The 300-Second Writer: 21 Things You Can Write In Five Minutes

* * *

Today, I’m going back in time to offer this revised version of a post I did in 2010. 

It’s 2:55 p.m. You’re in your car outside your daughter’s school waiting to drive her to ballet. You have five minutes.

You’ve just arrived at the office and are ready to get to work. Your first conference call is at 9:20. It’s 9:15. You have five minutes.

You’re in your p.j.’s. You’re tired. You have to get up early the next day. It’s not a good idea to deprive yourself of sleep. But you can spare five minutes, can’t you? You can take five minutes to write.

If it seem ridiculous to try to write in such short periods of time, it’s because you haven’t seriously thought about what you can accomplish in five minutes. The answer is: plenty. Stop telling yourself you must have entire afternoons or hour-long stretches or you just can’t get a word written. Yes, you can. Here are twenty-one things you can do in five minutes or less.

1. Rewrite a sentence—or several sentences.

2. Write a physical description of a character. One or two powerful details pounded out in a short space can make for a better description than a lot of adjectives you take time to come up with.

3. Come up with a compelling image or metaphor. Often, the best images emerge in the spur of the moment, rather than after hours of pondering.

4. Think of a first line for your next poem or short story.

5. Give a character a name.

6. Go through a page of writing and underline every word you’re not sure of. Later, you can think of whether and how to change them.

7. Write ten lines of dialogue. Do it as quickly as you can. You can always rewrite it later.

8. Learn something that will help you with your current story—especially if you can go online. If you’re writing about a steel worker, read a page on steel mills. If your work is historical, learn a few facts about the era. Does your work refer to snow boarding, trial lawyers, glaucoma, or museums in Tuscany? Use your minute to read something about them.

9. Read a paragraph aloud to hear how it sounds.

10. Think of a plot for a story. Yes, it can be done in five minutes.

11. Cross out every unnecessary word in a passage.

12, Look up the meaning of a word to make sure you’re using it correctly.

13. Write down three possible ways your current story could end.

14. Brainstorm ideas for essay topics.

15. Jot down notes about a memory from your childhood (or, for that matter, from last week). Later, they can be expanded into an essay.

16. Come up with details about a character’s life. What was her favorite childhood toy? What is the thorn in his side? What does she eat for breakfast? These types of details give your characters layers and texture, and take very little time to develop.

17. Write a haiku or other short poetry form. It doesn’t have to be perfect or brilliant. It doesn’t even have to be good. Just write it.

18. Make a list of words to create a poem or story around.

19. Run a spell check on a chapter.

20.Daydream. Five minutes of daydreaming might just be time to let your brain rest—or they might lead to writing gold.

21. Simply write for five minutes on any topic in any style. Free writing will loosen you up, give you ideas, provide you with practice, shake loose the writing demons, and keep your skills honed.

Keep a notebook handy. Use the spaces in between one task and another, the times you’d normally be looking at your watch impatiently, the intervals you fill up checking text messages or browsing through whatever reading material happens to be at hand. Put down the phone. Stop reading the cereal box. Write.

Click here to receive free, useful, eye-opening life strategies for writers in your email each week!