O.C. Writers

By Barbara Neal Varma // 

I credit my father for teaching me the 15 Minutes Game.

Eager to curb my enthusiasm for the long calls I’d have with my gal pals back in high school, Dad would set a kitchen timer for 15 minutes and place it within my view.

When the timer dinged, he said, I could go another round but after that I’d have to hang up, no exceptions—and who could blame him? He was the one footing the phone bill, after all.

Of course, at 17, the thought of having any kind of time limit felt so, well, limiting. Not until years later at a writing workshop did I learn the upside of setting a hard stop. During in-class exercises, the instructor gave us 15 minutes to write without pause, keep our pens and focus on the page. Go!

The goal, of course, was to see how much more productive, creative even, our writing could be when benching our inner editor—because who has time to chase perfection when the clock is counting down?

The first time I tried it, I was surprised to see how many words I’d managed to put down before the instructor called time’s up. There’s something freeing about running wild across the page, scattering words like rose petals as they come to mind, no pesky grammar or punctuation rules to get in the way, at least, not yet.

So was the writing golden? Pulitzer Prize material? Nah. But it had potential. In just 15 minutes, a story foundation had been laid; one I might’ve never thought of had my pesky inner critic had her way.

One nifty variation of the 15 Minutes Game is to write for 45 minutes then take a 15-minute break—actually get up and move around a bit, dance on the table, your choice. Your subconscious will continue to work on your story during the break, sparking ideas to use during the next 45-minute round.

Setting a time limit works well for nonwriting tasks too. When I go grocery shopping, I pause my cart just inside the store’s entrance, start my phone’s stopwatch, then speed through the aisles as if they were an obstacle course.

I imagine the roar of the crowd as I skid around the corners and perform a particularly tricky maneuver in frozen foods to grab the cauliflower pizza stuck in back. A final sprint through produce before dashing over to the checkout line for the win. Can she do it? Yes! A new world record!

But I digress. Point is, it’s become my habit to start each morning’s writing time with a timed exercise, usually the classic 15 but sometimes an ambitious 5 if I’m feeling particularly caffeinated.

Of course, these days, instead of a kitchen timer, I set a Calendar alert to fly on screen that says, “Time’s up, rock star!” in case no one else calls me that during the day.

Try it yourself. Pick a task, any task, writing or otherwise, and see how much you can get done in a short, finite amount of concentrated time. I can’t promise you can change the world in 15 minutes, but you can improve your little corner of it.

Maybe that’s what Dad had in mind all along.

 

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BARBARA NEAL VARMA is a contributing writer to Orange Coast Magazine and has appeared in other notable publications, including The Atlantic. Her easy-humor personal essays have proven popular with readers, one gaining numerous hits on Orange Coast Magazine‘s website. (Hello: Desperately Seeking Donny.) You can learn more at BarbaraNealVarma.com.