Nine ways to not write a novel in November

PaperBecause it is November and it is NaNoWriMo, it is also the time of year when procrastination from writing becomes so fun and so…exciting! Procrastinating now feels so…rebellious.

Here are my top nine nifty ways to not write a novel in November!

  1. Play games. This is pretty bad for me this month. I only have roughly a month to go before Cataclysm (the next expansion of World of Warcraft) hits, I recently bought a PlayStation 3. Ohh the joys of killing pixelly things on a screen.
  2. Clean the house. What’s worse, it needs to be done. It is a valid excuse, is it not? And there is a certain sense of calm in the normalcy of house-cleaning, in how ordered it is, how everything has a process…which can’t really be said of my writing “process”.
  3. Watch movies. Outside with others, or at home, it doesn’t matter. I have DVDs to watch! TV movies to rent! I have fifteen free a month, I must not let it go to waste! (Or so I say.)
  4. Internet hopping. I am sadly really prone to this. I look up something quick in Wikipedia, and unless I’m dreadfully needed elsewhere, I will end up with 10 opened tabs with topics in Wikipedia. The worst sites for this is Wikipedia and Youtube, I find. I have ended up doing it a lot over the past days: I have a lot of research to go through!
  5. Write on my journal. Of course, sometimes, writing anything but my novel is just impossible to resist.
  6. Talk or write about NaNoWriMo. *cough* Hence, this post. Talk about writing the novel! Talk about how to write the novel! Talk about not writing the novel!
  7. Come up with a website or a book cover for the novel. Well, it’s still novel-related, right? So that’s part of NaNoWriMo, right? Right?
  8. Sleep. Writing can sometimes produce headaches, when the words just don’t come. Of which the only cure is not writing and sleeping.
  9. Have an online social life. Be it NaNoWriMo boards, sudden activity in journals and other communities–being active in online communities suddenly makes a lot of sense. “I’m on the computer anyway, so why not peek in at the forums?” 50 topics later, 0 words in novel.

What are your favorite non-novel-writing activities during NaNoWriMo?

This NaNoWriMo, Rebooting writer post was published on Monday November 8, 2010, and tagged under , .

About the author

Me

Hello, I'm Angela. I cycle through a bunch of obsessions: web, reading, writing, gaming, and traveling. My first love is writing, though--I've never stopped writing, though the form and content have changed over the years. I want to get back to my creative fiction roots and get through that inner editor and pessimistic perfectionist who has plagued me for such. a. long. time. I love meeting interesting people and have excellent conversation, so leave me a comment or find me on any of the places below:

4 comments

  • Araceli said:
    November 8, 2010 15:24

    All the same ways as you. Also, finding music or making playlists to write to. Rereading what you’ve already written and editing it instead of writing new material. Commenting on entries. ;)

  • Clair said:
    November 8, 2010 11:47

    Come to think of it I’ve never joined nanowrimo. I think writing is a hard task especially with too many distractions. >,<

    • Angela replied;
      November 8, 2010 12:04

      Yes it is T_T; it seems harder especially when you’re kind of telling yourself to write, because when you’re telling yourself to write your body wants to rebel anyway. Haha!

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