10-second review: “Write at least 15 minutes every day, because even if you only get 15 minutes, your mind has to churn the story That keeps it fresh in your creative mind. …. Write a story that you would want to read. Just you. It starts with writing for yourself.” Michael Connelly.
Title: “In the ‘Lab’ with Michael Connelly.” Jeff Ayers. The Writer (October 2009), 20-23.
Comment: The first time I used the 15-minutes-a-day idea, it was in reference to reading. A librarian named Louis Shores, in an essay entitled “How to Find Time to Read,” in a book entitled The Wonderful World of Books, 1962, pointed out that if you read 15 minutes a day at 300 words per minute, which is an average rate of speed, you would read 4,500 words a day, 31,500 words a week, 126,000 words a month and 1,512,00 words a year or 20 books a year. When I shared this technique with students, they would tell me that it was absolutely impossible to stop reading in fifteen minutes, and they would go on and on. I have found the same thing to be true when writing fifteen minutes a day. It gets you started just because you know you can stop in a short period of time. RayS.
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