Writing in the Stolen Moments
By: Bernadette Geyer
Tags: Fiction, Writing, Writing Tips, Storytelling, Productivity

Writing in the Stolen Moments

4 strategies to help you keep writing even in busiest times

Credit: Adobe Stock

Often, you will hear writers complain that they don’t have any time to write when, in fact, they mean they don’t have the perfect confluence of time and solitude to sit and bang out a few hundred words in one sitting. Many times, you’ll see someone post on social media that they just can’t find the time to write anymore, followed by a post in which they talk about all the shows they’ve binge-watched on Netflix.

Seriously? If you have time to binge-watch programs on Netflix or Amazon Prime, you have time to write. And if you don’t write despite having time to binge-watch shows, no amount of justification of your inaction to others will ever help.

If all of this sounds familiar, start by jettisoning one phrase from your lexicon, it is this: “I just can’t find time…” No one “finds” time. Time is not like some loose change we discover fallen behind the pillow on your sofa. We “make” time, or we “steal” time. Or we use the time in a way that may not be optimal, but is time nonetheless.

I myself often feel the temptation to justify my own dry periods by saying things like “Well, I had too much to do this week. I just didn’t have time to go sit in a coffee shop for a whole morning.” I have to repeatedly remind myself that I do not need to wait until I have both time and an idea to sit down and write something. Anything.

The most important thing to remember is to always have your journal with you, or at least a small notepad or a few sheets of notepaper. It helps to be prepared for any periods in which you are forced to sit and wait for any length of time: in your car waiting to pick up your child from sport/music/dance lessons, in line at the post office the week before Christmas, or even in the waiting room at your doctor’s office. Steal those moments for your writing.

The following three strategies are ones that I always have to fall back on. They serve as reminders that even 5, 10, or 20 minutes is enough time to put pen to paper and hone a few writing skills.

1. Practice descriptions

Look around you. What do you notice? Practice noticing the smallest details about people or places around you. Do a character study or portrait. Invent a backstory to the person sitting across from you. What is their life like? How did they start their day? Oh, they have a scar … where did they get that?

Here’s a great example of a description from the novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup:

“Delhi’s Juvenile Home diminished us, but Dharavi’s grim landscape of urban squalor deadens and debases us. Its open drains teem with mosquitoes. Its stinking, excrement-lined communal latrines are full of rats, which make you think less about the smell and more about protecting your backside. Mounds of filthy garbage lie on every corner, from which rag-pickers till manage to find something useful. And at times you have to suck in your breath to squeeze through its narrow, claustrophobic alleys. But for the starving residents of Dharavi, this is home.”

2. Practice similes

Sometimes I like to give my imagination a workout with simple sensory exercises. What sound do you hear? What is making that sound? If you already know the source of a sound, think of all the other things (real and imagined) that could also make that sound. What about smells? What about things you can touch with your eyes closed?

Here’s an example from John Irving’s children’s book, A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound:

“It sounded like a monster with no arms and no legs, but it was trying to move … It was a sound like, in the closet, if one of Mommy’s dresses came alive and it tried to climb down off the hanger … It was a sound like someone pulling the nails out of the floorboards under the bed … It was a sound like a ghost in the attic, dropping the peanuts it had stolen from the kitchen … It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.”

3. Practice rhyming

Look around you or, perhaps, pick up a magazine, open a random book. What’s the first word you see? Write it down. Then write down all the words you can think of that rhyme with the original word. Start with one syllable then work up to two, three, four, or more. This easy exercise will help you to bring forward in your mind words that you do not typically use, so that they will be at-the-ready the next time you are in full-on writing mode.

4. Revise your drafts

Revision is also writing. If you have an article, blog post, essay, short story, or poem that you’ve been working on, print it out and carry it around with you. Use your stolen moments as a chance to deep dive into the revision or editing process. Here are a couple of ideas that closely relate to the old saying, “Show, don’t tell.” This means showing your reader images that help them understand how “sad” a situation is, instead of simply telling them, “It was such a sad situation.”

Examine your verb choices.

When you find yourself using a lot of adverbs to bolster your verbs, this means the verb you chose may be weak. Use your stolen moments to figure out a visual way of showing the way that the verb is being performed. For example:

He walked very slowly — You can strengthen this by saying something like “His feet moved as if they had weights tied to them.”

The car drove quickly down the street — You can strengthen this by saying something like “The car sped down the street.”

Prices rose sharply — You can strengthen this by saying something like “Prices skyrocketed.”

Watch out for abstract nouns and adjectives

Nouns such as “beauty” and “justice” are abstract, as are the adjectives associated with them — “beautiful” and “just.” Readers can’t see beauty or hear justice. What they can see or hear are concrete examples of these things. In your writing, try to avoid abstract nouns in favor of giving your readers examples that will illustrate something that is “just” or something that is “beautiful.”

Another good rule is to avoid reliance on adjectives that require judgement, such as “dark,” “deep,” and “strong.” How dark is dark? Is it as dark as the bottom of a well? Or is it as dark as tar melting under an August sun? How deep is deep? Is it as deep as a thimble? Or is it as deep as the gaping mouth of the Grand Canyon? How strong is strong? Is it as strong as the coffee that’s been left for five hours on the burner? Or is it as strong as the memory of your first kiss?

Not everyone can put their jobs on hold for two weeks to head to a writer's residency. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t take the time to write. Even a brief exercise like one of those listed above has the innate potential to bring forward a line or two that just might be the beginning (or end) to a new story, essay, or poem.