Feature Article: Give Me Twenty!
Twenty-minute Secrets for Writers with a Life

"How do you find time to write?" That question was posed to three prolific authors at a conference I recently attended.

Answer #1: "My kids have grown. When my wife leaves for work, I go to my office and write."

My heart sank. My youngest child just turned one. For me, that kind of freedom is almost two decades away.

Answer #2: "I rent an apartment that I use exclusively for writing. There are just too many distractions at home."

My shoulders drooped. I could relate to the part about distractions, but a writing apartment isn't a possibility for me.

Answer #3: "I write for twenty minutes each day."

My ears perked up. I checked my conference guide and found the bio for this author. She had a list of titles that would choke an elephant. How could that be?

Later I had a chance to chat with this author and find out how she trained herself to accomplish so much in just twenty minutes a day. I began to ask other busy writers the same question. Borrowing from their ideas, I came up with three strategies that work for me.

Hit the ground running! When you sit down to write, just write. And keep writing. Don't wait until you are in the mood to write. Usually the thing that gets you in the mood to write is writing. Forget about spelling, word choice and all of that. The objective is to prime the pump and get those juices flowing.

At a course I attended, the instructor began each class with what she called a "rush-write." She gave us a topic and set her timer for three minutes. The rule was that we had to write continuously until the bell sounded. Piece of cake, right?

About 30 seconds into it, I hit a brick wall.

"Keep those pens moving!" the instructor barked like a junior high gym teacher.

After several weeks, I learned that if I kept writing, I would eventually tap into a plentiful stash of ideas hidden somewhere in my head.

Now when I sit down to write, I force myself to continue non-stop for the first few minutes. When my fingers fly over the keyboard, they start screaming at my brain for ideas.

Fingers: "Hey up there! She's making us write again. Send us some ideas. Pronto!"
Here's what shows up on the computer screen: "Paper towels, lasagna noodles, orange juice."

Fingers: "Hello! This is not a shopping list. We're working on the daffodils story. Let's have something creative!"

The computer screen responds, continuing the daffodils story it had begun a day earlier: "He didn't want to look at the daffodils . . .."

Fingers: "C'mon, you can do better than that. Give us something good."

The monitor improves its display: "Keeping his eyes high, he focused on the jet that had left a white scar across the powder-blue morning sky. He was almost past the daffodils now."

At this point, the gap between fingers and brain narrows, the ideas begin to flow freely, and the writing takes off in a lively style. That's on a good day.

So my first few sentences stink. Big deal. My delete key works just fine. The important thing is that the good writing kicks in after the stinky stuff.

Enter through the back door. There is a place deep inside each of us where our best writing comes from. I can always tell when I'm writing from that place because my neck tingles and my nose itches. But it's not always easy to get there. I decided to cheat a little. I got the idea at the grocery store.

One day, I bought a generic brand of hand lotion. The first time I opened the bottle, the floral scent transported my brain staggering back to Grandma's house.

I was six years old. I sat at the vanity in Grandma's bedroom while she got out her antique jewelry and let me try on each piece. My favorite was a silver ring that had a locket-like compartment under a translucent opal.

I'm sure you've all had similar experiences. Certain smells, tastes, sounds and textures punch in some sort of secret access code to open up the deep places inside us. See if you can use this phenomenon to build a back door to your creativity.

Each time you sit down to write, do something that will stimulate one of the five senses. Light an "Island Mango" scented candle. Pop a butterscotch candy in your mouth. Listen to Mozart or one of those soothing thunderstorm CDs. If you perform a small ritual like this each time you write, your brain will begin to connect the smell, taste, or sound with the creative state of mind. It might just slip you in the back door and start you writing the way you know you can.

Skip and Go. When I was a reading tutor, this was one of the most important strategies we taught kids. If you become stuck on a word that you don't know, skip it and keep going. Chances are, you'll figure it out later from the context of the story. If not, then the word wasn't essential to the overall meaning of the story.

The same goes for writing. Nothing eats up time like spinning your wheels in the same spot. If you are stuck on a certain scene or paragraph, skip it and keep going. Once you have moved further into the story or article, you'll be better equipped to go back and write what you intended.

You might discover that the paragraph wasn't necessary in the first place. If so, you have avoided a waste of time, because during the revision process, you would have deleted it anyway. Skip and go is an excellent technique for writing.

So what are you waiting for? Forget about the isolated cabin in the woods, the costly writers' retreat, the long luxurious stretches of uninterrupted time. Who needs 'em?

Gotta go. The baby is crying. About the isolated cabin in the woods - maybe I'm not quite ready to give up that dream. But for now, I'll take my twenty-minute writing stints and make the most of them.

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