1. Make coffee. Nothing can happen without coffee. Apparently there are people out there who claim productivity without coffee or some sort of caffeine, but I’ve never met any and I, for one, doubt their existence.
  2. Drink coffee, while checking email and scrolling through social media because you can’t be expected to write while you are waking up.
  3. Make a to do list. Even if you don’t follow it, it makes you feel so much more accomplished.
  4. Do a few household chores.
  5. Exercise.  We’ve all read articles on how sitting is killing us and it’s difficult to be creative when you know damn well that every ten minutes in the chair is shortening your life span.
  6. Get a bottle of water and set it on your desk. You just worked out, you need water.
  7. Ignore the bottle of water and drink more coffee.
  8. Bring breakfast to your desk and scroll through email and social media because you can’t be expected to write while eating breakfast.
  9. Spend ten minutes on the phone explaining to your husband why you can’t pay the bills or go grocery shopping because you are working and he should respect that.
  10. Bring up your manuscript
  11. Answer some emails
  12. Watch cat videos
  13. Read a chapter of your manuscript to get into the groove and make a few corrections.
  14. Bring up the thesaurus on your computer.
  15. Scroll through twitter and see if anyone wants to write with you.
  16. Write for twenty minutes and then realize that you don’t know if this remote town in Spain had electricity in 1917 and spend another twenty minutes researching only to discover that they didn’t and now you have research what kitchens without electricity looked like in 1917, Spain.
  17. Write for twenty minutes and then realize you don’t need that scene and that you are padding and delete the only scene that mentioned the kitchen in the first place…
  18. Drink more coffee.
  19. Realize it’s lunch time and you have written one deleted scene.
  20. Eat lunch while checking social media because you can’t be expected to write while eating lunch.
  21. Take a few sips of your water and congratulate yourself on your commitment to your health.
  22. Drink more coffee.
  23. Hit upon an idea and write for two hours in a vortex of creativity. Come up for air when you realize you need to make more coffee.
  24. Realize there is nothing for dinner and you really do need to go grocery shopping but you have to pay bills first to see how much money you have left to grocery shop with.
  25. Look at your to do list.
  26. Cross off a couple of things feeling accomplished. Ignore all the things you didn’t get done.
  27. Drink more coffee knowing you probably won’t get any more work done that day.
  28. Console yourself that that’s okay, because you are now 1500 words ahead of where you were that morning.
  29. Try not to feel bad because those 1500 words have nothing to do with the project that has a deadline.
  30. Stop at Starbucks on the way to the store because you deserve it!