This morning in my writing workshop at the Wellness Community we began, as we always do, writing a list of pains and pleasures: the most hurtful things that had happened in the past month and then the things that had brought pleasure and happiness. Everyone wrote for five minutes. The five minute time limit for writing is crucial and the whole workshop is set up around it – three hours of five minute writing exercises about different topics and then reading the exercises aloud.

Five minutes is important because it doesn’t allow you to sit around and think, brood, get nervous and then stuck. You’ve got five minutes and that’s it. It’s a micro deadline.

Once you start writing don’t stop, just keep going. (The only “rule”: no stopping.) If you stop to edit or to think, you’ll get hung up on whether it’s “good” or “bad”. You’ll worry about punctuation and grammar, or whether it’s making sense, or what your mother will think if she reads it. None of this matters. You’re jump starting yourself. It’s just an exercise. Athletes stretch, musicians practice, dancers warm up – why shouldn’t writers do exercises?

The deal is you have to start writing whatever pops into your head. There’s no time to think. You have to get out of your own way. If you start writing about something besides the topic given, it doesn’t matter. You can write your grocery list if that’s what’s on your mind. If a resounding blank occurs, that’s okay too. You write about it for five minutes: “I can’t think of a damn thing to write and I feel like an idiot etc.”. Or, as one honest and lovely woman wrote this morning: “I find my self wanting to edit, to write well, so everyone here will like me.”

It’s very liberating for writers to know that there’s always a way out of being blocked. You do a five minute exercise. You get out of your own way. You write about why you can’t write.

I always tell my students that no one can write something meaningful in five minutes so they’re off the hook. But I lie. The fact is that they often write amazing stuff in five minutes. Some people in the Wellness Workshop have been coming for seven years so they’re really, really used to these five minute sprints. And I’ve learned something from them – as in anything, practice is vital, and this includes writing. In five minutes they reach deep down into their inner lives and write their heart’s truth. It’s raw and often the depth and truth even surprises the writer. And that’s one of the reasons we write: to surprise ourselves with our own feelings.

To Do: Time yourself for five minutes and write the pains and pleasures of the past week or month. Keep your pen moving, don’t stop, don’t think. Just write. After five minutes if you want to continue go on. If not, you’ve done all you need to.