Last month, I decided to do Camp NaNoWriMo. Spoiler alert: I set a goal of 50,000 words, and ultimately, I hit it. I wrote only Monday through Friday and took a few days off, too. That means I averaged 3,000 words a day on each writing day. I aim to do the same thing this month, while I wrap up writing Paragon of Water. At a minimum of 3,000 words a day, it’ll take me about 16 days to finish the rest of this fantasy book.

There was a time in my life where I thought it was impossible to write that much. Now, it still feels like too little, but as we creep closer to summer break, I try to remind myself that it’s a perfectly reasonable amount of writing for someone in my current life situation… and that I’ll probably get less done across the summer months.

When you’re raising kids, finding the time to write can be one of life’s biggest challenges. One of the biggest things I’ve done to make it more achievable has been learning to work in bits and pieces. This has been a long process for me, and training myself to be able to work this way has been rough. But my books are getting done, five minutes at a time.

One of the ways I keep myself going with writing is using a day planner. At the bottom of each daily page for the days I intend to write, I put a section to track my writing, split into 3 columns. Right now, each represents a session, and most of those sessions happen in the morning, during school hours. But across the summer, they’ll represent morning, afternoon, and evening.

Each number on the grid represents five minutes where I sat down with my laptop, opened my book document, and set a timer. That’s it. Five minutes at a time, in between chores and the rest of everything life has to throw at me. When my time’s up, I write down how many words I wrote in that 5 minute period, then move on with my day.

If I can claim just 5 minutes for myself out of every hour through the day, I can consistently hit my 3k daily word goal. And if I can only get 5 minutes every other hour, that’s still 1,500 a day and nothing to sneeze at.

There are a few things I did to make this easier. One, I became a solid outliner. Not only do I have an overarching outline for each book, but lately, I do mini outlines for each chapter using index cards. I break each important part of a chapter down into bullet points on my cards, but I only make up two or three in advance, so I can change things as needed if I find something on my outline isn’t working well. Each bullet point on a card is followed by how many words I estimate will be necessary to achieve that piece of the story, so I know how many 5-minute sessions it’ll take. And then I carry my index card in my pocket or stuff it behind the case on my phone, so even if I can’t get to my laptop, I have my immediate outline handy so I can tap out some words in my phone’s notes app. I’m an iPhone/Mac user, so it’ll sync automatically and I can easily copy/paste my work to my book document later.

Having a whole hour to think over what happens next means when I sit down, the words tend to come more easily, and sometimes it gives me extra witty one-liners because I’ve had all day to think them up, so it seems to be working well. I wrote Paragon of Fire this way, too, and that’s the first book I’ve ever written that succeeded in making my husband laugh out loud.

All this means I have to spend a little time on the weekends figuring out what’ll go on my next few index cards, as well as checking my main outline document to make sure I’m heading where I need to go, but it’s made a big difference in how fast I can finish books.

Just five minutes at a time.

I’ve seen a graphic floating around recently. Maybe you’ve seen it, too. It talks about how it’s okay to take a step back from creating to do other things; you’re still valid as a creator if you take a break.

That’s probably something we should discuss more: the validity of the writer who doesn’t write, or the artist who doesn’t make art. I’m sure there are lots of things to be said about society and the expectation to be productive, but that’s not really where my thoughts went, so it’s not what I’m going to discuss today. Instead, I’d like to focus on a part that’s often overlooked: the need to not create.

My friend Megan shared a blog post last week about when you should write every day and when you should not. It was interesting to see her talk about it, because it was already on my mind when the post went up. ‘Cause you see, writing is hard, but sometimes not writing is harder… especially when you’ve already established the habit of writing daily.

The more I write, the faster I write, but it also means my high word counts are followed by deep crashes where I feel like I have no words in me at all. It’s like putting a kink in a garden hose. The water–the words–come out high-pressured when it’s unkinked, and there’s a deluge for a moment. Then the flow returns to normal, and then, sometimes, it ends up kinked again and the flow stops.

One of the hardest things I’ve had to start adjusting to is that it’s okay to work in spurts. Slow and steady is fine, but so is stopping to refill the well. Except my words aren’t always like a well. A well refills slowly, a trickle of water that seeps in through the ground until the level is back to where it was. Often, my productivity is more like a bird feeder. I’ll have a few days where the birds show up and peck a bit, maybe flutter and frolic a little, then go on their way. These are normal writing sessions. Standard production days. Then we have the days where a squirrel gets into the feeder, knocks the lid off, and sends the feeder swinging like crazy, spraying birdseed out in every direction. Often, this results in weird sprouts in the yard. But it also results in a feeder that’s empty after a moment of wild productivity, and it stays that way until I go out there to make a conscious, deliberate effort to refill it.

But what happens when I’m out there, tidying up and refilling the feeder? Not writing, that’s for sure. I can’t write until the feeder’s full again, because there are no words until I’m done.

Changing to block scheduling has helped this a lot. It gives me spells where I don’t need words, where I can take my time getting out there to refill my feeder and wait for my birds to come back. But it also means long gaps between writing sessions, and sometimes I feel bad for not making steady progress.

Does it matter? Not really, as long as the work gets done. We don’t always have what we need to refill our mental bird feeders with words. Maybe the store was out. Maybe we couldn’t afford it at the time. Maybe we just forgot, or the weather has been too bad to get it done.

The important takeaway here isn’t that the feeder is empty, though. It’s that it’s there. And whether or not it’s got seeds in it, its purpose is never changed. It never stops being a bird feeder, just like the writer who’s out of words doesn’t stop being a writer. Still there. Still valid. Still existing in just exactly the way it was meant to exist. It’s just empty for a bit, that’s all.

Refill when you’re ready. You’re still a bird feeder when you do.