1. Take all the 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper you were going to recycle (for instance, old copies of manuscripts) and cut them into 5 1/2 x 4 1/2 rectangles. Put one stack by your computer, one stack in the kitchen by the phone, and one stack in reserve on a shelf somewhere. Use these pieces of paper to write notes to yourself, grocery lists, or ideas for your next novel.
2. Find all of the photos you’ve saved in various places on your computer, CDs, or flash drives, and save them to one place. Sort and file them by categories so you can find them when you need a photo for a blog post.
3. Make homemade ice cream in an old-fashioned ice cream freezer, the kind that uses crushed ice and rock salt, the kind you have to crank by hand and takes a really long time. To make this project take even longer, use fresh fruit in your mix. Chopped and mashed strawberries work very well.
4. Take all of your clothes out of the closet, dresser drawers, and winter/summer storage boxes. Everything you have not worn in more two years must go in the donation bag. Everything. No exceptions. Take the bag(s) to a donation center before you change your mind.
5. Go to the library and do some research. If you don’t have anything to look up, pick one of these subjects and run with it: zombies in Denver, zombies in Pittsburgh, or zombies in Washington, D.C.
6. Go to Chuck Sambuchino’s Guide to Literary Agents Blog and read all the posts under his “7 Things I’ve Learned So Far” category. Read my post first.
7. Google “villas in France” or “villas in Italy” and check out your options. Don’t look at the prices, just look at the pictures.
8. Catch up on your shredding. Feed the papers into the shredder one at a time so you can look at each one and make sure you haven’t tossed something important into the “To Be Shredded” box.
9. Check out Smashwords and read their “How to Publish” page. Then go to the Smashwords blog and read at least the last ten posts. Really. It’s important to know this stuff.
10. Back up all your blog posts from day one by copying and pasting to a Word document and saving them to your hard drive or a flash drive. Copy each post as you go and put it in a notebook(s) in date published order. If you want, you can print a second copy so you can file by categories. Then catalog your posts on a spreadsheet. If you don’t have a blog, use 10a instead (the a is for alternate).
10a. Start a blog. Sign up for Dani Greer’s FREE one-month online blog book tour class which starts July 5th. No need for any other procrastination efforts for a whole month. You won’t have time. Do it. You know you want to.