Writing Every Day

"But that day's not today..."-Missing Time, Here We Are

So I'm sure you've all heard that you should write every day if you want to be a writer. I sign on to that philosophy whole-heartedly. I've only managed to do it once, for a summer, but I progressed more as a writer during that summer than I think I ever have in one short period like that.

The trouble, of course, is finding time to do it. When you work from the time you wake up until the time you go to sleep (oh college, let me count the ways I love thee...), when do you find time to write?

The solution came to me today as I was reading some poetry and pondering whether to put it down and pick up my PSP for a few minutes to play another level of Crisis Core.

First some background on the game---the way it's designed, you can do optional sidequests that take literally between 3-5 minutes to get through. This is great for someone like me, who needs to take brief breaks from studying every once in awhile and do something a little more enjoyable. I can spend a little bit of time playing, and then get back to work, and overall I'm much more happy and productive.

So how does this apply to finding time to write?

Find ways to write that only take 3-5 minutes. For me, I think that's poetry. I can scramble off a short poem in 10-15 minutes. It might not be any good, and it probably won't have anything to do with whatever fiction project I'm working on at the time, but for that 10-15 minutes my mind will at least be engaged in writing.

For you it might be something else---vignettes, a scene, character sketches, whatever it is that both moves you and doesn't take much time, but I'm willing to bet there's something, and finding and taking advantage of it can only help you in the end.