Comments on: The magic of 5 minutes

By: Juliann

Juliann — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 19:03:00 +0000

I was greatly in need of a place to start…and along came your email. I’m on day 5 of “5 minutes,” and I’m hooked. I do it first thing, even though I’m not a morning person, and that’s part of the charm. It’s a new habit at a new time. After about 3 or 4 days, I found I started to know what I wanted to say the next day, and now find I look forward to it. You have talked about the importance of not editing while you write. This is the first time I’ve been able to do that. Thanks Daphne!

By: Daphne Gray-Grant

Daphne Gray-Grant — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 15:37:00 +0000

In reply to Kelly Beischel. Congratulations, Kelly. You've not only beaten writer's block; you've squashed it like a tiny, annoying bug!

By: Kelly Beischel

Kelly Beischel — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 13:34:00 +0000

Being on the tenure track with writer’s block is a scary place to be. With Daphne’s prompting, I tried this technique 1 year ago. Since then, I’ve written and published 2 manuscripts and working on my third, have been asked to be a reviewer for few great journals, have written 4 abstracts that were accepted for presentation, wrote one successful grant proposal, created a website for my new business, and stared blogging. I kid you not!! Thank you Daphne for all of your great advice!

By: Daphne Gray-Grant

Daphne Gray-Grant — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 15:15:00 +0000

In reply to Kathy Widenhouse. I think 5 minutes works for practically everything!

By: Kathy Widenhouse

Kathy Widenhouse — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 13:43:00 +0000

You can also apply the 5-minute rule to working on a certain project — say an article. If you work on it just 5 minutes a day, you’ll accumulate 35 minutes a week, which translates into 2 to 21/2 hours a month. At that point the article will be done.

By: Daphne Gray-Grant

Daphne Gray-Grant — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:52:00 +0000

In reply to Dives. 500 words a day also works. Coincidentally, that's my daily goal for writing my next book (although only five days per week.)

By: Daphne Gray-Grant

Daphne Gray-Grant — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:51:00 +0000

In reply to Chris Brady. I can't write long-hand, Chris. Am not sure whether this was the result of damage to my wrists from years in the newspaper business or from one of my strokes but I just cannot write legibly. But if your question is whether writing by hand should "count" as 5 minutes of writing, my answer is a definite yes!

By: Daphne Gray-Grant

Daphne Gray-Grant — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:49:00 +0000

In reply to Rachel Lom. Good tricks, Rachel. One other one I like to suggest is to write your text in the body of an email. Somehow, most of us have no difficulty writing emails. If you can convince your brain that that's what you need to do, suddenly the writing becomes much easier!

By: Daphne Gray-Grant

Daphne Gray-Grant — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:48:00 +0000

In reply to atozwriter. Yes, surprisingly, 15 minutes can be way too much. Especially if you're doing it every day.

By: Daphne Gray-Grant

Daphne Gray-Grant — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:48:00 +0000

In reply to Murl Tucker. Works for exercise, too!