Peru, September 2005 – Back when researching & writing this book was my job.

And there was still lots of resistance.

I spent most of 2013 knowing that I wanted – even needed – to be working on my novel again. I went on two amazing writing retreats and did some great, big-picture thinking about the book. I developed a solid plan for what I wanted to do now, coming back to this project after six years of being away from it.

But in terms of actually working on the writing of it, I was stuck. I have two little kids, a husband who often travels for work, a thriving grantwriting business, a household to run, a meandering house remodel project greedy for attention, and significant needs for exercise in order to maintain a decent waistline and mental health. You know the reasons. We all have them.

When on earth would I (re)write this book? I was mired in fear and resistance, which took the form of a lot of conversations in my head.

Me: I could try to write 1 hour a day.

My head: An hour! Totally impossible!

Me: An hour on Tuesdays and every other Saturday?

My head: Too complicated.

Me: What about 15 minutes a day?

My head: What on earth would you accomplish in 15 minutes a day? Why even bother?

Then I read this blog post by Jenna Avery, this one, and this one. And I thought, “why the fuck not?” And I started writing on the novel for 15 minutes a day. That was in early November. Now it’s three months later, and I’m still going (although I admit, only rarely at 6:30 a.m., since Emry decided that he likes to get up at 6:30 now, and 6:00 just feels like too much to me).

So what can you do in 15 minutes a day?

In three months’ time, you can write 50 pages of a novel, starting over from Word 1.

You can move things forward inch by inch, moment by moment.

You can survive the 15 minutes.

You can squeeze it in, 19 days out of 20.

You can feel relief when you’re done.

You can feel like it’s hanging over you until it’s done.

You can forget about it entirely if you don’t do it in the morning, not remembering until the kids go to bed and the kitchen is a mess and you’re not ready for your morning deadline.

You can do it anyway.

You can skip that day, knowing the next day you absolutely must-have to-will not let get anything in your way.

You can be gentle on yourself.

You can push yourself.

You can do it with a migraine, eyes half-closed against the computer screen glare.

You can use profanity, sparingly, like a dash of cayenne.

You can surprise yourself.

The beauty is in the do-able-ness of it. It’s 15 minutes. Good or bad, ugly or fun. 15 minutes out of the 1,440 we are gifted each day.

There can be a lot of resistance to getting going. Some days I easily spend double that 15 minutes finding other really good things that have to be done that moment. There is fear, self-doubt, the feeling of “why bother?” – all those things that plague us when we try to pursue the big things, get down to the business on the category of “important, not urgent,” that stuff we know we want to get to someday.

But there’s also a tremendous gift in it. Just from putting in those 15 minutes a day, especially when I get to it early in the day, which is always my goal, I get to feel deep satisfaction for the rest of the day. I get to live in a completely different world, and feel its reverberations for the rest of my day, noticing things and appreciating them differently. I get to think I am a novelist and have that make up a part of my identity.

When I look around at the chaos in the house and start feeling bad about myself because the kids’ clothes drawers are a disorganized mess, because I can’t find the bin of Elan’s outgrown 3T clothes that Emry should really be wearing now instead of the 18-24 month stuff I’m still stuffing him into, because the beautiful new wood floors are dirty, because I got impatient and yelled again this morning, because the bathtub hasn’t been cleaned in longer than I’d like to publicly admit – I can think, It’s okay that I’m not the mom who has everything completely together and organized, never loses her patience, and pays attention to everything her kids say and do. I’m the mom who’s writing a novel. I’m up to big stuff. I can let the little stuff slide.