If I'm ever going to actually finish my book, I have to actually write. But there are all sorts of ways to put that off. Here are a few:
- Read a highly recommended book on writing.
- Read Horn Book, your favorite children’s literature magazine.
- Read blogs by agents and editors.
- Write your own blog.
- Read a classic book in your genre to study its structure and style.
- Organize your notes.
- Surf the web for potentially useful background information you can call research.
- Reread what you have already written.
- Change the laundry load.
- Read important e-mails.
- Answer important e-mails.
- Read quick e-mails just to get them out of your in-box.
- Answer quick e-mails because they won’t take very long.
- Write new emails to people you have been meaning to contact. (Break in writing this blog to write that e-mail I have been meaning to send for the past month, but keep forgetting because there was nothing in my inbox to answer.)
- Write your agent about current manuscript concerns.
- Change the laundry load.
- Check Facebook to stay in touch with fans. (OK, so I check out my kids and friends while I’m there.)
- Clean off your desk.
- Weed your file cabinet.
- File the pile in the corner of your desk that has been waiting for you to clean up your file cabinet.
- Check e-mail again in case your agent wrote back already.
- Change the laundry load.
- Label pictures on iPhoto.
- Clean up your address book.
- Clean up your iTunes files.
- Delete unnecessary computer files cluttering your hard drive.
- Add old picture files to iPhoto and label them.
- Change the laundry load.
- Scrub the floor mats from your car to get ready for your up-coming trip to a writers conference on the West Coast.
- Plan your route to the writers conference and what sites you can see on the way.
- Make a shopping list of things you will need when you travel to the writers conference.
- Shop.
- Fold laundry.
- Set up a new electronic calendar to help you keep track of travel and responsibilities.
- Share it with your family and get them to set up calendars to share with you.
- Check your new handy dandy calendar.
- Those revisions are due WHEN?!?!
- Yipes! I had better get busy.
[Please note: this list does not include skating or working on my doll house, activities I find hard to justify as work although the former really did start as research and who knows? Maybe someday I'll write a book about a miniaturist.]
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