When your novel or nonfiction book idea looms large, overwhelming you to the point of writing paralysis, or when you can’t seem to scrape together even an hour of alone time to research your article or put down a rough draft of your essay, try jumpstarting your writing by concentrating on miniature projects instead.

Today’s fast-paced, sound byte environment has created a tremendous need for short pieces, with markets clamoring to fill their pages or Web sites with informational, educational or entertaining tidbits that can be read in minutes. From recipes and fillers to humor pieces and books reviews, online and offline publications have a constant demand for fresh, new and short material—a demand that you can fill even when your life allows you only snippets of time to write.

Moreover, these short pieces often pay an incredible amount per word. It took me less than 10 minutes to craft a tightly-written tip for Family Circle Magazine that brought me a $50 check; Woman’s Day has a similar tips page that pays the same rate. Although Reader’s Digest leading the pack as the most well-known (and competitive) market for fillers that pay top dollar, hundreds of other lesser known yet equally hungry markets exist, if you know where to find them.

Even the time-consuming task of locating these markets has been done for you. Rather than comb through your Writers’ Market, publication by publication, to find out who’s buying what, author C. Hope Clark has put together a number of specialized market books for the time-pressed writer, including:

Get Paid to Write Book Reviews

Short and Sweet—Markets for Your Fillers

Cooking Up Recipes—Markets for Your Recipes and Food Tips

Quick as a Flash—Markets for flash fiction 100-500 words

Just Hit Send—Markets that You Can Query via E-mail

These volumes come as ebooks, so you can pay for and download them within minutes by going here: http://tinyurl.com/2gep2r.

So until you get the time, energy or motivation to tackle your larger projects, why not keep your writing and paychecks flowing by hammering out short pieces? You’ll find that what little time you have to write will be time well spent.