Your First Five Minutes on the Page
Okay. You've got your cheap notebook. Maybe it's still got that Macey's sticker half peeled off the cover.
So what do you actually do with it.
That's what today's about. Not theory. Just the first five minutes, because I think that's where most people quit before they even start. They sit down, pen in hand, and the blank page just stares back at them like it's judging their life choices. It's not. It's paper. But it feels that way, doesn't it.
Here's what I want you to do instead of staring.
Step one: write the date and one true sentence
Not a good sentence. Not a smart one. Just true.
"I'm tired." "I don't know why I'm doing this." "The dog woke me up at 5." Whatever's actually sitting in your head, that's your first sentence. You are not writing the opening line of a novel. You are just telling the page what's going on.
I've started entries with "I have nothing to say" more times than I can count. Usually by the third line I did have something to say. But you have to get past that first fake sentence to find the real one underneath it.
Step two: set a timer, not a goal
Five minutes. Seven if you're feeling ambitious. Not a page count, not a certain number of good insights. Just time.
I'd set an actual timer, phone or kitchen one, whatever you've got. Something about knowing it'll end takes the pressure off. You're not committing to write forever. You're committing to five minutes, and then you get to stop, guilt-free.
Step three: let your hand keep moving
If you get stuck, write "I don't know what to write" over and over till something else shows up. It will. It always does. The trick is not letting the pen stop, because the second it stops, your brain starts editing, and editing this early kills more journal entries than anything else.
What NOT to do
Don't reread what you just wrote until the timer goes off. I mean it. Don't go back and fix a misspelled word or cross out a sentence you don't love. That's a different job for a different time, and honestly, for this kind of writing, that job doesn't need to happen at all.
Don't write for an audience. Not even future-you. Especially not future-you. That's how people end up performing on the page instead of just getting the truth out of their heads.
A little something that happened to me
I collect old menus. From restaurants that've closed, mostly. It's a weird little habit, I'll admit it.
One night I pulled out a menu from a diner I used to go to before Patrick and I got married, and I sat down and just started writing about it. Not planning to write about anything deep. Just, huh, remember this place.
And here's the thing. I couldn't remember the food at all. Not one dish. What I remembered, clear as anything, was the booth. The vinyl was cracked and it stuck to the back of your legs in summer, and there was a window that looked out at the parking lot, and I used to sit facing that window on purpose.
I didn't know that about myself until I wrote it down. That I remembered the seat better than the meal. That told me something about what I actually pay attention to in my own life, which is not the main event, apparently. It's the corner of the room.
You don't know what's going to come out until you let your hand move for five minutes without judging it. That's the whole lesson, really. Everything else is details.
My honest opinion here
There's no right way to do this five minutes. I've seen people swear by writing standing up at the kitchen counter. I do mine at the table with coffee, most days. Somebody in a past class did hers in the car before she went inside from work, sitting in the driveway with the engine off. All of it works. Anybody who tells you there's one correct method for these five minutes is trying to sell you something, and you don't need to buy it. 😊
One caution, and it's a small one: if you're doing this late at night and it's stirring up something heavy, it's okay to close the notebook and come back to it in daylight. You don't owe the page your worst moment at midnight if it's not the right moment for you.
Before next time
Try it once before we meet again. Date, one true sentence, five minutes, no rereading. If it's a disaster, good, bring the disaster, that's usually the interesting part anyway. 🌞