A Few Reasons Why Writing Just 20 Minutes a Day is Good For You

1. You will have a chronicle of your daily life, if that’s what you choose to write on. Just a sliver of your life, to be sure, but one that later you will enjoy looking back on.
2. You will find after a few days that all that difficulty getting words on the page is getting easier, and after a week or so, you’ll be writing as if that sludgy feeling that once plagued you never even existed. In other words, your writing will have greater fluidity.
3. You will find yourself less perfectionistic about your writing, which is a key to creativity. You have plenty of time to go back and “fix” anything that’s not as you like it, but when you only have 20 minutes to write, you are outrunning that nasty critic that often holds you hostage with ugly words like, “What makes you think YOU have anything to say?” The ability to hold that critic at bay will increase with practice. That’s a good thing.
4. You will find yourself more observant about the world around you. When you know that you have to come up with something to write every day, then you actually start looking around for something to write about. I often take photos in anticipation of my 20 minutes of writing so I have something to refer to when it’s time.
5. You will have the chance to write about things that are important to you but that you never actually say to anyone. For example, I wrote about my wedding ring for 20 minutes one day and my grandmother’s rocking chair in another 20-minute session. I was happy to have a place to articulate how I feel about these things, just for my own enjoyment and satisfaction.
6. You will feel a sense of relief that you’re actually writing if this is something that’s important to you to do. No more beating yourself up with thoughts such as, “I want to write, but just can’t find the time.” When you commit to just 20 minutes a day, you can actually find the time even if it’s in two 10 minute sessions or even four 5 minute sessions.
7. You will find yourself breathing deeper, feeling more relaxed and having a sense of accomplishment just from taking the time to slow down and put words down on the page. This can also be thought of as meditation time when you refocus your priorities and simply allow yourself to pour out your thoughts on the page. This alone would be worth the effort since there is a multitude of research showing the benefits of slowing down and doing something that is calming in your day.
8. You will feel that your life has more balance. By taking that 20 minutes, you are whittling a bit of time out of your day that is solely for you. This goes hand in hand with the meditative quality of this practice. You will soon find that you feel better about life in general and your life in particular.

This list is a reminder to you (and myself) why writing 20 minutes a day is much bigger than simply putting words on a page. It is about claiming a bit of your day just for yourself and thinking of this as a meditation practice as much as a writing process. Then your critic really has nowhere to go with complaints. After all, you can simply say, “This is just me noticing more closely what’s happening in the world around me and inside my head. No room for a critic here. I am just musing.”

---

Visit Len Leatherwood’s blog.

A Little Chat With the Masters at the Tate Modern

In this post, writing coach/teacher Len Leatherwood reflects on some artful lessons she’s learned from masters of their craft.

On our vacation, Ray and I spent the afternoon at the Tate Modern in London.

I go into an art museum with an inquiring mind. I am there to experience the art, but also to learn what I can read about the artist and his/her techniques, point-of-view, historical perspective, etc. Some museums are better at providing this information than others; the Tate Modern is excellent regarding this educational aspect. For example, I wandered into a room where the focus was on the studio of the artist and here are a few examples of what I saw and learned:

Why is this important, you may ask? Because not only do I see an everyday scene from 1915, but I also learn that Bonnard valued painting intimate parts of his life. As a writer, this helps me to see the benefit in writing about the little things in my life, which reflect what is important to me.

Here is another:

Here is Picasso’s studio in 1955. I learned that Picasso created twelve different paintings of this studio over the time he lived there, helping me to see that you can use the same subject matter over and over and view it each time from a different perspective. As a writer, it’s easy to dismiss the idea of repeating a story or a memory because you’ve “already told that one.” Picasso’s repetition of the same material helps me to see that I can learn from looking at a story or memoir piece from different angles to expose other layers of truth.

Here’s one more:

Matisse did this same bronze four times over his lifetime, reflecting his different perspective as he aged. This helps me to understand the value of exploring different parts of my life at different times in my life. What I created at twenty may look very different from what I may create in my sixties. No better, no worse. There is freedom in that realization for me. Sometimes I think, “There’s no reason to rehash that,” which may be true in some cases when the subject feels resolved. However, there are other topics where venturing back down that path may indeed bring fruitful results since time and experience may offer an awareness I previously could not have attained.

These art museum forays are a way for me to commune not just with the art, but also with the artists. To learn from his/her process and to open my heart and mind to guidance that comes from their wisdom. I left the Tate Modern feeling more heartened about my writing than I have felt in a long time. As if I had been given a pep talk by the likes of Bonnard, Picasso and Matisse, only to mention a few.

I am now back in LA and ready to go to work on my writing.

---

Visit Len Leatherwood’s blog.