Monday, June 20, 2011

Good Distractions

How do you distract yourself when querying? Because if you don't, you're checking your email every five minutes. Even with distractions, you tend to only narrow it down to every ten.

Here's my list:

1) Create a new playlist. Playlists rule my life - for writing, workouts, road trips, cleaning. I love putting together new playlists!

2) Work on your NaNo from last year. I was scared to open it. I mean, I wrote it in 30 days. Granted, I had a pretty detailed outline, but I did allow myself some freedom - characters showed up that I wasn't expecting and took the story in a different direction. Then I'd spend the morning re-outlining and dive back in for my 2,000 words. Surprise! It wasn't bad. It's far from perfect, but it wasn't as horrible as I was expecting. So flushing it out is proving fun. I'm in love with the idea, which makes me look forward to working on it...hold on, I have to check my email...just kidding.

3) Deep clean the house. I'm talking get into all those nooks and crannies you've been ignoring while you were working so hard on your manuscript that is now being queried! Move those electronics and dust UNDER them. Move the furniture around and get those dust bunnies hanging out under it. Hey, wait...did I say move the furniture?

4) Rearrange a room or two. It's like we have a whole new living room and bedroom! The bedroom actually feels BIGGER.

5) Buy a pedometer. Program the pedometer. Figure out it's not logging your steps right. Re-program the pedometer. Take another long walk. Find that it's still adding extra steps you aren't taking. Re-program. Take a short walk. Find that it's still adding extra steps you aren't taking. Put it in the drawer in the bathroom where all things electronic that bug you gather. Hope they don't plot against you.

6) Go through your closets - gather old clothes to donate.

7) SHOP! Fill those closets right back up.

8) Search for new recipes! I'm committed to making two new dinners a week. This means using ingredients that I have previously shunned...like bulgur, quinoa and red lentils. Grate ginger. Grow your own herbs - my basil is out of control!

9) Catch up with friends - lunch and coffee dates have come in handy. It's so much fun to LAUGH and catch up!

10) Netflix. I admit that I'm watching a lot of my old faves - from Xena to Stargate Atlantis. But I'm vowing to watch two (yes, my favorite number) new movies a week. Mixing the old with the new!

I still haven't started that garden that I wanted to. I would love to plant a vegetable garden. The Hubster has Thursday off so we may go look at some plants (tomato - yummy!) and boxes. I just may be able to add Vegetable Garden to my distraction list.

What about you - what do you use as distractions?

8 comments:

  1. For some reason, home improvement projects provided the best distractions when I was querying. I painted and rearranged almost every room in the house during that time! My poor husband - he did all the heavy lifting.

    I'm amazed you're able to write! That was the one thing I couldn't do... I just could not stay focused. I'm impressed! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good to hear you are keeping busy! :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lol! Wow what a list! I rearranged and detail cleaned the living room Saturday for this reason! And netflix. GOD what I would do without netflix. (productive wise AND stir crazy wise. Evil...wonderful thing netflix is...)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sounds like a good list to me, I'm digging the idea of deep cleaning, moving furniture around, and organising closets. I know, I'm lame.

    ReplyDelete
  5. What a fun list! I write to distract myself, too. I worked on the second book of the series I was querying on for a while, but then I found I just needed a completely new thing to focus on, so I am writing two totally new books now. Yay, we're in the query trenches together :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Those sound like such fun distractions! I always clean after I finish a first draft or a draft of revisions. One, because by that time I usually need to. Two, because it's so nice to do mindless work for a change!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I work at my local public library part time, so I can check out movies and TV shows, so I've started watching the BBC show "Merlin" and it's awesome and addicting. The bad thing is that I only have it for a week at a time, so I have to marathon the episodes and I put aside my writing for too long!

    But I totally have become addicted to outlining, I never knew it could be so helpful!

    ReplyDelete