Monday, August 27, 2012

Procrastinate to Productivity

Productive procrastination sounds like an oxymoron. But I think I did some of it this past weekend. I have my excuses for not moving onto the rough draft of Book #4 of The Futhark Chronicles.

Number one is my relentless efforts to get Beneath the Mountain up on Smashwords. The site is incredibly busy. I get to a certain point in the process and I get that little spinning symbol and the old lie, 'one moment please.'  I think it is called Smashwords because so many people smash their computers or something else when they're trying to use it. I had a little trouble with this when I published my first book there but my second one was smooth as silk without a single wait.

Number two is my need to promote book #3, Beneath the Mountain to mega-heights to make up for the income I'll lose when I retire next summer. I tell myself that is a very important full time need. Here's today's effort toward my retirement. BUY!

Number three is the need to check my email every hour or so to see if my romance publisher has responded to my latest submission of the first book in a new futuristic romance series.  I checked at least once while I wrote this post.

Number four is my efforts to get to know my fellow authors at Crescent Moon Press, the publisher who has contracted the first book in my newest epic fantasy series. Lots of new websites and blogs to check out.

So those aren't terrible things to spend time on. But I also did even more useful procrastination stuff this weekend. I cleaned up my desk, shuffling the mess into neat piles. I made little stacks of things that went together. I filled up my trash can with some 'stuff' that had piled up with my intention to use it or file it at some point.  Later this week, I'll dive into each stack of things I think I have a use for and do some more productive procrastination.

Do you procrastinate? If not, are you really human or are you one of those robots word verification warns up about? Is your procrastination productive or just for fun? Care to give me a little sympathy for my Smashwords debacle?

14 comments:

Unknown said...

I procrastinate like nobody's business, though I tend to be productive when I procrastinate, which is something :)

The Happy Whisk said...

Hey, sounds to me like you got a tons of little stuff, that all added up to a lot.

Go you.

Happy Monday :-)

Cate Masters said...

It's amazing the myriad things that suddenly become urgent when it's time to write, lol. If you're still thinking about your story while you're doing it, I say count it as writing time. :)

shelly said...

I have Smashword issues, too.

Hugs and chocolate,
Shelly

http://www.shellysnovicewritings.blogspot.com/

http://secondhandshoesnovel.blogspot.com/

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

I can master procrastination with the best of them! Think of it as reflection time instead.

L. Diane Wolfe said...

I might do other, more fun things on my list first, but I tend to plow through the list and get it done.

Christine Rains said...

I try to be productive with my procrastination. I clean and I visit blogs. Then there are times where I play mindless games. I've wasted so many hours over the years with those addictive little things!

I'm sorry to hear Smashwords is giving you a hard time. I've never trusted those 'one moment please' things!

Shannon Lawrence said...

I'm Queen Procrastinator. Guess what I'm doing right now. ;-p Good luck with promotion and uploading your books!

Ghadeer said...

I do get much temptation to procrastinate sometimes, but I'm self-disciplined and usually push that temptation away. Maybe I'm taking too soon, though, still a student and haven't experienced the feeling of being so busy that you live in denial instead.

Tonja said...

No robots here. My desk is a mess. I can't seem to write with the chaos, and yet I keep putting off cleaning it. Why are my kids' things on my desk??

momto8 said...

my husband and myself do not procrastinate over anything! we tackle the most unpleasant tasks first. cannot explain where my children got their gene pool.

Lynn Proctor said...

no that's not one of my problems--as a matter of fact i am crazily to the other extreme :)

Susan Gourley/Kelley said...

I keep telling myself blogging is not procrastinating, but I could spend all day visiting, commenting and reading my comments here.

Ciara said...

I grew to hate the spinning symbol on Smashwords. I just hope you don't have the ISBN problems I had. ugh. Good luck!