THE FIFTEEN-MINUTE NOVEL by Max Jason Peterson

My McIntosh produced its first tiny apple.

Time is always the issue, isn't it? I'm constantly scrambling for time for all the things I want and need to do. So often I've despaired over ever being able to finish another novel. I'll stress about the amount of time required so much that after the first few sessions on a new project, I may even give up. After all, there’s so much else I need to do right now, or want to accomplish in my life.

With attention fractured and pulled in different directions, it can be hard to focus, even for blocks of time as short as twenty-five minutes as part of the oft-recommended (and justly so: it does work) Pomodoro Technique. 

But what if you don’t have twenty-five minutes to spare? What if you find even that amount of time daunting as you stare at the blank screen or page, when you’re not sure where the plot or characters are going? What if, instead of writing, you just spin your wheels about all the sacrifices needed to make time to finish that novel?

My suggestion: try something even smaller.

It may sound counterproductive. How could one possibly get anywhere by working on a novel for only fifteen minutes, or even ten?

Yet—ten minutes might be exactly what we have, at the end of the day, before falling asleep. Fifteen minutes might be available while waiting in a parking lot, on hold for customer service, or even standing in line.

For years now, I’ve been leading micro writing workshops for Hampton Public Library as Adele Gardner. These are free, one-hour sessions via Zoom. (Adele’s Writers Café; ages 18+, free, online only, registration required, which has been through Hampton Public Library’s Eventbrite, but that might change due to changes in how Eventbrite works. I typically lead several in spring and several more in fall. You can also hear about these via the Gardner Castle listserv, where I post news about my writing and art.)

For these sessions, I devise writing prompts, and then all the participants create very short pieces of fiction or poetry during a set period of time. In between prompts, those who wish may share their creations with the group. Depending on participation, we usually cover three or four prompts per session.

After much experimentation, it seemed to work best for everyone to write in ten-minute blocks. Some people are finished earlier; many are still in the middle of writing; but it’s a comfortable length of time, permitting enough space to quickly come up with an idea and create something that captures it without having too much time to overthink things. These are necessarily rough drafts, made with the intention of coming back later to add more and/or polish the work. But people have written some amazing and beautiful things at these sessions.

The length of time seems perfect for the “micro” works we’re striving for: though we’re not counting words or lines, and often run over, the aim is to make poems/flash pieces of 20 lines/200 words or less. The timer set for ten minutes lets the brain set to work quickly, on a sprint. There’s no time for the lengthier ruminations one might fall into during twenty-five minutes. One must simply get right to work. Find the first idea that catches your fancy and go!

Yes, a good poem can take a long time to finish. I recently spent over thirteen hours writing and rewriting a longer poem (over 100 lines). But often, for me, poems and short stories have seemed like a more achievable goal, because of the time involved. However, I’ve always dreamed of writing book-length fiction. So far, I have one mystery novel written but not published; but that often happens with first novels, so I need to finish the next one, and the next. However, that first one took ten years to complete! I’ve been finding it hard to even start on the next, since I don’t want to devote that amount of time. So I’ve been stymied.

Then I wondered—how long would it really take, if I approached it the way I do in my own workshops?

Since this is a novel we’re talking about, I decided to experiment and see what would happen if I tried fifteen-minute blocks.

When writing by myself, I do get distracted—a lot—so I decided to track how long I’d been working when the first urge to check my DMs or mow the lawn struck. It’s often about seven to ten minutes into a new writing session. Perhaps it takes that long for my anxieties about time to really kick in. But if I’m only aiming to write for fifteen minutes—and I check the timer and find I have eight minutes left, or only five—I can keep going for that amount.

Try it! Set a timer for fifteen minutes. Tell yourself, “It’s only fifteen minutes.” It’s just the length of a break at work, on which you can walk outside with a notebook or your phone (do some voice typing in a note or send yourself a text or email). In fact—if you’re in the middle of a marathon yard-work session, as I was last night—you will probably find a little break in the middle to be really helpful!

I’ve come up with some really interesting new angles on my characters and plot during those fifteen minutes—especially when I had no idea what I was going to write when I sat down.

Fifteen minutes can also keep you from getting trapped in a brainstorming spiral. Or it can keep a scene short, if it turns out to be something you want to experiment with but aren’t sure yet that you want it in the book.

Typically, I can write anywhere from 250-500 words in a fifteen-minute session. Most often lately, it’s at least 350+ words. Your mileage here may vary, and that’s perfectly okay. Remember, it’s only fifteen minutes. (And you’ll probably get more words per session once you start doing it every day.) Note: Your average word count per hour won’t apply here. I write a lot more in four separate fifteen-minute sprints than I do in one solid, unbroken hour. I think our brains gear up for a short sprint and we get the words out there a lot faster.

I did the math. For a fantasy novel, I’d want my first draft to be about 90,000 words before I get in there and start rewriting and editing. Even if I only wrote fifteen minutes each day, and even if I only did an average of 250 words per session, I’d be done with the amount of rough draft I need in less than a year.

When I look at it in terms of fifteen minutes a day…it doesn’t seem like such a huge sacrifice, either. I’m not really taking anything away from my family or other commitments. It’s a between-time. As long as I take my writing device or tools with me, I can make art anywhere I happen to be. For fifteen minutes, or even five.

I do try to get in at least two fifteen-minute sessions per day—one in the morning before work; one at night before bed. That way I’ll have half the year to make my draft, and half the year to revise.

Though I do also write in longer sessions when I can, I actually find I’m coming up with some of my best ideas when I sprint this way! It’s even allowing me to explore writing scenes from the points of view of side characters. Whether or not these scenes make it into the book, it’s a helpful way to explore and learn more about their character and motivations.

Of course—you’ll want to put in more time when you can. There’s research, for instance. And for at least some of the editing sessions, you’re going to want more time to consider things beyond the sentence currently in front of you. But as a start, as a means to create the draft needed to be able to start editing in the first place—this really seems to be working for me.

I hope it helps you as well.

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For more information about Max Jason Peterson (they/them), visit maxjasonpeterson.wordpress.com or the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram links through gardnercastle.com. Here’s a recent interview as Adele, but the author goes by Max in daily life.