The Writing Advice That Works Great If You Don't Have Kids, a Job, or a Life

Every writing coach I have ever read recommends the same thing.

Ten minutes of uninterrupted stream-of-consciousness writing. Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way, swears by it. Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, swears by it. Basically, every person who has ever taught a writing workshop swears by it.

I have tried this.

My daughters, for reasons I can only describe as supernatural, interrupt me at minute eight. Every single time. Not minute three. Not minute six. Minute eight — right when I'm in it, right when something is happening — one of them calls out, and I run in afraid she'll wake the other, and just like that, the flow is gone.

If you can get ten minutes of uninterrupted time to do anything, it must be nice.

What is that like?

But not for those of us who are in the thick of it. Maybe for you the interruption is different — maybe you have the smallest bladder in the world, maybe you're battling a disease that gives you only a few moments of energy and attention, maybe you just have ADHD.

For my interruptions — AKA my kids — I stopped waiting for ten minutes and started working with five.

I call it chunked focus. The idea is simple: you don't need a long, uninterrupted stretch to make progress on a story. You need five focused minutes and somewhere to put the words.

Set a timer. Write one section. Stop when it goes off.

That's it.

One minute of writing yields between 40 and 70 words. Five minutes gets you somewhere between 200 and 350. That is, for the record, most of the middle of a story.

Desire.
Obstacle.
Outcome.

The part that matters most. Done before your coffee gets cold.

I write before my daughters wake up. Sometimes it's five minutes. Sometimes I get fifteen. On the hard mornings — sick kids, early calls, the particular chaos that descends on a household when two small people are not sleeping — it's five. And five is enough to keep the story moving.

The math is not glamorous, but it is real. A few five-minute sessions across a week, and you have a complete first draft. Not because you found a perfect two-hour window. Because you kept coming back.

You advance on your stories by coming back, not by marathon sessions.

Pick the story you started this week. Set a timer for five minutes. Write just the middle — what you wanted, what got in your way, what happened.

When the timer goes off, stop. Come back tomorrow.

That's the whole practice.

Happy telling!

-Carlos

P.S. In The Story Frame Sprint, writers complete a full, polished story in four days — using exactly this method. Next sprint starts March 9th.