My ten planned steps to success (I hope)

Step 1) Unhook the wireless card from my laptop. This is crucial. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have a serious email problem. I can't resist checking it. With the advent of Gmail chat, I can easily waste an hour without even trying. Once I start checking the email, it's a slippery slope to surfing "just for a minute". Forget that. I am allowing myself set internet breaks once every two hours, and I am allowing occasional updates to this blog. In order to do that, I will have to leave my writing area and come downstairs.

Step 2) Make my bedroom as comfortable and distraction free as possible. I am going to use it as my primary writing area. I'll be bringing a comfortable chair up there, and it will be where I spend the vast majority of the weekend. It's better than downstairs for a few reasons. One of these is that the dogs don't like to come in my room. This will reduce pestering. It's also where I wrote my book, and it's become very comfortable to me.

Step 3) Sleep Friday afternoon if possible. I still don't know what my work situation will be that day, but if it's at all possible I want to take a nap on Friday afternoon. This will keep me a little more alert as I write from 12:01 am until I decide sleep is a priority.

Step 4) Give myself 8 hours of sleep every night. Crucial.

Step 5) Have healthy foods handy that don't require a ton of effort to make. Use caffeine sparingly, and avoid sweets. Sweets cause me to crash hard, and I can't afford energy dips.

Step 6) Use the outline. It's there to stop me from freezing up. You cannot rely on yourself creatively when you are in a marathon situation. The outline is there to help me keep moving. Obviously, the time may come for me to deviate from that outline, but before I do, I need to be positive I know everything that comes next.

Step 7) For the love of god, back up my work. Save every ten minutes. All it takes is one momentary goof and you can lose pages of work. I saw this happen last year to people on the TV show, and that scared me. Every page counts.

Step 8) Control my ambition. I know that stories get bigger for me as I write them, and new avenues and digressions come naturally. This is not the time for that. I need to tell a more or less simple story in a straightforward way. After the contest, I can expand the book to be whatever I want it to be. My goal for the weekend is to finish. Period. I can't let the book get too big to wrap up in three days. If I do that, I've blown it.

Step 9) Don't be afraid to take a brief walk. Sitting all day can tire you out and wear down the mind. It's a good thing to get the blood flowing. Play with the dogs for a few minutes, whatever I need to do. Just get myself awake and aware, and go back to the book.

Step 10) This is the hardest one for me. I need to shut out all other concerns. My biggest distraction will always be anxiety. In quiet moments, I worry. I obsess about past failures, hurtful things I may have said or done, and I worry about the things to come. This has to be a three-day vacation from all of that. This time is for me, and for this book. I'm giving this story 3 days of my life without reservation. Three days isn't going to make a difference to any problems short of a sucking chest wound.

So that's what I think. Anyone else have any ideas?