Thoughts on Timed Writing

I first learned about “timed writing” in my grade-eleven Writer’s Craft class. The concept is simple: it’s exactly what it sounds like. You set a timer, and then you write, continuously, until the timer goes off.

At the time, I found it mildly confusing that this could be considered challenging. I thought in streams of words, and it was a simple matter to transfer mental sentences to the paper in front of me. Sometimes, I couldn’t write fast enough to catch up with my inner monologue.

Of course, the point wasn’t to challenge us. The teacher promised us she wouldn’t read what we’d written–she’d only confirm that we’d kept writing for the two or three or five minutes she’d set. She encouraged us to put whatever we wanted on the page, no matter how bad it was.

Again, as someone whose primary way of thinking is to write stuff down, working it out with pen or pencil in hand, this felt natural to me. I was used to making nonsensically detailed lists; diagrams criss-crossed with arrows connecting blocks of text and phrases scrawled in margins; and notebooks full of hasty descriptions of my ideas. Doing so without pausing to think might have been a novelty, but it wasn’t so far off from my ordinary practice.

I kept on timed writing for the last few years of high school and first several of university. I used it to fill the rough-work “page a day” other writing teachers requested of us and the journals we had to write for some acting classes. I didn’t think much of it–it was something I did in order to “be a writer,” the same way that, for a few years, I dutifully practiced breath and vocal exercises each morning to be a better actor.* If you’d asked me how it helped, I would have shrugged and made some noises about enjoying it.

Which I did. And do.

But after a while, daily timed writing became tedious. About seven or eight years ago, I stopped altogether. After all, it didn’t seem to make much difference in my life. It felt more like busywork. And other things with claims on my time were ramping up: I started dating my now-husband. I just finished my PhD and started my first career-type job. I was getting more into theatre, sports, working out, and other activities.

Besides, I had plenty of other, non-timed writing I wanted to complete. I wanted to keep working on my manuscripts and write entries for this blog. I was writing snail-mail letters to friends. I had lots of opportunities to put words on paper. Which was another thing–writing longhand in notebooks and on tablets was starting to be physically difficult. “Timed typing” just didn’t have the same ring to it.

I started timed writing again, off and on, earlier this year. Why? Because I realized that my “blog” time or “writing” time had started to turn into me staring at the screen, waiting for ideas that never showed up. My brain felt empty.

Could timed writing help? It didn’t seem likely–how could more writing re-fill my ideas? That would be like spinning gold out of straw. Still, it couldn’t hurt. At the very least, I’d spend five minutes finding different ways to scrawl “I can’t think of anything” until my timer ran out.

But when I put pen to paper and decided to stop caring what came out, that mountain of dross eventually started to sport glittering specks. My brain wasn’t empty–it was just clogged. Not with big feelings that I knew how to write about, but the everyday detritus of life. Little problems I didn’t know how to solve, burned-out areas I’d been pushing too hard, tired parts that needed to be taken for a joyride to shake off the dullness of the everyday.

There are a lot of mechanical analogies I could use here–flushing the system, greasing the gears, charging the battery–and different bouts of timed writing feel closer to different processes. Timed writing is helpful in part because it’s so flexible. Do I need to get a thought or feeling or rant out of my head? No problem. Do I need the motivation to work through a knotty problem without aiming for a solution? Sure thing! Do I just need the emotional pleasure of writing something longhand? Yup, that’ll do.

Timed writing isn’t a magical fix for any problem, but as writing exercises go, it comes the closest for me. Even if I write and write and write and nothing good comes out of it, I still feel accomplished–hey, I did my timed writing until the timer went off, and that was my only goal.

I still struggle with the physical difficulty of timed writing. The older I get, the more writing with a pen on paper hurts my bad arm/hand, and the sooner the pain starts to settle in. But five-minute rounds, subbed in on slow writing days when I can’t seem to get “real” words out on my works-in-progress, are doable.

That’s why I’m making an effort to slot timed writing back into my daily rotation. I won’t force myself to write it if I have other writing I want to tackle, but if I’m stuck or unmotivated or staring at my screen, it’s a relief to know that I have the remedy in my back pocket. And all I need is a pen, some paper, and a clock.

* You better believe my student dorm neighbours thought I was up to some very different things, especially with the breath exercises!