OK, I’ll admit it, the title may be a tad misleading. Unless you have a time machine it is highly unlikely that you will write a book in five minutes. However, you can write it in multiples of five minutes. And that’s the key, you just need a lot of them.

It isn’t easy to find the time to write with all the other things you have going on in your day. You may be a stay-at-home mum or dad and have children to juggle or you may have a full-time job and you would like to give it all up to be a writer. Or you might have a full-time job and have children, the possibilities are endless but sadly, time is not.

You have to force yourself to find the time if you are serious about writing and it won’t be easy to do. Some things will have to slip and others will take a back seat.

However, if you can get yourself in to the habit of writing in bursts of 5 minutes, you’ll find them appearing all over the place. If you have your phone on you at all times, or whatever it is you choose to write on, then when you spot a few minutes of clear time, get going.

I have championed having a good planning structure for a while and when you are only able to write in short bursts I really find it helps. You don’t waste the time deciding what to write, you can just get down and do it.

Today’s 5 minute task

Write a book (it’s OK, I’m kidding!). Just make time for 5 minutes writing some of your book. If you can write for longer, great.

If not, maybe you can squeeze another 5 minutes in later. It will all add up. In 5 minutes you should be able to manage 100 words, maybe 200 if you are lucky. 300 will give you a paragraph, 15 paragraphs and you have a chapter. 20 chapters and you have (quite a long) book. That comes to roughly 90,000 words and first novels are often in the 60 – 80,000 range. Try not to be overwhelmed, keep adding to the 5 minutes and it won’t be long before you have a first draft.