Take a breath. Sit back in your chair. You did it, my friend. You wrote for a full five minutes, uninterrupted. You’re a goddamned hero. Go ahead and check your email, to see whether anyone has sent you a congratulatory email. If they haven’t, consider drafting a preliminary “thank you” email. Also, do you have any unread emails? What about emails from college? How about that rejection email you got two years ago? Have you reread that lately? Now you can read it from the high peak of one who has written for a full five goddamn minutes. There will be parades in your honor. Ticker tape parades. Do they still do ticker tape parades? You should look that up. Also, was the ticker tape in ticker tape parades actual tape? Or like paper from a machine or something? You should check Wikipedia. You’ll want to know how to answer these sort of questions when the parade marshall knocks on your door, congratulating you for doing a full five minutes of writing. Your downstairs neighbor has come up to ask why you’re marching around and high-fiving yourself. Open that door and start launching some high-fives in his direction, because once he finds out that you spent less than 1% of your waking hours successfully writing without interruption, he’s going to want to know more about you. “How is writing going?” he will now ask when he sees you in the hall, replacing his former question (“What is wrong with you, why do you stomp around your apartment screaming, ‘Eat it, Hemingway’?”). “Just fine,” you’ll say with a wink. Get. Your. Agent. On. The. Phone. You. Are. On. Hold. With. Her. Secretary. Oh. That’s. Right. She. Dropped. You. As. A. Client. Maybe she’ll decide that you’re worth representing now that you have done that full cinco minutos of writing. Escribir? How do you say “writing” in Spanish? Del escribo? Escritorio? That’s not it. Better open up Duolingo and play that for a while, until the word “writing” comes up by chance. Wait, you got a new email. Your trophy guy says he won’t have the “PROFESSIONAL WRITING PERSON – 2018 (5 MINUTES)” trophy ready until Tuesday. That’s almost a week from now. Think about how much more writing you’ll have done. Six minutes? Seven minutes? Five and a half minutes? You did it. You’re done.
