This is part of a series of posts where I’m coaching you on one of the biggest challenges writers say they face: time.
You’re feeling the squeeze, so you’re tempted to put off writing and focus on the urgent items on your to-do list.
In my last post, I recommended you value yourself and your work enough to stop putting it off. The assignment: figure out where the time goes so you find time to write.
The good news is that even if you only have slivers of time available, a lot of writing rolls onto the page during these “Pocket Sessions.”
Shut the Door (if you have one)
To get the most out of your Pocket Session, slip away and shut the door so you write undistracted. Stephen King wrote about this in his book On Writing:
The [writing] space can be humble (probably should be, as I think I have already suggested), and it really needs only one thing: a door which you are willing to shut. The closed door is your way of telling the world and yourself that you mean business; you have made a serious commitment to write and intend to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.1
When a Pocket Session for writing opens up, race to your room and shut the door.
However, not everyone has a room or a door they can shut. And some people are caregivers or have obligations that place them smack in the middle of a hectic space, surrounded by people.
Pocket Sessions in the Middle of Chaos
I didn’t have a room with a door for two decades. But I wrote anyway…my Pocket Sessions happened in a busy house where LEGOs were dumped out in a clatter and PBS kids’ shows blared in the background.
If you’re in that phase or one with similar limitations—if you can’t slip away even for a short amount of time—take inspiration from E. B. White, who said:
I’m able to work fairly well among ordinary distractions. My house has a living room that is at the core of everything that goes on. It is a passageway to the cellar, to the kitchen, to the closet where the phone lives. There’s a lot of traffic, but it’s a bright, cheerful room, and I often use it as a room to write in despite the carnival that is going on all around me.2
He goes on to say:
The members of my household never pay the slightest attention to my being a writing man. They make all the noise and fuss they want to. If I get sick of it, I have places I can go. A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper (emphasis in bold is mine).3
I found in this some solace and a kindred spirit. He actually chose to work in a space that was nothing more than a passageway between rooms. There, he managed to write significant works—essays and books we read to this day and enjoy, like the beloved Charlotte’s Web.
Speed Up Pocket Sessions
To maximize what you accomplish in a Pocket Session:
- Fast draft; don’t stop to re-read or edit—type as fast as the ideas roll out of your head
- Dictate (we speak faster than we type) or record an audio file (transcribe it to get a draft)
- Have a plan (outline and decide what you’ll write during this session based on the available time)
- Hop on Zoom with a supportive friend, click “record,” and explain or “teach” the content; you’ll end up with a draft when you transcribe the audio
Pursue Pocket-Sized Tasks
Pocket Sessions aren’t for deep dives. Write what you can, even if it’s short. In 2010, author Parker Palmer said:
If you can’t write a book, write a bunch of essays. If you can’t write a bunch of essays, write a bunch of paragraphs. If you can’t write a bunch of paragraphs, write lines. If you can’t write lines, write some words. And if you can’t write some words, write your truth with your own life, which is far more important than any book.
If we only have ten minutes, we can write paragraphs.
Or lines.
Or words.
No matter what complicates your schedule—a career, caregiving, or ferrying kids to camp and back—you can make progress. You won’t get your words down all at once in a Pocket Session, but session by session they’ll add up.
Books Are Written in Pocket Sessions
Author Andre Dubus III said that years ago, when his kids were little, he was working on a novel. They had a tiny apartment. He was teaching at four or five campuses as an adjunct writing professor, remodeling houses as a carpenter, and sleeping only four or five hours a night.
He’d wake up at five in the morning, drive to a graveyard not far from his house, park there, and write. He wrote longhand in a notebook.
After about 17 minutes, he had to stop and drive to work as a teacher and carpenter. On the way back, he’d stop at the graveyard once more and write for another 17 minutes. Longhand. In a notebook.
That’s it. The only Pocket Session he could find was a total of 34 minutes of writing time per day, split into two 17-minute sessions.
He decided not to wish and wait for ideal circumstances. Instead, day after day, he drove to the graveyard and wrote.
“After three years,” he said, “I had 22 notebooks, filled.”
In those twice-a-day 17-minute writing sessions, he crafted the beginning, middle, and end of a novel that would become The House of Sand and Fog, the book that put him on the map.
“So at the height of our young, struggling family life, I was able to write an entire novel,” he said. “Anyone can do it. You don’t need all day.”4
Find your pocket sessions, and write.
Resources:
Footnotes:
- King 151, Pocket Books – a div. of Simon & Schuster, NY, copyright 2000, personal copy
- White, E.B., interviewed by George Plimpton and John Crowther. “The Art of the Essay No. 1,” The Paris Review, Issue 48, 1969. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4155/the-art-of-the-essay-no-1-e-b-white (accessed 7-25-2026).
- Ibid.
- Dubus, Andre. “Episode 54—Andre Dubus III on His Accidental Memoir, the Love of Revision, and Getting the F*CK off Social Media – Home of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast.” Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, Brendan O’Meara, brendanomeara.com/episode-54-andre-dubus-iii-on-his-accidental-memoir-the-love-of-revision-and-getting-the-fck-off-social-media/. Accessed 25 July 2026.
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