The Power of Writing in the Margins: How to Write in 10 Minutes a Day
We’ve talked about the necessity of the sacred pause and six ways to enjoy liminal space in your writing life. Now we’re talking about re-entry. What happens when you emerge from a season marked by less writing and are ready to forge ahead? What are the micro-shifts you can make to ensure you see progress over the long-term?
Writing in the Margins
Writing in the margins is the idea that we make progress not by sitting down for three hours at our desk every day, but in the margins of our life. The ten minutes before bed, the twenty minutes before picking up our kids from school, on airplanes, on a walk with a notebook we keep in our pocket, or while waiting for an appointment.
But writing in the margins isn’t just the actual time captured, it’s also the belief that these micro-moments add up to something in the end. I’ve seen this work repeatedly in my own life, and I’ve heard from so many readers that embracing margins is not only doable, but effective. This mindset keeps them moving forward when it seems like there’s always something pulling attention from the work at hand.
How to Prioritize Your Writing (and Reading) Practice
Here are some things I did in a recent season of liminal space, and when I was craving a desire to reconnect to my inner writer.
Find some books from a time in your life when you were a younger writer. High school or college might be a great period to work with, but it really doesn’t matter. The idea is to pluck out a book or two or three that you read during a time that writing felt really accessible and embodied, and read them, and see how you feel. It’s a great way to tap into what might feel like a former life you had, and might bring up a lot of nostalgia too.
In the reading camp, I not only identified some books to connect with, but focused on actually reading more. A lot of times my reading life looks like getting all tucked into bed and then falling asleep after just ten minutes. The reality is, if I want to get through more books, I need to read more during the day when I’m more alert. So I’ve tried two micro-shifts here. The first is in the morning. After my routine, I head into my office to get on the computer, but instead of logging in, I decided to try sitting in my chair for 10-15 minutes to read, and I’ve really liked that. I’ve also tried it at other times during the day, or when I want a break, just trying to be more conscious of taking a few minutes to read instead of shop online or something, and I’ve made a lot more progress in books so far. All of us will have different schedules but my encouragement here is to find margins of time (10-15 min) rather than trying to read for an hour, say, and see how that works for you.
The 10-15 minute container can also work wonders for writing. Instead of thinking about sitting down for an hour or two, find a smaller margin in your day. Write by hand in a notebook while you wait for your kid’s practice to finish. Bring your laptop to another room and set a timer for 20 minutes. That’s it. When you do this, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to discover how much progress you’ve made after a few weeks have gone by.
Circling back to the first suggestion about reading a book from a former time in your writing life, another suggestion is gathering items that might represent that season for you. If you’ve read Wild Words, you might remember that I talk about this hot pink spiral bound notebook I had when I was a kid. I think we all have those objects from our past that we might remember. Maybe it’s a particular chair you sat in. A pen, a notebook. I love the idea of going out and getting a new notebook that evokes the essence of the original, sort of as a nod to that younger version of yourself, and seeing what might spark from that.
Just remember that big shifts are harder to achieve and make sustainable long-term, so pick one, maybe two things to start with and see what happens when you start prioritizing your writing again with both your energy AND your time. There’s that phrase, something like “energy goes where energy flows”—and the point is, where we put our attention really makes a difference.
