How Twenty minutes saved my writing this summer

It’s not been the easiest summer writing-wise for me.

My writing year has been pretty disrupted as a whole actually.

At the beginning of the year, I found myself wrestling (read ‘struggling’) with the latest draft of my novel.

This wasn’t helped by the fact the time I set aside to work on the novel was regularly disrupted by a complex potential house move, which then fell through in July. In June came the loss of a very dear member of our family and with it the hurricane of chaos that accompanies death.

Available writing time

I can safely say, I’ve had easier years. Then, the summer holidays arrived, hot and dizzyingly ready to be sprung into a golden haze of paddling pool days and camping nights. They did so with an invoice attached calling in most of my available writing time.

Struggling as I was to get back on track with the novel, being increasingly overwhelmed by a new writing project and often needing to dip into those post-bedtime pockets of evening time to get my paid article writing work done, it was hard not to feel a little defeated.

But as anyone with stories to tell knows, the damn thing(s) won’t let you go and only serve to make you miserable if you fail to show up to the page for them. What then was I to do?

Working with what I had

I began simply by working with what I had. Tuesday evenings are sacrosanct in my house for the Writing Room. I invite any and all writers I know to join me via Zoom at 8pm for us to get our write-on together. I am endlessly grateful to this amazing community of women for showing up to their writing and for helping to keep me accountable in showing up to mine. As I regularly say, the Tuesday writing room can be an anchor in a writing week. I say this from direct and personal experience.

Because nothing feels better than when I have turned up to my writing. Suddenly the sense of pressure and angst I have been carrying is lifted. Even though the ‘problems’ may still be there to deal with I feel lighter and more able to address them. Tuesday sets me free from the fear that this might be the week I don’t write, which might be the beginning of me never writing again. It’s a ridiculous fear, but that rarely stops it from being a powerful one whenever it strikes. Having my Tuesday anchor is the best antidote I know to stop it running riot when the writing chips are down.

Twenty minutes

And then I found twenty minutes. What I actually found was an old copy of that writer’s goldmine, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. I devoured her essays on writing practice – well that’s not actually true. The first two I swallowed down like delicious and deeply nourishing biscuits. Then I began to apply what she was saying. I agreed with myself that I could find 20 minutes every day to free write. 15 felt too short, an hour or 30 minutes felt unreasonably long. But twenty minutes, well that was the porridge that was just right.

Freewriting, if you haven’t (knowingly) experienced it before is I believe the writing we all do when we are first forming the concept of ourselves as writers. It’s the speedy, compulsive, irreverent way of writing. We throw words down as though they simultaneously cost us nothing (they don’t) and save our lives (they do). There is a wild unapologetic abandonment to free writing. It roams without care or concern about productivity and efficiency. It taps directly into a childlike joy of writing, into writing that is written from a place of knowing that it doesn’t matter except in the most important way writing can matter, in the getting it downness of writing.

Like my Tuesday night anchor, I find 20 minutes of freewriting sets me right with myself.

Safe space

And then, especially on working days, I began tacking on a second 20 minutes to work on the novel. For my novel 20 minutes created a safe space. It meant I could look again at my earlier draft and see that it wasn’t quite as blisteringly awful as I had talked myself into believing it was.

Peeling the fingers off from over my eyes, I could pick up the myriad documents I’d written since, the pieces of chapters, scenes, ideas, the new twist, the emerging character that hadn’t been there before. I could consider my original manuscript against the developing version of the story. I could see what was the same and wanted to remain, what was (truly) awful and had to go, and what was yet to be written.

Twenty minutes was long enough for me not to get overwhelmed. It was long enough for me to make friends with my manuscript again, with myself again. Twenty minutes over a number of days and then weeks built up enough confidence for me to get back into a new fresh draft. That new draft needs a different amount of time from me – but thankfully September is peeking its head around the corner, still warm and bright but with a freshness that will be just what’s needed to get this next version down and onto the waiting page.

New writing project

Somewhere, in between my Tuesday night anchor, my daily freewriting practice of 20 minutes, in between meeting writing deadlines for work, holding coaching sessions, going on days out with the kids and burying ourselves in the long hot luxury of days at home together, I also found time to work on my latest, least formed writing project.

With that watering of time, it grew from an idea, dashed down in the earliest moments of a morning, after I’d delivered bowls of Frosties and platefuls of buttered toast to hungry children, let the dog out, emptied the dishwasher and so on. It grew and grew, into more than 15,000 words. I don’t know where this one is going. I don’t know what it is yet or whether it’s anything other than a folly for my eyes only. But I don’t care. I don’t care because I’m writing. I’m writing in the morning, I’m writing in the evening, I’m writing in the daytime, all over the place. And that, dear writers, is all we ever need, right?

And that is also how 20 minutes saved my writing summer.

 

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