Things to do when you're not writing

• Mope
• Whine
• Bitch
• Drink
• Talk about writing

• Talk about *not* writing
• Mope some more
• Pick fights with your husband
• Make up with your husband
• Strip wallpaper

• Work at something that actually pays you
• Hassle people
• Read blogs
• Drink some more
• Watch the Buffy DVDs you borrowed off'n a coworker

• Ask coworker if he would be willing to part with them
• Figure out how much you can get away with vis a vis DVDs, back at the ranch
• Write two scenes of a novel that is totally out of your genre
• Did I mention the Buffy?
• IM coworkers with your demands

• Think about moping in husband's presence
• Give it up as a bad deal (see bullets the seventh and eighth)
• Look for boxes with manuscripts in them (progress!)
• Decide it's easier to drink
• Resolve to be less of a general pain in the ass, going forward

• Sigh, tip head back, finish wine, and go to basement to find manuscript boxes so you can go through the very simple steps of marking each scene in your (ultimately doomed) Third Draft, with a view toward doing scene-by-scene critiques of your own work
• Which is pointless anyway because you are a hack
• And really, you should just spell-check the thing and ship it off to your amazing bestselling novelist friend who has agreed to critique it, who won't be your friend any more once she realizes what shite it is

WHEN ACTUALLY, all you REALLY need to do are the following:

• 1. Tell yourself the story so you can figure out what the story actually is.
• 2. Go through Draft Three making notes of what you need to add and remove.
• 3. Take it step by step from there. In other words, apply ass to chair and repeat.