Most any author you know will complain about not having time enough to write. I am no different, but today, I want to discuss productive ways to procrastinate!
See, if you are being creative–even if you’re not creating right at this very minute–I believe your brain is working on your WIP, or getting you geared up to balance the budget, or help your kids with their homework, or finish that report, or whatever it is your mind needs to concentrate on next. So I present some tried-and-true sure-fire time-wasters, as well as some new ones you might not have known about.
1. Check email. Because someone legitimate might have decided to offer you a million dollars in the last ten seconds.
2. Visit your news site of choice: Mine is the Huffington Post (’cause I’m a Proud Liberal; your causes may vary).
3. Free Rice: This site is a vocabulary test that donates ten grains of rice for every word you get right.
4. Mind Habits: This site provides mind games to “reduce stress and build self-confidence.”
5. Your library, to check how your request list is shaping up (I’m 42nd in line to get 300, Diane!)
6. Go Fug Yourself: Plenty to mock.
7. The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks: If you’re a word and grammar person, this is punctuation porn.
8. Hello Kitty Hell: Just in case you ever think you have a small obsession with your books, check these people out. Even Amanda isn’t this nutty about HK! (Are you, Amanda?)
9. Amazon. You never know when you might see that ohmylord my favorite author has a new book coming out! Must get!
10. Clive, Orlando, Gerard, Jeremy Northam, some nude statue Janet saw, Elena, ‘fess up who’s your secret crush, Sean Bean, Takeshi Kaneshiro, etc., etc. ad abdomen.
So–what’s your favorite way to procrastinate?
I procrastinate by reading Risky Regencies and then clicking on all the links.
My personal favorite: solitaire. You know, that eye-hand coordination thing.
Blast you, Megan Frampton!
(shakes fist crazily at the sky)
Reading and commenting on Risky Regencies, History Hoydens, Fog City Divas, and other fun blogs (all of which qualify as work of course :-). Saks.com, neimanmarcus.com, net-a-porter, and other fun shopping sites (which are harder to justify).
I procrastinate by reading Risky Regencies
Yay! 🙂
I just donated 300 grains of rice. And am smarter for it, I’m sure. 🙂
Blast you, Megan Frampton!
(shakes fist crazily at the sky)
I never knew that’s where Megan lived! That explains a lot.
I check my email, read blogs, check my email, read message boards, play computer anagram games, check my email, look at the news again, and then wonder where all my time has gone. 🙂
Cara
Reading and commenting on History Hoydens, Word Wenches, Risky Regencies and Megan Frampton’s blog. Also, People.com, ew.com, Go Fug Yourself, checking my evite to see if any more people RSVP’d, checking my blog to see any one left any comments, and also reading my horoscope on at least four different sites.
I love Blogdorf Goodman for fashion and makeup stuff–plus it has a huge and fascinating list of links. Good for killing at least a couple of hours! 🙂
Great, Megan! Thanks! Now I have even MORE places to procrastinate before I actually get some words on paper! I procrastinate by reading Risky Regencies, History Hoydens, Romance Bandits, the Goddess Blogs, numerous other blogs. Check my e-mail. Write e-mails. Critique everyone else’s work. Check all of these blogs again. Check my e-mail. I am beginning to see a pattern here!
Curse you, Megan! I just spent a half hour over at Go Fug Yourself. Help! My fellow Riskies are corrupting me…
Okay, Cara, I donate 500 grains and it was fun which is why I had to get off that site!
I got everyone beat 540 grains.
Jewel Quest Solitaire
GerardButler.net
Email
Blogging
Finding some tiny little research detail and then spend an hour or two looking up everything I can
and now…Free Rice!
I forgot to mention that on Free Rice, several of the words that I knew were words I learned by reading Regency Romance
Oh just remembered Megan asked me to fess up as to my secret crush. The True Confession is I love variety in my fantasy men.
To the ones she’s mentioned add Colin Firth, Ioan Gruffud (sp?), Hugh Jackman, John Corbett (as he was in Northern Exposure, not so much in his later work).
I spend waaayyy too much time searching up images for heroes on the web. But it’s research, right?
Oh me, solitaire. And Wheel of Fortune. And Cake Mania. 🙂 Oh, and there’s Uno too. 🙂
Lois
Woo! What fun responses!
And thanks, Elena, for sharing your crushes.
Yes, all of the stuff we do is research, or food for the brain.
I actually don’t procrastinate by reading Risky Regencies. No, I take that very, very seriously, and learn so very much. It is not procrastination. Not at all.
By contrast:
1. Obsessively checking my email.
2. Typing my name into Google and seeing what turns up.
3. Checking the citations on my papers to see if any of them have been cited in the last hour. (Odds of this happening: miniscule.)
4. Looking up random things up Wikipedia.
5. Re-ordering the icons in the various folders of my laptop.
Now those are procrastination!
Todd-who-needs-to-finish-this-comment-so-he-can-get-back-to-straightening-the-piles-on-his-desk