A Writer Writes Every Day

A Writing exercise for would-be writers.

Image created by the author

I am a beginner writer — an aspiring fiction writer, to be specific.

At age 37, I consider myself a “late-bloomer writer.”

And like anyone learning a new skill, regardless of age, I’m gathering every resource I can to improve my craft. This is especially important as English is not my first language.

One of those resources is books. Among all the books I’ve bought and borrowed on writing, one that’s keeping me on track to write daily is “The Five-Minute Writer: Exercise and Inspiration in Creative Writing in Five Minutes a Day” by Margret Geraghty.

Though I’m not far into the book, it’s already been instrumental in keeping the mighty temptations of procrastination at bay.

Image taken from Amazon media

If you’re reading this, I assume that, like me, you’re at the infancy stage of your writing journey. I’m writing this in hopes that I could contribute in some way by sharing what’s working for me, and it might as well work for you, too. I plan to share the writing exercises in the book, share my own output from it, and encourage you to do the same and follow along.

Before we get to the exercise, though, I want to briefly touch upon its significance, according to Margret Geraghty.

In the book, she reiterates that writing every day trains our minds to produce something from nothing. After all, that’s what a writer is, right?:

A writer writes daily. One sentence at a time.

Indeed, big things comprise small things, assembled one at a time — like how Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel — one stroke at a time.

In addition, she mentioned the two literary giants, Stephen King and Raymond Carver, swear by this writing process:

Raymond Carver said, “For several days I’d been going around with this sentence in my head:

‘He was running the vacuum cleaner when the phone rang.’

I knew a story was there and that it wanted telling … I made the story just as I’d made the poem; one line and then the next, and the next.

Pretty soon I could see a story, and I knew it was my story, the one I’d been wanting to write.”

Stephen King shares a similar sentiment. In the preface to his uncut version of The Stand, clocking in at over 1,000 pages, he writes:

“When asked, ‘How do I write?’ I invariably answer,

‘One word at a time,’ and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is.

It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time. But I’ve read that you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.”

The Writing Exercise:

For this exercise, our task is simple: write a sentence in one minute.

Many aspiring writers claim they don’t have time to write (I was once in that camp). According to the author, to combat that, here’s the solution:

Write one sentence for just one minute (surely everyone can spare that). That’s it. The book provides many prompts to get the wheels turning, but I’m sure you don’t need them — there are countless things to write about, and I’m sure you already have sentences forming in your mind as you read this.

With that said, here’s mine:

“Writing a sentence about anything at all turned out to be far more challenging than I initially imagined.”

If you’ve made it this far, I’m curious to see your one-minute, one-sentence creation. Leave it in the comments. I’d love to see what my fellow newbies, or even seasoned writers, came up with while reading this. It’s probably something that needed to be written.

So . . . got a minute? Do the exercise and let me hear from you! 😉