how to write a book in 20 minutes a day
A lot of people I talk to tell me they’re going to write a book one day.
Most of the time, when we talk further, they’re waiting for the “right time.”
They’re going to take a sabbatical. Hole up for a month, or three months, or a year, and finally write that novel / memoir / children’s book.
Writing a book is like having a baby, or getting a colonoscopy: there’s never a good time.
Here’s how to write a book in twenty minutes a day.
Decide when in the sequence of your day you will write. It works best if you can tag it onto something you already do at the same time of every day, like after eating breakfast (or dinner), during your lunch hour, whatever. I write when I sit down at my desk, around 9 or 9:30am.
Decide which days of the week you will write. Doesn’t have to be every day. I write Mondays through Thursdays.
Set a timer. For twenty minutes. Or ten. Or thirty. Don’t try to do more than thirty minutes if you’re just beginning.
Set up your documents. On your first day of writing, set up your documents. I prefer to write in Google Drive. You can use whatever you want, but don’t spend time researching special software. Just open whatever you already use - Microsoft Word, a Google Doc, Pages. You want one folder labeled with the working title of your book (it can say “Book Draft”). One document for notes. One document for the manuscript. That’s it. On the first day, decide if you want to write down some thoughts in the notes document or just… start writing. You don’t need to prepare, you don’t need to plan, you just need to START.
Write until the timer goes off. Don’t check email, don’t answer texts, don’t open a browser just to research one quick thing. Don’t do anything except type into your document. You can also stare into space, but only if you’re actually thinking, not if you’re beating yourself up about not knowing what to do.
Repeat. As my client Kelly Thompson (author of Closing the Confidence Gap) says, “Consistency isn’t sexy, but it works.”
That’s it.
It’s simple. Not easy, but simple.
When you don’t know what to write next, open your notes document and write about how you don’t know what to write next. Then ask your brain for fifteen ideas of what to write next. Don’t stop until you hit fifteen ideas. Then pick one and write that.
When you write for twenty minutes a day, multiple days a week, for weeks and months in a row, you can’t help but stack up pages. It’s inevitable.
It’s kind of like when you start saving $20 a week. It feels stupid, like such a small amount you shouldn’t even bother. Until two years later, when you forgot you’ve even been doing that and realize you have $2,000.
I’ll make you a deal: write twenty minutes a day, four days a week, from now until the end of the year.
Then email me on January 2 and tell me how many pages you wrote in that time.
Someone’s gonna write a third of a book, or half of a book, this way.
Let’s do it.