Three-Minute Writing Sprints

In her book Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir, Natalie Goldberg, suggests that ‘three-minute writing sprints’ can be considered as training to run a long distance – a book! You start small and build up skill, fluency and distance.

Three-Minute Writing Sprints

 Try writing for three minutes on each of these prompts. Write quickly without overthinking.

• The best song of my life
• What I can’t live without
• What I can’t forget
• What I can’t forgive
• At night I think of …

It’s tough fitting all this into three minutes, but sometimes you’ve got to get to the point! Try to add as much detail as possible.

You can, as Goldberg suggests, ‘Keep these topics in your back pocket and exercise them often.’

I’ve shared a couple of my responses on Write Vibes on Substack.

Would you like to try out these three-minute writing sprints? I’d love to read your responses.