Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Admit it. This is the procrastination section, right? What internet sites/tabs do you have open when sitting down to write? ;) I always have a browser window open and refresh it whenever I feel I deserve a break.

My usual sites:

Gmail
Twitter
Writing forums like this one and AW ;)
Lately I've had Grooveshark open for music

*cough* Yeah, it's bad. *cough*

I always have Facebook open (hi, my name is Robin and I have a problem)
Bookshelf Muse http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/
Thesaurus http://www.visualthesaurus.com/wordlists/1034

Facebook has been driving me crazy lately, but I used to have Thesaurus up all the time. ;)

How dare you ask such a question, Regan? I never...never...uhm...oh, poo

Twitter - almost always
AW - often
Pandora - often
this very place! - sometimes
Wikipedia - sometimes

Man. No wonder my word count is down.

Currently, Facebook and this wonderful gem for Mad Men Lovers of the World/Crying Don Draper Lovers of the World: http://saddondraper.tumblr.com/

Guilty pleasures:
- email
- Facebook (of course)
- Ohnotheydidnt
- websudoku

Ugh, the root of all my procrastination!

I'm trying to remember to use Mac Freedom more often (program that shuts down your wireless for a certain number of hours) because I am such an Internet addict it's not funny. For example, last night I sat down "to write" at 8 PM and FINALLY got around to opening my Scrivener doc with my outline in it at... 10:36. GAWD.

Here's what I had open at one time:
- Gmail
- Google Reader
- YouTube
- Theater discussion forum
- Pandora
- this forum
- conspiracy theory site (research for my novel revision)

Tonight's gotta be a Mac Freedom night.

I draft in fullscreen and try not to exit unless I really need to look something up on the Google. When I switch over to my browser, I always have Gmail, HootSuite, and Google Reader open in pinned tabs. I'm actually quite good at not clicking over to them when I'm in the middle of a writing session.

None - I've learned by harsh experience that if I want to do some writing, then the only way I can get the writing done is to work on a laptop that has no internet connection.

Which doesn't stop me sneaking down to my PC every hour or so to have peeks at my favourite websites, but then that's not procrastinating, that's moving away from the keyboard at regular intervals for health and safety reasons.

I'm a compulsive Facebook and NB forum checker. Whenever I have a moment where I don't know what to do, I usually go to those two sites. I've closed the web browser and then reopened it two minutes later...I don't know why, it's not like I'm expecting something new to have appeared, but I do it anyway. Sometimes I honestly can't stop myself.

dios4vida wrote:I'm a compulsive Facebook and NB forum checker. Whenever I have a moment where I don't know what to do, I usually go to those two sites. I've closed the web browser and then reopened it two minutes later...I don't know why, it's not like I'm expecting something new to have appeared, but I do it anyway. Sometimes I honestly can't stop myself.

ditto!

But I also have to have my music so I have Grooveshark open as well as iTunes. In fact, I often accidentally play both at the same time and wonder at the cacophony coming out of my computer.

Lately I have also had the UConn website open since my current WiP takes place on the UConn campus. It is pretty common for me to have a site or two that I use for particular manuscripts.

I should add StumbleUpon...yep. :) And I'll add my own site, too. I usually know I need to write a blog post so the tab sits there and mocks me until I do one.

-Yahoo (my email)
-My blog (both the blog itself and the admin web dashboard)
-Facebook
-Youtube
-Geekologie

And other random sites depending on what's captured my interest. It sounds like I have a problem, but I'm actually way more productive when I have little distractions readily available, especially when I'm writing new content or rewriting something. Sometimes I need to let my brain work through some writing problem and I can't do that while I'm staring at the blank page of my writing program. So I take little mini-trips to the internet. I might pull up a youtube video I really like or just some background music. I keep my blog open because I have all my favorite links down the left-hand side so I might check a book blogger, author, or web comic out while I'm marinating on my writing problem or new scene.

I do have co-dependency issues with my email. I honestly don't know how to close that tab and still function.

- Hotmail
- Facebook
- This forum (usually)
- Another forum (usually)

I found the trick to stay productive is to fool my eyes/brain. Of all the tabs, I leave Facebook as the one that's open -- and then I resize my window on Microsoft Word so that I can always see the notification bar at the top of Facebook and the chat bar at the bottom of Facebook -- so I can keep on top of notifications when they pop up (and they pop up quite often), but I'm not distracted by profiles and the newsfeed. So... to my eyes and my brain, it's almost like my word processor has the Facebook bars at the top and bottom... It helps me stay in writing mode while feeling like I'm still on Facebook...

Did that make sense or did I just totally lose everybody?

youtube or itunes (for music)
wikipedia (for research)
aol (e-mail)
(and if i'm being REALLY unproductive) blogger dashboard
when i wander into the bransforums i lose all sense of time, so i try to avoid them while writing! :)