Talked once about April Kihlstrom’s great session in NY called “10-20-30 Minutes to Write.” (The link will take you to her “Book in a Week” page, scroll down to see the particulars of “10-20-30 Minutes to Write.”)
Used her method today when a morning that was supposed to be devoted to writing turned out to be more of a getting my desk cleared off day. And darn it, I looked through everything from NY and still can’t find the email address of the Michigan writer I sat next to lunch one day. She lives less than a mile away from me and we were going to start emailing each other. Damn! I really wanted to follow up on the few addresses I did collect, but found nary a one.
Mainly because everything in the closet came tumbling down when I was on the hunt for an envelope the other day (imagine the headline “Local Housewife Killed When Unpubbed Manuscripts Fall on Head”) it took hours to get my writing room functional again. Got rid of three large bags of books, two purses, a tote bag, a 1000 word crossword puzzle, and various other items I have no room for and am no longer interested in. As a book reviewer, it’s difficult to keep my space neat and down to the modest 1000 favorite books. But I am ruthless!
Anyway, what was going to be three hours of writing time turned into 45 minutes. Deliberated about just not writing until tomorrow, but then decided that I could do a first draft (I’m working on a profile of my Weight Watcher leader for Weight Watcher magazine) and no matter how crappy it was, at least I would have a draft. And I could always fix it.
So I set to work and a mere 15 minutes later, I had a two page first draft. It’s not Shakespeare, but then, neither am I. Point being that Kihlstrom’s method really works.