Home-work

I am in full-on organisation mode! After moping about for a while this afternoon thinking about the progress I'm making on the book, I decided that I need to set myself a stricter schedule, as I did when I was working on the first draft. So here's what I have worked out - two chapters a day. Finish by 3 August. Do a final read-through in the first week of August, making sure all the changes are ticked off. Send to my advisor on 10 August.

Self-motivation is hard. I'm getting better at it, but it's still hard.

Andrea's Tips on Working From Home, In No Particular Order, Which Aren't All That Revolutionary, But Are Fun to List:

1) Get dressed as if you were going to an actual workplace (well, pretty much - it can be a zany, creative imaginary workplace rather than a corporate, suity one. But dress so that if you were suddenly called out to a meeting, you could go with only minor adjustments). Psychologically, this gets you in work-mode.
2) Drink lots of coffee.
3) Set a daily timetable, with breaks scheduled in. I don't work an eight-hour day, because I find I get too drained creatively - instead, I work from 10am to 6pm, with an hour for lunch and two half-hour breaks. So I end up working a six-hour day.
4) Install a cat. They produce useful warmth and a pleasant working environment.
5) Get a housework schedule established and stick to it. It's so easy to get distracted from working by the sudden, urgent need to pair all your socks or clean the back of the toilet cistern with an old toothbrush or alphabetise the spices. This is known as procrastination, and is a Bad Thing.
6) Make sure family and friends know that, although you are working from home, you are still working and are not eternally available to run errands, meet them for coffee at the drop of a hat or have long phone conversations. Of course, sometimes you will want to do things. But you need to protect your time, or else it will become fair game and you will end up driving your mother's dog to the groomers' every week (speaking from personal experience).
7) Get out of the house regularly! Go for a walk. Get some fresh air. Otherwise you will go stir-crazy.
8) Stop working in the evenings and on weekends, just as you would in a more conventional workplace. It's easy to over-work when your 'office' is only one second's walk from your bedroom. And over-working plays havoc with your health, peace of mind and relationships. It also means you'll burn out at some point. I used to pull late-nighters when I was in the first throes of writing this book, but I soon figured out that it made me tired, cranky and creatively useless after a few days.
9) Eat properly and resist the urge to snack endlessly as a distraction or because the fridge is just so ... damn ... close.
10) Reward yourself when you reach your own milestones! It's fun, and gives you a sense of achievement and progress. And no one else will. (Although they should).