- Read En Tequila Es Verdad for your daily dose of a "fountain of liberal rage."
- Check your email.
- Make and drink a pot of coffee.
- Rewrite your to do list with nicer handwriting.
- Better yet, you should do it in Microsoft Word, then print it out.
- Add to your to do list.
- Make sure your books are still alphabetized by author's last name.
- Visit the forums for NaNoWriMo.
- Update your status on Facebook to say "NP is not scribbling."
- Vacuum the living room.
- Play fetch with the cat (yes, one of my cats plays fetch).
- Make Thanksgiving plans.
- Read.
- Rework your NaNo outline.
- Adjust the font and margins of your NaNo novel.
- Play the Expert level of Minesweeper until you can win twice in a row.
- Do some early Christmas shopping online.
- Print out your NaNo outline to put in a folder since you're trying to be more organized.
- Check your word count.
- Watch Law & Order to get character ideas. (Don't worry about what time it is; L&O is always on somewhere.)
- See if any of your NaNo buddies are on AIM.
- Do some laundry.
- Gaze out the window.
- Stare at a wall.
- Look for writerly Christmas gifts online that you might want.
- Start a NaNo scrapbook to document your life in November.
- Go through your story and find ways to pad the word count (omitting contractions, changing all hyphens to spaces, lengthening lists like this one, adding mundane details that border on purple prose, etc.)
- Take a quick little nap to recharge yourself.
- Check the time to see how much more writing time you have.
- Watch the cat sleep.
- Blog.
- Play Mahjong Solitaire.
- Fill out an email survey and email it to everyone in your address book.
- Add page numbers to your story.
- Take the page numbers out.
- Add a title page.
- Add an Acknowledgements page.
- Add an "About the Author" page.
- Create an interview that could be included in the paperback edition.
- Come up with lists for your blog.
Okay, now that that's done, I guess I'll get back to writing.
I did the same things, but oddly enough, I seem to actually be pulling off writing fairly decently. I'm keeping up with everything despite the lack of sleep, reading other people's blogs, and dealing with random houseguests that don't want to leave.
ReplyDeleteI think part of it is because I can tilt my head to the side and look at the screen like a mildly confused cat while typing at some seventy words per minute. Can that be classified as a superpower? I think I'd like to join the JLA.
Though, I should probably get back to writing myself. I made the mistake of actually starting a blog, which is a bad idea, especially when done before NaNoWriMo starts. Ah well. Accidents happen, and it hasn't eaten me yet!
And now, I bounce.
It's interesting that you tilt your head when you write--I do the same thing.
ReplyDeleteI've joked with my husband that it helps the ideas fall out of my head better.
I used that on the roommates once.
ReplyDeleteTheir response, which was amusingly clever, was "Don't the headphones keep it in?"
I had nothing to say to that, unfortunately.
Adding to reading blogs et al, I just created my first YouTube video. And it has nothing to do with NaNo.
ReplyDeleteWe're all going to get there. No matter how much else we do to distract ourselves, when crunch time comes, we'll crunch. And we'll get through. And we'll swear to never ever in our entire lives do this ever again - until next year.
Here's to us!
Actually, I'm starting to oddly like the pace of this. I might just keep to the NaNoWriMo regimen for as long as I can. Two thousand plus words a day seems to be working fine, even with the odd distraction.
ReplyDeleteSome days I have to work to keep up, or play catch-up, but it's never really that much of a problem. I'm going to be attending a wedding this weekend, though, so I might have a few problems there.
I actually rather like this, though. I wonder how long I can keep it up.
I think the internet in general has increased my ADD by about 2 million %. I find myself flitting around all day long. "Okay, work for 10 minutes on this spreadsheet and then you can check the headlines on Yahoo"
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine the temptations that go along with working from home.
@BigStick, I'm the same way. "Write this article, then you can catch up on your web comic-reading for a few minutes, then get to NaNo."
ReplyDeleteWorking from home is more of a challenge when I don't have as much to do. When I have a lot to do, I can push myself to get it done, but if my task list is short, I'm a HUGE procrastinator. That's why I'm trying to write over 100,000 words for NaNo. Even if I don't have work to do, I can reason with myself that I *should* be working on NaNo.