by Bethany Maines
As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, this year is all about
trying new things for me. From submitting to contests and magazines to trying
different kinds of writing I’m attempting to push myself into growth. I truly
want to understand not just what makes good writing, but how to construct a
story. One of the things I’ve discovered is that forcing boundaries onto a work
can actually improve the work itself.
From outlawing specific words (swear words, oh how I miss you!) in some
pieces to declaring that certain elements must be included (there has to be a
dog, OK?) by working against/with a constraint it forces creativity. But one
boundary that I consistently seem to be rubbing up against these days is time—I
don’t have enough. Particularly since the birth of my daughter, the effort to
carve out extended periods of time to be creative is monumental.
I have managed in some cases to do this by ignoring other
areas of my life (Dishes? What dirty dishes?) or through the understanding of
my husband who swoops in and carts our kid off while I’m furiously typing up
some scene or another. But on many days,
there is no “vast, unbroken slab of time.” Which is why I found this article
about What You Can Achieve in 15-Minute Bursts of Creativity to be an interesting articulation about the approach
I’ve developed. Working on a project in smaller chunks does allow the project
to always stay fresh in my mind and churning away in my subconscious. It also
forces me to stop waiting for the perfect time to think or do something. I had
not realized that the “perfect time” was such an illusion or that I clung to
the illusion so much until I switched to a “do it now” approach. The
accumulation of tiny chunks of time allows for a productivity that would have
seemed impossible to me before the process was forced on me. This bit by bit
approach does work. It may be a constraint I didn’t want, but like many of the
other boundaries, it has forced me to come up with creative solutions that I
might not have otherwise discovered.
So if you’re out there despairing of finding the few hours
you want to do something – don’t give up.
Take your fifteen minutes and do the thing (whatever the thing is) now.
It doesn’t have to be perfect. You can undo half of it tomorrow if you like,
but it’s still more than you had before.
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Check out the most recent accumulation of fifteen minutes. (Cover reveal coming in September!!)
The Second Shot:A drunken mistake in college cost US Marshall Maxwell Ames the love of Dominique
Deveraux. Six years later, he’s determined to fix the slip-up, but there’s just one tiny problem – someone wants the Deveraux family dead. Now Max must make sure that the only one getting a second shot at Dominique is him.Join my mailing list to be alerted when additional platforms become available or pre-order now on Apple
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