How to Find Time to Write a Book: Writing Your Memoir in 15 Minutes a Day
If you’ve ever wondered how to find time to write a book, I’d guess you’re picturing a writing retreat where all you do is spend time on your book and talk to other authors. Or maybe it’s a cozy cabin and a whole weekend away from civilization and notifications. (Wouldn’t that be lovely?) The trouble is, that kind of time rarely shows up, so your book keeps waiting.
Here’s what years of writing books and coaching women through theirs have taught me: Most people write their books in small pieces. Fifteen minutes a day is enough to write a memoir, and for many of my writers, it works better than waiting for a big, open block of time.
Why Writing 15 Minutes a Day Works Better Than Waiting for Free Time
Fifteen minutes might not seem like much, but think about how much time you spend scrolling Instagram. (No judgment here!) My phone is set to close Instagram after 15 minutes so I don’t get lost in the hypnotic dopamine hits. If 15 minutes is long enough to scroll, it’s long enough to get some thoughts down.
Writing every day also keeps your story top of mind. Your brain keeps working on your book between sessions, so you’ll find yourself remembering little details in the shower or on the drive home. When that happens and you can’t sit down to write, grab your phone. A quick voice memo, or voice-to-text in a notes app, gets those thoughts out of your head and saves them for your next session.
Stolen minutes here and there add up, especially when combined with your scheduled writing session. At 150 words a session, five days a week, you’ll have about 39,000 words in a year. That’s most of a memoir!
There’s research behind consistent writing, too. In a well-known study from the late 1980s, psychologist Robert Boice followed a small group of university professors for a year. The ones who wrote in brief daily sessions and checked in with someone regularly produced more than nine times as many pages as those who kept waiting for big blocks of free time. It was a small study, so I wouldn’t hold too tightly to the exact number, but writers have been seeing the same pattern in their own lives for decades.
How to Write a Memoir While Working Full Time
I know this one firsthand. When I was rebuilding my business, I also worked full time, 9 to 5 in an office. I took my iPad to work and spent my lunch break working on my business, and most days I found 30 minutes in the morning, too. I even started ghostwriting two books while I still had that full-time job, so I had to make every hour count (and yes, that included some Saturdays).
I’m not saying that’s what you have to do. But it’s worth asking yourself a few honest questions: What is my priority right now? How badly do I want to get this book written? And what am I willing to give up to get it done?
You’d be in wonderful company, too. Toni Morrison wrote her early novels while working full time as an editor and raising two young sons, and she told The Paris Review that she wrote before dawn, before her children woke up and said “Mama.”
Here are a few ways to make those small pockets of time work for you.
Tie your writing time to a habit you already have. Try writing right after your first cup of coffee or during your lunch break. When you write at the same time each day, your brain starts to learn when it’s time to write, and the words come a little faster.
Set a timer. You get to write for 15, 20, or 30 minutes—whatever you decide. The timer helps you focus and keep that promise to yourself. I also put my phone in another room so it can’t tempt me. (A simple egg timer works great, too!)
What to Write When You Only Have 15 Minutes
One question I hear often is, “But what do I write about when I only have a few minutes?” It’s a great question, because the blank page and a blinking cursor are the biggest obstacles to a short writing session. If you spend ten minutes deciding what to write, you only have five left to write it.
My favorite fix is to get your next session ready before you close this one. When I come to the end of a writing session, I make sure my document, or the story I’m going to write about next, is ready and waiting for me. You can jot down one line about what’s next, such as “the morning Dad sold the truck” or “what the kitchen smelled like that summer.” Then tomorrow, you can sit down and start right away. Ernest Hemingway famously did a version of this. He liked to stop each day while he still knew what would happen next, so he could pick right back up the next morning.
Writing prompts work beautifully here, too. A good prompt hands you a single moment to write toward, so you can skip the deciding and go straight to the writing.
Try to focus each session on one small piece, like a single scene or one memory. You build a book one page at a time, and every page counts. (And it’s allowed to be messy.)
How to Build a Daily Writing Habit That Lasts
Life will get in the way sometimes (it always does), so here are four ways to help a daily writing habit hold up.
Track it. A simple checkmark on a calendar is surprisingly motivating. After a week of checkmarks, you won’t want to break your streak. Research supports this one, too. A 2016 review of 138 studies found that people who monitored their progress were more likely to reach their goals, and the effect was even stronger when they physically wrote that progress down.
Give yourself grace on hard days. On a rough day, five minutes counts, and so does one paragraph. Keeping the habit going matters more than any single session. When researchers at University College London studied how habits form, they found it took people an average of 66 days for a new daily behavior to feel automatic, and missing one day here and there didn’t undo their progress. So if you skip a Tuesday, pick your habit back up on Wednesday.
Reread only the last paragraph. Before you start, read just the last few lines you wrote. If you reread everything, the temptation is to start editing, and that switches your brain into editing mode instead of writing mode.
Give yourself a finish line. “Write every day forever” is hard to keep up. “Write every day for two weeks and finish one chapter” is a goal you can actually see the end of.
Start Your Book in 15 Minutes a Day With The First Chapter Challenge
That last idea is exactly why I created The First Chapter Challenge. Before Day 1, the first lesson asks you to choose your 15 minutes and block them on your calendar for the next two weeks, like an appointment you don’t cancel on yourself. Then you’ll get 14 daily lessons, each a mini lesson plus a prompt designed for about 10 to 15 minutes of writing, so you never have to face a blank page or wonder what to work on next. The printable tracker gives your checkmarks a home, and my Line Edit Cheat Sheet walks you through a three-pass polish once your draft is done.
It’s self-paced, so you could start tomorrow morning with your coffee. And the best part? Two weeks from now, you’ll have a complete opening chapter and a daily writing habit you’ve already proven you can keep. Let me know what time of day you choose. I’d love to hear it!
