Things to do to Avoid Actually Writing

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.

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• 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.]