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!
