5 Minute Writing Session: Bursting Through the Silence
“Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.”
―Isak Dinesen
This is what 5 minute writing sessions allow us to do.
Dear writers, I have an idea for you who may be finding it hard to know what to write about, or are experiencing creative avoidance, or feeling like you have ‘nothing to say’.
5 minute writing sessions. I do them every day. It is the only fail proof way for my fingers to outrun my inner critic. There is no time to worry about an ‘idea’, to obsess, or stew, or be hard on myself.
Writing for very small bursts of time, writing FAST, is the surest (and often only) way to burst through silence… It is to be done sometime (anytime) in the day. And weirdly, it IS often the very best way to uncover a story or poem.
Great flash fiction has little to do with plot, or idea. It is about an epiphany, a spark, it involves a moment of emotional epiphany that is often connected with associative logic or dream logic. Flash fiction is ALL about discovery. The 5 minute writing experience is the way in..
Irving Howe said it this way: “.. a moment rendered in its wink of immediacy.”
However you want to say it. flash fiction is a creation that reveals the truth of a situation in just a few words..
How do we find these strange and marvellous stories? We cannot find them by thinking them through. But when we tap into our unconscious and just write, and write fast, we are no longer interfering with our own writing process.
Flashes are like wild animals and they live inside our lives.. and we can often only let them come out by writing fast and opening our hearts to the moment.
Timed writing is to access raw material that comes from the unconscious, from the heart, from the spirit. It can all be edited/revised/polished later but the challenge will be to maintain the raw energy from the original piece. It comes from the part of the brain we can’t access by sitting around trying to be profound. So many stories are living in our tired brains and our job is to free them.
As a place to start, I suggest trying any one of the prompts I have sent from my prompt newsletter. If you don’t know about the Pokrass Prompts newsletter, or would like to try it out, I hope you will.. My aim is to offer writers some kind of concept prompt 4 times per week and often with a photographic image because some of us work better with a visual starting point. My prompts are ideal to use as timed exercises.
For today, let’s say the prompt is this: Write a story about trying to break a habit. Set a timer for 5 minutes. See if you can assign yourself 5 random words, or use the words I have assigned. Words such as nose, lint, soda, dream, fold. Again, your job is to fold the random words in when you need them (the minute you feel stuck) and not to worry about how you will use them. They are mainly there to use as a stepping stone for when you may feel stopped. Your eye will grab one of those words and all of the sudden, you have a new way in..
When you do a 5 minute fast-write, give yourself a simple concept, object, random photograph, a phrase, or even a list of random words to start with.
It is very important not to think or plan. Take a few deep breaths before you begin. You may benefit from putting on jazz or classical music. (This helps to take me somewhere else). Sometimes I turn off the lights or write with my eyes closed.
Do not set the timer for longer than 5 minutes. If you want to keep writing about the same story, set the time for another 5 minutes, and then another 5.
Or if you would like to spend 30 minutes writing, try 6 5-minute timed exercises back to back, using the same concept or random words. You can write 6 linked pieces, or expand on the first, or write 6 entirely new stories.
I hope you enjoy this timed writing challenge today. As you’re only asking for a 5 minute time expenditure, it is something you can do every day, even as the Xmas season is upon us!