#283: 15-Minute Writer

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

What could happen if you devoted just 15 minutes a day to your writing? Keep listening, because over the next few minutes, we're going to share some encouragement that, when applied, can actually help you finish writing your book. My name is Shelley Hitz and I'm here with my husband, C.J.

Hey, guys.

And we have been mentoring writers for over over a decade, helping you get your book out of your head onto paper with our book writing formulas so that you can write words that outlive you and publish books that fulfill your calling. And in each of our trainings, we promise to share at least one thing that can help you move forward in your writing. Self publishing and marketing of your books so that the message of your books can impact lives. So today we're going to talk about being a 15 minute writer.

Yeah. And some of you may or may not be familiar with a guy named Anthony Trollope. Now, this was a guy that was one of the most successful novelists in the Victorian era in England. And over the course of 35 years.

Trollope wrote 47 novels. Now, that's not even the most incredible thing. The fact that he wrote the 47 novels is impressive. But he did this all while working a demanding job as a post office inspector.

Now that's impressive.

Absolutely. And his regular practice was committing 15 minutes of every working hour to writing 250 words. And this commitment could produce up to 10 pages of a novel each day. Trollope made the decision to turn off the distractions during those 15 minute segments, only hearing the ticking of his watch. And he did this day in and day out. Now, although this may not be realistic for all of us, and I would say that many of us, if we were to maintain that for the rest of our lives, that would be pretty impressive. But this practice shows what can happen during uninterrupted 15 minute intervals. And when we become intentional about scheduling these 15 minute writing sessions, it can add up over the course of weeks, months and years. So even if we haven't written 250 words, these segments could allow us to organize our thoughts or ideas. Productivity can be defined in numerous ways, and many of us know that just having a direction and placing ourselves.

In front of our writing pads or computers can be half the battle. And in that 15 minutes, we could have a direction that sets us up for a good session of writing tomorrow or the next day.

Yeah. And, you know, inside Christian Book Academy, we'll often have writing challenges. So for the month, we challenge you to just Write at least 15 minutes a day. And for some people, you know, they want to be that consistent writer, 15 minutes a day. And then others choose to be a chunk writer where, where you're writing more of like two and a half hours in a chunk or two hours in a chunk or an hour and a half in a chunk. And so there's many ways to go about this, but what we've heard over and over again from our members inside Christian Book Academy is if they'll just sit down and start for 15 minutes, guess what typically happens? They keep going. And so I've had people say, yeah, have people say, do I have to stop at 15 minutes? I'm like, no, go as long as you want, but at leave commit to 15 minutes if you can at least get started, get the engine going. A lot of times it will keep going, the inspiration will come and you'll see God do amazing things.

And that 15 minutes may be what we would consider a 15 minute warm up. And we've talked about, and we'll talk about that more in depth at other times, but that could set you, set you up to where you do say, wow, that was just the beginning. I think I'll actually set my alarm for another 30.

Yeah. So we just want to challenge you today. You know what if you committed to writing just 15 minutes a day, you know, surely this can be a realistic goal for each of us and could you commit to it? You know, let us know. Either comment below or email us. So supportrainingauthors.com let us know if you will take this challenge. Thousands have taken this challenge inside of our writing week challenge. So we would, you know, challenge, you know, you for a week to do at least 15 minutes a day. And we've gotten testimony after testimony after testimony. If you just take that step of obedience, just take that step of, of, of God inviting you to write with him, it can do amazing things. So. So, C.J. why don't you just pray over us and we'll close with that encouragement.

Yeah. Father, we thank you so much that we have examples like Anthony Trollope, who was productive. He made a lot of use of his time, those 15 minute segments. And day in and day out, we thank you for guys like that. But we ask that you would help us.

Become even more productive with our time. I pray that we would be able to get the most out of our time, our hours, that, that we would find those 15 minute chunks to be able to write and maybe that turns into more. But I pray that you give us inspiration and that we also would be able to have that undistracted time in order to write. And we thank you for calling us to be writers for your glory. And we want to give you the glory and the honor for anything that's produced as a result, whether it's 250 words or 25,000 words. And we just ask this in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen. So I don't know how many words we've written, but C.J. and I together have written over 68 or about 68 books. So we're in this with you. We get it done there. Understand?

And the resistance that comes with it.

Yes. And we are cheering you on. So we will see you next time.

God bless you guys.

Bye Bye.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy, where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom writers.