A friend gave me a vintage book for Christmas, the
delightful, Turned Funny, by
Celestine Sibley. Those of you who live in the south remember the morning paper, The
Atlanta Constitution, which later
combined with the Atlanta Journal to form the AJC.
Sibley was a reporter with the Constitution and also wrote a
daily column. Additionally, she wrote for the Atlanta Magazine, a Sunday
insert. Someone told me that she might have written for as many as seven
different pennames for the magazine, probably writing a great percentage of the
articles that appeared in its pages. So, as you can see, her daily work was demanding.
It doesn’t seem she’d have time for anything else in
addition to raising her children. Somehow, though, she managed to turn out
twenty-five books.
Seriously.
And it started with a piece of advice she received from a friend to work on
a book just fifteen minutes a day. Sibley said it was the best writing advice she ever received.
Most writers I know have trouble getting started. We’ll
scrub baseboards, clean out the dryer lint trap, organize our sock drawer,
anything to avoid beginning work. I don’t understand it either, but I do it.
Maybe it’s the fear that we don’t have anything to give, that we’re just
imposters. Or maybe, we’re by nature procrastinators. I don’t know, but it’s
almost universal.
Other people who long to write a book say they don’t have
time. But they have fifteen minutes. Everyone has fifteen minutes. And big things
can come when you combine all those fifteen minutes together. Say you’re only
able to write a thousand words a week at fifteen minutes a day. If you do the
math, you’ll find it adds up to 52,000 words a year. That’s a book, my friend.
And that’s what Sibley did.
She took the advice, gave the fifteen minutes a day, and
produced a novel. Later for one of her books she combined articles she’d only
been paid twenty-five dollars apiece for at the Atlanta Magazine with other
stories she wrote into a book called Christmas in Georgia, and it sold so well,
it moved her editor to the helm of his publishing house.
She died years ago, but I can still see her face in my mind’s
eye above that daily newspaper column. It serves as inspiration to me, that
little things add up.
Reminds me of these words, “Do not despise these small
beginnings . . .” (Zechariah 4:10 NLT).
So don’t. Make a contract with yourself to spend fifteen
minutes a day on a big project and watch it bloom right in front of you. Let me
know how you’re doing. I’ll be cheering you on.