The official blog of Michelle Tuckett, word ninja.

What with NaNoWriMo well under way, we must ask ourselves:

Are we actually writing?

Here is a handy list to double check if you are, in fact, writing.

Things that are not actually writing:

• Looking for that tab you had open as reference material for a blog entry
• Outlining
• Complaining about not writing
• Practicing your quick-draw technique in case of a duel
• Sharpening your samurai sword
• Slimming down your collection of 5,000 fonts
• Tweeting
• Facebooking
• Searching the web to see of other people have the same problem as you
• Replying to blogs saying “OMG I thought I was the only one with this problem!”
• Replying to other comments with solutions you think you have conjured for the problem
• Creating more problems now that you’ve solved one
• Outlining (yes, it is worth saying twice)
• Working on your chewing gum collection
• Reenacting Firefly scenes with your Lego collection
• Chatting online with friends and pretending to be writing because you have a word processor open the background
• Shopping for apps
• Shopping for gadgets to put apps on
• Juggling small poodles
• Obsessing about [RANDOM BODY PART]
• Obsessing about [RANDOM HOT GUY/GIRL]
• Reorganizing your throwing star collection
• Gluing your furniture to the ceiling
• Outlining, for gods sakes – stop it
• Making ice cream statues
• Bitching about writers block on your blog (if you can blog, you are not that blocked)
• Complaining over beers you should be writing. When you could be writing.
• Laundry
• Research of any kind
• Hunting wabbits
• Pressing the backspace key
• Wondering if you are original enough (hint: no one is, but write anyway)
• And most of all… anything that looks like writing that is not actually contributing to your word count, regardless of how beneficial or essential it is and/or might be to the other aspects of your life

Things that are actually writing:

• Writing

Special thanks to irowboat for his snark and insight.