Susan Meier's Ten Minute Solution

Janet here. Most of us struggle with too much to do and not enough time to do it. We’re fortunate to have Susan Meier in Seekerville, talking about her Ten Minute Solution.

Susan is the author of over 30 books for Harlequin and Silhouette and one of Guideposts' Grace Chapel Inn series books The Kindness of Strangers. Her books have been finalists for Reviewers Choice Awards, National Reader's Choice Awards and Cataromance.com Reviewer's Choice Awards.

Susan Meier here! I’ve been a published category romance author for almost twenty years. But the years I’ll bet you’re  the most interested in are the years I worked full time AND wrote a category romance or two a year, raised three kids, was one of eleven siblings, and served as President and on the board of the multi-genre writers group, Pennwriters.

My oldest son suffers from a seizure disorder which landed him in the hospital at least once a year as we regulated his meds during his teen years. My daughter was a cheerleader and gymnastics student – which (by default) made me a cheerleader mom responsible for baking things for bake sales, car pooling and working concession stands at games. (I’d love to know how the cheerleader moms get stuck with the concession stand by the way – when they don’t get the money – but I guess that’s another blog!) And my youngest was the school … well, how does a mother say this nicely…con artist? Spunky could charm the birds from the trees and the principal out of being angry with him with just a smile. Coincidentally, he’s in politics right now. LOL

Anyway, I was fairly busy gal. And the truth is writing was the one activity everybody believed could be “dropped” from my list. It seemed that when somebody came up with something that wasn’t on our already overbooked schedule, he or she would simply say…Just don’t write tonight. And either I gave in and didn’t write that night or I spent an hour explaining that writing might be fun for me but it was also a big part of my income…and even then people didn’t always understand.

Agh!

Undoubtedly many of you are facing that same dilemma right now and I can tell you from experience that you’re not going to change your family, the school or the other cheerleader moms who want you to pull your weight! The only person you can change is you.

So I seriously looked at my schedule and found that I was wasting a lot of time waiting in the car for Sarah as she flipped her way across a gymnasiums on mats, sitting in the dentist’s waiting room while young teeth were being cleaned, standing in line at the grocery store and waiting for doctor’s appointments with Mikie…not to mention waiting while dinner cooked, the washer ran through the spin cycle, and “enduring” a few sitcoms that made me want to barf…but which my kids enjoyed.

When I looked at my life and saw how many places I could “write” if I could figure out ways to write on the fly…or in a room while a television was on…or in small snatches of time that I could carve out of my otherwise overloaded day… I could get a lot of work done. You can probably find some time in your schedule too. You may not have as many doctor’s appointments but you probably have your own blocks of in “somebody’s” office or waiting in the car for your own little superstar!

The real bottom line came down to one simple question…What can you do…seriously what can you do…in ten minutes. And the truth is, if you’re desperate enough, eager enough, hungry enough, passionate enough…determined enough that you are going to live your dreams …there are lots of things you can do!

So, what can you do in ten-minute blocks of time?

You can fine-tune your descriptions.

You can make sure all your chapter endings have hooks.

Beef up unappetizing chapter beginnings.

Correct the grammar of a page or two.

Perfect your sentences.

Double check a passage of dialog.

Compare your kisses, making sure each is unique.

Look for duplicate words in a scene.

None of these things will set the world on fire, but if you focus on a section/segment/chapter or scene or two a day and you find several ten-minute blocks a day, within a very short amount of time you can polish an entire book. One paragraph at a time, one scene at a time, one chapter at a time.

If you don’t have a manuscript to polish, you can write a new paragraph in a ten minute block. The prolific among us can draft an entire page in ten minutes. Most days ten minutes is plenty of time for me to write a page. But even writing only a paragraph in each ten minute block you find, imagine what you could do if you found several ten-minute blocks in your day? If a page a day nets a book in a year, writing a page in every two or three ten-minute block you carve out of a busy day could net you a draft in less than half a year.

You can work on a lot of little things that will make a big difference in your book.

Part of the trick to taking advantage of your ten-minute blocks is being prepared. But that’s nothing to those of us who are juggling busy lives! Most of us have briefcases or folders. We’ve got tablets. We’ve got pens. We’ve got paper clips, and post-its and cute little multi-colored tabs. We simply have to learn to put them to good use. We also need to print off copies of our work and be ready to grab it to take with us when we are on the run.

Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of thinking ahead. Look at your calendar at the beginning of the week and you’ll see what ten-minute segments you’re going to have, then figure out what chapters or scenes you need to print to have available to work on on the run.
Can you get the family involved? Or should you just trick them? Or is it the same thing? LOL
I never really tricked my family, but I did bribe them. “If you let mom alone while she finishes this chapter, she will take you to the park on Saturday…” was a very common line in my home! But, I also quickly learned that if I could cut all the “big” household tasks down to ten-minute tasks and assign each of my kids to small, simple-to-accomplish tasks they were always more willing to help because they didn’t see themselves stranded in the kitchen for their entire evening or Saturday morning.

We all like a sense of accomplishment, and cutting everybody’s tasks into ten-minute increments, and handing out easily accomplished tasks that make children feel a real part of things reaps the two-fold benefit that they actually help and they frequently do more. Do more? Are you serious? Sure. You know yourself that you work better once you’ve got a little momentum. Sometimes all a kid needs is a little boost to get involved. It doesn’t work every time, but sometimes is better than never. LOL

And speaking of momentum, 10-minute tasks really work to get YOU motivated on those days when you feel you just don’t have it in you to write. If I’m having an uninspired day, I assign myself a ten-minute task to get myself involved in my book. Sometimes it works so well that I fall into the work with ease and don’t come up for air until that day’s work is done. Other times, I do the ten-minute task and still don’t feel like working all morning, though I can do another ten-minute task or two.

You’re not going to feel like Nora Roberts every day…I’d pay to feel like Nora Roberts for two days running…LOL. But you can get some halfway decent work done, simply by luring yourself into your work ten-minutes at a time!

So that’s the quick and dirty version of my ten-minute solution workshop…the core.
You have me for the rest of the day to discuss the techniques and to answer questions.
By the way, if you’re interested in a free workshop on analyzing for your target line, sub-genre or publisher, you can read my HOW TO ANALYZE THE BOOKS YOU READ workshop on my website…susanmeier.com

susan meier
susanmeier.com
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