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How to Write When You Only Have 20 Minutes

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Twenty minutes at a time can carry a whole novel. May Cobb told Writer's Digest she wrote her first one "in 15-20 minute chunks of time over the course of a year."

Five habits come up below, each described by a named writer:

  • doing the warm-up before the session starts (Howard Tayler)
  • writing before email (Mette Ivie Harrison)
  • looking for a time during the day when you are not yet mentally exhausted (Howard Tayler)
  • spending some time with the book every day (Dean Bakopoulos)
  • writing while you travel (Anthony Trollope)

Not everyone can work this way. Brandon Sanderson, a host of the podcast Writing Excuses, said in 2009 that "if I'm really going, an hour's worth of time can get a lot of work done. But if I sit down and say I only have an hour, nothing happens."

It has been done

Writer's Digest asked May Cobb for one piece of advice to other writers. Her answer, in full: "You can write a novel in small chunks of time. Stolen moments are often the best moments and I was able to write my first novel in 15-20 minute chunks of time over the course of a year."

In Ploughshares, Maria Eliades reports that the journalist Jake Tapper wrote his political thriller, The Hellfire Club, "sometimes in intervals of only fifteen minutes at a time." He "completed his novel in four years".

She writes that, for him, "the consistency that came with writing every day, even when he didn't feel like it or didn't feel he was turning out great writing, was the key to finishing the book." His advice, as she quotes it: "Every time you're in an airport or on an airplane, write a little."

Kirsty Greenwood drafted The Love of My Afterlife mostly in twenty-minute units too, though she "spent the summer of 2022 doing nothing much else but writing a draft of this book."

Each day she was on a video call with an author friend, after looking into "the concept of Body Doubling—whereby you work closely alongside another person in order to increase your productivity." Then: "We did 20-minute writing sprints, with a dance break at the end of every three sessions. That's pretty much how the whole novel got written."

Do the warm-up before you sit down

The 2009 Writing Excuses episode on the hosts' writing habits takes up this problem. After Sanderson's "nothing happens", Howard Tayler, citing a book about knowledge workers, put numbers on an hour-long session:

"If you've only got an hour to write, then, well, 45 minutes of that might be just warmup, and then you get moving, and you really only get 15 minutes of good writing".

Sanderson said it works this way for him: "I have to have a block of four hours. There's got to be people out there that do this differently."

Tayler turned to the people for whom long blocks are "just not an option": people who "write entire novels on their lunch breaks for a month", with an hour at lunch.

Their warm-up, he said, happens before the break. They "multitask before their lunch break and spend that 45 minutes thinking", psyching themselves up for the hour ahead, "and then they hit it and they go fast."

Sanderson answered: "When writing time has been more precious to me, I produce much more quickly", thinking of "times in my life when I've had to go to school".

Dan Wells, the third host, said he will "underestimate my ability to write in a short space". His example was an hour and a half before he had to leave: "I'll often find a whole chapter comes out the other end in an hour and a half, surprisingly."

The novelist Anthony Trollope, who also worked for the Post Office, kept time by the quarter hour. "It had at this time become my custom,--and it still is my custom, though of late I have become a little lenient to myself,--to write with my watch before me, and to require from myself 250 words every quarter of an hour."

His sessions were three hours long, from 5.30 in the morning, and he spent the start of each one on the book itself: "I always began my task by reading the work of the day before, an operation which would take me half an hour".

His reason: "by reading what he has last written, just before he recommences his task, the writer will catch the tone and spirit of what he is then saying, and will avoid the fault of seeming to be unlike himself."

Write first, and keep the rest out

Mette Ivie Harrison, a guest on a 2013 Writing Excuses episode built on her e-book 21 Reasons You Think You Don't Have Time to Write, tries to put the writing first when she sits down:

"I try to prioritize first as a writer when I sit down, get the chunk of writing I feel like I want to get on the page today, get that done. Then deal with the emails and putting out fires and whatever stuff needs to be done immediately."

"Reversing that has enabled me to like increase my word count enormously on a daily basis."

On waiting for more time later, she allows that it "may, in fact, be true", then: "Most of the time, my experience has been, you're not going to have any more time later."

On the same episode, Tayler describes a setup that travels with him when he writes prose: "It's a little ritual and I create that space". Once the document is open, he does not allow himself one last check of email before starting.

Harrison thought this "may be an advanced skill". Tayler's reply was that a beginning writer who knows it exists can do it too.

Tayler's ritual includes "unfolding the device and setting it up in front of me". Scrin opens in your browser: no installer, no account, nothing to set up.

Tayler's advice for a timer, from a 2010 episode, is about the time spent online, not the writing. Set it for ten minutes of browsing: "after you set that timer three times for 10 minutes, you discover that you are chewing up all of your writing time playing click."

Pick a time when you are not worn out

On that 2010 episode, Sanderson said that when people say they have no time, "what they're really generally meaning is yes, I have time, but I'm so mentally and emotionally exhausted from a demanding job that there's no way I can put anything on the paper." Wells added: "demanding job and demanding family."

Tayler said there are "countless solutions to this", and: "I think all of them center around looking for a time during the day when you are not yet mentally exhausted where you could spend at least 30 minutes writing." The floor he names is thirty minutes, not twenty.

"I've known a lot of people who wrote on their lunch breaks. And on their lunch breaks were able to crank out 800, 900 words. If you can do 900 words a day for a month, there you are, a third of your novel is finished."

The other approach he names: "going to bed at nine, and getting up at five in the morning and writing for couple of hours before the rest of the family gets up."

Wells "worked for years and years as a corporate writer", writing "8 to 9, 10 hours a day", then came home to try to write novels at night. "It was just too much." What he eventually did was "come up with some kind of palate cleanser in the middle".

Then, "when I got back into it a couple of hours later after everyone in the house was asleep, it was much easier and I didn't have that burnout anymore."

Spend some time with the book every day

Rebecca Meacham, for Ploughshares, asked the novelist Dean Bakopoulos how he sticks with a novel over a long stretch. His answer:

"I think you have to spend time with the novel every day. Even if it's only 15-20 minutes. If you leave it alone because you've got a semester to start, or house guests, or the flu, you will lose it and you will start to despair."

Fifteen to twenty minutes is the least he says to give it. His own draft of Summerlong took long days: "I wrote every morning for six hours, then wrote after dinner for a few more".

Asked what one novel teaches about the next: "if you don't finish a draft you will never finish a novel. A few pages a day, that's how books are built."

Write where you already are

In the 1850s, Trollope found he spent "very many hours" in railway carriages. If he meant to "make a profitable business out of my writing, and, at the same time, to do my best for the Post Office", he had to "turn these hours to more account than I could do even by reading."

"I made for myself therefore a little tablet, and found after a few days' exercise that I could write as quickly in a railway-carriage as I could at my desk."

He wrote in pencil, and his wife copied the pages afterwards. "In this way was composed the greater part of Barchester Towers and of the novel which succeeded it, and much also of others subsequent to them."

His one objection was "the appearance of literary ostentation" in front of "four or five fellow-passengers. But I got used to it".

Eliades sets Tapper's airport advice beside Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones: "There is no perfect atmosphere, notebook, pen, or desk, so train yourself to be flexible."

Eliades's own conclusion keeps a limit in view: "While it is difficult to assess or edit a long work in fifteen minute spells, it may be worthwhile for more writers to accept, especially at the beginning, that fifteen minutes of writing in the subway, on the bus, or before dashing off to work is better than waiting for that gift of an hour at our desks to arrive."

If your weeks allow fewer, longer sessions instead, the guide to writing a novel in a month on this site notes that "the same arithmetic still works with fewer, longer sessions instead of more, shorter ones."

The lengths each writer names

WhoWhereLength namedSaid of
May CobbWriter's Digest (2022)"15-20 minute chunks of time"her first novel, written over a year
Jake TapperPloughshares, Maria Eliades (2018)"sometimes in intervals of only fifteen minutes at a time"The Hellfire Club
Kirsty GreenwoodWriter's Digest (2024)"20-minute writing sprints"The Love of My Afterlife, drafted in a summer
Dean BakopoulosPloughshares, Rebecca Meacham (2013)"Even if it's only 15-20 minutes"the least time to give a novel every day
Howard TaylerWriting Excuses 5.8 (2010)"at least 30 minutes"a session found before you are worn out
Dan WellsWriting Excuses, Season 2 Episode 14 (2009)"an hour and a half"a session he expected to get nothing from
Anthony TrollopeAn Autobiography of Anthony Trollope"250 words every quarter of an hour"his own mornings, three hours from 5.30
Brandon SandersonWriting Excuses, Season 2 Episode 14 (2009)"a block of four hours"what he needs to get into the work

Questions

Can you write a novel in 20 minutes a day? May Cobb says she wrote her first novel "in 15-20 minute chunks of time over the course of a year." Maria Eliades reports that Jake Tapper wrote The Hellfire Club sometimes in fifteen-minute intervals, over four years.

How do I get going fast in a short session? Howard Tayler says people who write on their lunch breaks do the warm-up before the break, thinking ahead to the hour of writing while they do other things, "and then they hit it and they go fast."

What should I do first when I sit down? Mette Ivie Harrison tries to write first and deal with email afterwards; reversing the order, she says, increased her daily word count "enormously". Howard Tayler, writing prose, keeps a little setup ritual and no last check of email.

Is a short session worth it if I can't write for long? Dean Bakopoulos says to spend time with the novel every day, "Even if it's only 15-20 minutes", or you will lose it. Brandon Sanderson said in 2009 that he needs a block of four hours, though he writes "much more quickly" when time is more precious.

Where can I fit twenty minutes in? Anthony Trollope wrote most of Barchester Towers in pencil in railway carriages. Jake Tapper's advice, as Maria Eliades quotes it: "Every time you're in an airport or on an airplane, write a little."

Sources