour per week, five hours per month and 60 hours per year. According to my writing stats, I average about 1,500 words per hour. That’s 90,000 words per year. I’m not a particularly fast writer, but even if you did half of that, you’re still in the 50,000 words/year range.

That’s a lot of words, considering you’re only writing for 10 minutes a day. But there’s more.

Occasionally, you’ll be in the mood for writing. Your ten minutes fly past, and you’re nowhere near done. Maybe you write for 30 minutes, perhaps an hour, working on an exciting chapter of your story.

The words add up faster than you think.

The Challenge

Starting today, write for at least ten minutes per day for a week. You may work on your current WIP, write a short story, blog post or journal.

There’s no word goal. As long as you sit down to write, it’s a success!

I set up a challenge in Writing Analytics if you’d like to join:

https://app.writinganalytics.co/challenge/647f2785e7b6ddfbda265635

One great thing about WA is that you can set and track time goals for your writing sessions. That makes it super easy to build a writing habit like that:

Happy writing!

Alice Walker, from “Even As I Hold You”, Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems 1965-1990

Do you ever look at a sparrow and think, "that bird is really wasting her potential?"

No. That thought would clang against the simple dignity we sense in nature, the dignity of a living thing inhabiting a life.

You are that sparrow. You are the branch she rests upon.

You embody that same dignity.

me and karma vibe like that.

Change is hard but staying somewhere you don't belong to will destroy you

i think society’s obsession with productivity will be our downfall, it’s unrealistic. you don’t need to be productive every minute of the day. your body needs rest. it’s not natural to stay “grinding” or “hustling”. please don’t feel guilty about taking care of your body and taking a break when you need one.

To the writer who needs to hear it…

YES. Your story DOES matter. It wouldn’t exist without you. You are in charge of bringing it to life because other writers don’t possess your style / voice. You are the only person capable of creating your story.

You are an unique, creative, worthy human being. Go show the world what you’re capable of.