Summer is a busy season. Different schedules, new activities, vacations, kids home from school. It’s often hard to find time to write, especially if you’re working on a book.
But you can make consistent summer progress by just writing 15 minutes at a time.
When you carve out a 15-minute time slot for writing, your book project will experience forward motion. You are showing up. That matters more than word count. It keeps your story fresh in your mind.
You’ll probably spend more time thinking about your story even after your 15 minutes of writing time. So, your momentum will continue.
The more consistently you take this step, the more likely you are to continue. You’ll find it easier to write too because you’ll already be thinking about your project. Each step builds on the next.
One thing that might make your writing easier is to simply describe the next story, scene, or section of your book. Imagine sitting across from a friend and describing the story to them, just summarizing the bare bones of it. Not perfect sentences. Just getting the gist of it on paper.
If you can write that way in your 15 minutes, you’ll have something to work with next time. When you take your next 15-minute writing session, you can shape that summary, add details, clarify. Like molding clay on a potter’s wheel.
Another quick way to start is to spend 15 minutes creating a messy mini outline for your next scene or section. What’s the next topic you’re going to focus on in your book? Write your topic of focus, and then make a bullet point list beneath it.
List whatever ideas come to mind related to that topic. Don’t worry about putting those ideas in sequence or even full sentences. Just write them down, one bullet point at a time.
In your next 15-minute writing session, you can expand on one of those bullet points. That’s a great way to consistently build out your next chapter or scene in small steps.
A few 15-minute sessions scattered across your week might not feel like much. But by the end of the summer, you could have several parts of your book already shaped or ready to be shaped. Showing up is everything. That’s how books get written, one small piece at a time.
Today, set a timer for 15 minutes. Write a few sentences describing a scene or a small section of your book. Or make a messy mini bullet point list about one of your book chapter topics.
When the timer goes off, celebrate that in the midst of a busy summer, you showed up as a writer and moved your book forward. Then make a plan for when to try your next 15 minutes.
Janet Eriksson 