Now it’s time for links!

First up, Laura Fraser explores the politics of Chick Lit and Dude Lit at The Daily Beast. This is a FANTASTIC post. Read it!

Agent Nathan Bransford warns of the “pernicious momentum of first ideas”.

Agent Rachelle Gardener gives tips on author headshots (Remember Monday I said I thought every writer/blogger needed one?)

Both Jodie Renner and Simon L. Carter wrote excellent posts on how to format dialogue and write dialogue tags.

Jessica at Book Ends asks what makes a classic?

Jenn posits that playing World of Warcraft will make you a better networker (don’t tell my husband that!)

Michael Hyatt offers four surprising conclusions about author websites (be sure to have your own website graded on WebsiteGrader.com).

Writer’s Digest’s digital Big 10 Issue is out. I have yet to read a magazine on my iPad, but I’m going to download this one.

Chilean artists released a bomb of poems on Berlin Tuesday, so I’m going to bomb you with a poem, too. Written by my friend Matthew Zapruder, I give you Pocket.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

As some of you know from reading this excerpt from my work in progress, I was a fashion model from 1988 to 1997 (full-time for the first six years in Europe and Japan and then part-time for the last three while I was in college in LA), so clothes were a HUGE part of my life. I modeled for designers like Armani, Jil Sander, Hermès, Missoni, Kenzo, Comme des Garcons, Yohji Yamamoto, Martin Margiela, and Dries Van Noten. I did their big press shows in Paris, Milan, and Tokyo. I did their show room and their fittings, and I wore their clothes in magazines. But my relationship with clothing was—and still is—complicated.

I’m one of those people who loves and appreciates nice clothes but finds people who spend a lot of time and money on them shallow. When I was a kid, I had no sense of fashion and no interest in it. I began modeling for the money, not because I liked clothes. But I had to get interested, fast, because clothes were the product I was selling, and I wasn’t going to sell them well if I didn’t like them. I grew to appreciate the difference between cheap knockoffs from Gap and the real thing from Hermès or Missoni. The fabrics were softer, the cuts better, the designs more elegant and refined. And because I worked as a fit model as well as a press model, everything fit me—perfectly. I learned to love designer clothes and ask other models, “Who is that?” (not “Where did you get that?”) when pointing to an article of clothing.

I bought $400 Anne Demeulemeester shoes (this was 1990, before people were spending $800 on Manolo Blahniks and Jimmy Choos), a $1000 Jil Sander jacket (directly from Jil at the wholesale price), and $150 Agnès B. shirts by the bagful. I spent $500 a month on clothes, and that was a lot less than many models. One woman I met said she spent $10,000 on clothes—every MONTH. I was most envious, however, of my friend who booked Vogue covers and wore thrift store clothing, managing to look stylish without spending much money at all.

Flash forward twenty years, and I am now 40 years old and living in Berkeley, CA, one of the least fashionable cities in the United States. The great thing about Berkeley is that I could go to the supermarket in my pajamas and no one would care, while in Paris I wouldn’t be caught dead stepping foot outdoors in tennis shoes or jeans (all that has changed since the 90s. When I visited Paris in 2005, the fashionable women were wearing Citizen jeans and Nike or Converse tennis shoes.) The drawback of living in Berkeley, of course, is that I sometimes DO spend all day in my pajamas, switching from my fuzzy socks to my Ugg slippers to take the trash out or get the mail. The only time I don’t wear tennis shoes is when I wear a dress, in which case I wear the one and only pair of flats I own—black and fraying at the edges.

So what happened? How did someone who used to spend thousands of dollars on designer clothes end up wearing $10 sweaters from Target? For one, I make far less money than I did in my 20s. I’m a part-time mom spending my nanny days writing for less money than I pay my nanny, which means my budget for clothing is exactly: $0. I’m also in a profession that doesn’t care how I dress. An agent isn’t going to care about the shoes I’m wearing as much as how well I can describe shoes, in a scene, in a chapter, in my book. And the only designer jacket that’s going to matter to my readers is the jacket on my book.

But wait, doesn’t image matter at ALL in publishing? What about personal branding? How you present yourself online matters, doesn’t it? Of course it does. And if you post photos of yourself online, you’d better be looking literary in front of a brick building and not doing beer bongs while getting lap dances from strippers. What you’re wearing doesn’t matter as much as how personable and professional you look. An agent or editor is going to look at those pictures and ask themselves, “Will this person present him/herself well at readings, on book tours, and on author panels at writers’ conferences?” Because although much book promotion is now online, authors do still make public appearances, and do still conduct interviews—whether in person, on television, or on someone’s video blog.

Should you have professional pictures taken of yourself for your website? Unless your mom or best friend is skilled with a camera, I say yes, you should. Just as you should have your website professionally designed, and your book professionally edited. Why? Because there’s a heckuvalotta competition out there, but there’s also a heckuvalotta poorly designed blogs and a heckuvalotta poorly written books. Professionalism will make you stand out above the rest.

What do you think? How do you present yourself to the world? Is your online persona different from your real life persona?

What about you? What is your process for starting a new project? Where do you begin?

For myself, I have a very vague idea of what my next book will be. First I thought it was going to be nonfiction. Then I realized that I never read nonfiction and get really bored reading nonfiction and that all I really care to read are literary novels. So then it occurred to me that maybe I need to take my nonfiction research and turn it into a novel. I like that idea! But I am SO SO far from beginning a draft. I haven’t even begun to research it let alone come up with an outline or a plot. Oy. I get anxious just thinking about the process. And I envision myself (maybe this will be a self-fulfilling prophecy) taking years to really figure out a) What it is I want to say b) How I’m going to say it (plot), and c) What style I want to say it in. Maybe if it were my full-time job I could whip off a draft in a year, but with two kids, freelance editing, blogging, and finishing up what I hope will be the last revision of my memoir, I see it taking more like 5. And in five years, Tawna Fenske, and all fast writers like her, will have whipped off another six books, two or three of which will perhaps get published.

What about you? Are you a lightning speed writer like Tawna Fenske or a pokey poke writer like me? Do you wish you could write faster than you do, or are you happy with your pace?

1. Aim to write a bad book (or bad story, or bad chapter). This will eliminate your fear of writing crap. It will shut off your internal editor and allow you to just sit down and write, no matter what comes out.

2. If you’ve already written a bad book (or a so-so book, or a good book), and you’re in the revision stages, aim to make this draft just a little bit better. Don’t expect this draft to be the final draft, or a great draft, or even a much better draft. Just aim to make it a little bit better than the last draft.

3. Break your big goals into bite-sized, manageable tasks. Make them so small you will eliminate all your fear and resistance. For instance, if your goal is to write 1000 words today and you really really really would rather clean the gutters, try writing just 100 words. Still want to clean your gutters? How about 50 words, or even 25? Once you get started, you’ll find yourself writing much more than you expected.

4. Write in a journal. These could be morning pages à la Artist’s Way, or they could be typing on your computer about how sick you are of your book, how much you’d rather be outside, how you have a million things to do, how you need to make more money, etc. Just get it all out so you can move on.

5. Find the fun in writing again. Remember why you first started writing? It was fun. And reading was fun. You loved it and thought it would be much more fun to write for a living than to clean gutters. Now that you’re finding yourself applying for gutter-cleaning jobs, think back to when writing was fun. What was fun about it? Inventing bizarre stories? Getting revenge on ex-girlfriends by turning them into villains in your novel? Take a break from your WIP to write something fun. It could be a poem, a sci-fi story, a children’s story—anything. Fall in love with writing again.

6. Put your WIP aside for a while and write something else. Work on a short story for a while, or an essay. Don’t set it aside for too long, but sometimes you need a break. I did this last week. I started a new book and about half hour into it, I missed my WIP. I closed the document and went back to work on my book.

7. Take a break from writing for a while. Give yourself a chance to miss writing. Don’t set goals; there’s no point in feeling bad about yourself if you really need to take a break. Give yourself a finite amount of time—a week, a month, whatever you need. Use that time to do some things you’ve been missing out on. Take a vacation, get some exercise, cook some gourmet meals. Then get back to work.

8. Research. Spend some time researching your WIP. Gathering information is a fun and easy break from writing and will serve you when you sit down to write. But limit your time researching so that it becomes a means to get excited about writing again and not as a means to procrastinate.

9. Eavesdrop. Spend sometime sitting in cafes eavesdropping on conversations and taking notes. This is a great way to learn to create authentic dialogue and it gives you an excuse to drink tea and eat chocolate croissants.

10. Reread your WIP. I find that reading my book helps me in three ways. 1) I find myself automatically editing and before I know it, I’m working on my book again. 2) It makes me realize that my book is good and WILL sell one day. 3) It helps me stay connected to my work in a way that is resistance-free. There is NOTHING scary about reading, so I can put in a few hours on my book without much effort at all and, like I mentioned in 1), before I know it, I’m writing again.

11. Read other books. Underline/highlight when you read. When you come across great passages, fabulous descriptions, apt metaphors, take notes. Reading good books will help you to become a better writer, and it will get you excited about writing again.

12. If all else fails, check out Jerry Mundis’ methods for fighting writer’s block. He has an audio seminar and an out-of-print book that this writer raves about. I asked Sean Miller, by the way, whether he still thought Mundis’ strategies for fighting writer’s block worked now that three years have passed, and here was his response: “Three years gone, I still wholeheartedly endorse Mundis and his method. Without it, I don’t think I would have finished my doctoral thesis in a timely fashion with a minimum of stress.”

The Wall Street Journal has a great article about vanity press going digital.

Meg Waite Clayton has a great series of posts on how writers get started. Start with Part I and read all six!

After the New Yorker released its 20 Under 40 list (I’m honored to know three of them—Daniel Alarcón, Yiyun Li, and ZZ Packer—Ward Six released a 10 Over 80 list, including Beverly Cleary, Harper Lee, and Elmore Leonard. Check them both out!

Rachelle Gardner at Rants & Ramblings has an inspirational post for writers eager to get published. And her guest blogger, Susan DiMikele, says there is no good time to write.

JD Moyer teaches you how to get luckier, and, what a coincidence, Meg Waite Clayton’s guest blogger Julie Compton writes about luck, too!

Simon over at Constant Revision has a fabulous post on the cycle of blogging.

A friend sent me this great New York Times article on 50 Fancy Words. Thanks Herzel!

Samuel Park has a great post on why writers irrationally dislike their WIPs.

And Sierra Godfrey has an interview with New York Times bestselling author Allison Winn Scotch.

Have a great (HOT if you’re in the Bay Area) weekend!

When I was seven, I started a book of poems, all handwritten on that gray paper you get in grade school to practice your penmanship and bound by a black piece of construction paper. I wish I could find that book now, but I do remember the first poem I ever wrote, titled after my sister’s boyfriend at the time:

Bruce the Moose
Bruce the Moose
Had a rubber goose
Bruce the Moose
Just Loved Dr. Seuss
One day Bruce’s Moose
Got Loose

You’re probably asking yourself, “Wait. I thought Bruce was the Moose.” Well, it just so happens that Bruce the Moose had a pet moose.

By second grade I was winning contests. Every month we had a reading contest. We had to record how many minutes we read non-school books at home, get our parents to sign the paper, and turn it in to our teacher. I won the contest every month. I entered a creative writing contest with a story called “Christy Goes to the Olympics.” I have no memory of what that story was about, only that I wished my name were Christy and that I wanted to take gymnastics with my friends, but my mom wouldn’t let me because she thought I’d break my neck. So through my story I got to live my dreams. It came in second place after my friend J’s “How The Leopard Got Its Spots.” J is now a Hollywood producer.

Later, in middle school, I remember reading “The Most Dangerous Game” and LOVING that story. It was so gripping, so full of suspense. I wanted to write stories like that someday, to entertain. In high school I grew a bit disenchanted with reading because we had to read so many “boring” books like Grapes of Wrath and a ton of Shakespeare. I began reading the Cliffs Notes before exams. Then, I graduated and moved on my own from the Midwest to California and began devouring books again. I read everything I could get my hands on—from Sartre and Hesse to Vonnegut and Hemingway. There were so many good books out there! I couldn’t read fast enough, and spent the time I wasn’t reading browsing the shelves of bookstores.

By that time, I was living abroad—in Paris, Milan, Munich, and Tokyo—so I was constantly on the hunt for the local English-language bookstore. I hated to part with my books, so I shipped boxes home via boat once I accumulated more than I could carry. I was very lonely much of the time, and books kept me company. In them I found friends, and I felt less alone. Many days, you could find me either in the fiction aisle browsing for authors I hadn’t read or in the self-help aisle looking for guides on how to be happy. I read books like The Tao of Pooh, Seat of the Soul, and The Greatest Salesman as well as works by Anais Nin, Graham Greene, and James Baldwin. Instead of writing short stories and poems like I did when I was a kid, I wrote in journals. I wrote everything from grocery lists and appointments to rants about how much I loved or hated my life, depending on the hour of the day. Here’s a journal entry from a time when I was living in Germany and had more free time that I liked:

” I used to do everything quickly Now I take my time. I go to bed early & Get up very early. I take a long shower—washing my hair & shaving my legs each morning. Then I have a slow breakfast with toast, orange juice, sometimes meat sometimes muesli & an apple. Afterward I drink a cup of tea. Then I wash the dishes. All of this takes time. And that is my goal. To lose time.”

Eventually I got interested in creative writing again. I read Syd Field’s Screenwriter’s Workbook and started to jot down notes for a screenplay. I wrote a farce about models called “The Hanger” in which supermodels are magically teleported to Supermodel Planet after they retire, where they spend their remaining days rescuing Earthlings from fashion disasters like VIPs (visible panty lines) and stocking with runs. If I’d entered it in a contest, it probably would have won a prize for the worse screenplay ever written. I wrote a short story, too, about a Native American in Paris. I can’t remember the details, but I have a copy that I translated into French. It could probably win an award for the worst short story ever written. I had no idea how to write. I had never taken a class, and my English wasn’t good because no only had I not gone to college, but I had spent the years after graduating from high school living in non-English-speaking countries studying French, German, and Japanese. I was thinking in French, dreaming in French, and having trouble remembering even some basic English words.

But I continued to read, and I continued to write in my journals, and that kept my passion for writing alive. Once I was 26 and applying to UCLA as a junior after completing my general ed requirements at three different colleges (American University in Paris, University of Michigan and Santa Monica College), I applied to film school and didn’t get in. Someone suggested that an English major could just as likely write and direct movies, so I re-applied as an English major and was accepted. I read Beowolf and Canterbury Tales, and The Awakening and Beloved at least three times each. I was happy to discover new books (Maxine Hong Kingston, Octavia Butler), but sad not to read Faulkner or Joyce. I mastered the English class essay and got an A on every one. I wanted to be a creative writing major, but because I had transferred in and the creative writing classes had to be taken consecutively, it would have taken me an extra year to graduate. So I settled for being an English major, switching from English Lit to American Lit in my last semester to avoid having to learn Middle English. I wrote my honor’s thesis on the graphic novels “Maus” and “Paul Auster’s City of Glass.”

By the time I graduated in 1999, I had grown disenchanted with Hollywood. I didn’t have a film degree, and I had PA’d (worked as a production assistant) on a Nike commercial and hated it, and that was the path tho working in Hollywood, PA’ing. I decided I wanted to go to med school and started studying math and science to take a test to enter a one-year pre-med program at Scripps College, east of LA. Then one of my professors said to me, “What are you doing? You’re a writer” and a friend said to me, “Meeg, you’ve always wanted to write. Med school will always be there. Why don’t you give writing a chance? Give it five years, and if it doesn’t work out, then go to med school.” I decided she was right. I should give writing a chance. I decided I wanted to write for magazines, and I applied to a couple in LA. Then I met a journalist who worked for the Christian Science Monitor, and he told me if I really wanted to learn the craft of writing, I should get a job at a newspaper, where I’d be writing every day. I applied to several newspapers and got hired by the Brentwood Media Group, which published six weekly community newspapers, ie, ad rags. I worked there for two years, often staying at work past midnight to write, edit, and lay out the articles for the paper because we were so severely understaffed. I loved every minute.

But the goal of any community newspaper reporter is to work at a big daily paper like the LA Times and to get there, you need to start at a smaller daily newspaper, so I applied to papers in LA and San Francisco and got hired by the Oakland Tribune Company to work in their Fremont office writing for The Daily Argus. I did that for two years, and then I got really burned out. There was no money in journalism, no jobs to be had and no raises to earn. I was racking up credit card debt in order to live in the expensive Bay Area. If I was going to be poor, I may as well teach until 3 and write after work, I thought, rather than getting home at 8 p.m. every night. So I took the CBEST and began substitute teaching for the Oakland School District, probably the worst job I’ve ever had. My glasses were stolen one day. I came home with gum in my hair another. I was constantly calling the security guard to remove unruly students. When I told one student to stop throwing spitballs and sit down, she called me a racist (I was a white teacher in mostly all-black schools). Another called me a “White snow-ho,” which I told her was redundant. And then I applied to grad school.

The thought of spending two years reading and writing was so exciting to me. I had joined a writers group and begun writing a memoir about my years living abroad, and I hoped to use school to finish it. Two years later, I graduated with 100 pages completed and joined the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, where I rented an office and completed the first draft of my manuscript. I spent the next four years getting married, having two kids, and writing three more drafts of my manuscript, which brings me to the present. I’m now on what I hope will be the last draft of my memoir and am extremely eager to move on to other writing projects. I want to write nonfiction books, and I want to write novels. I want to continue to write book reviews, and I want to keep up my blog.

I had intended this post to be titled “Why Do You Write?” but I think my own answer to that question is apparent in my writing journey:

1. To entertain
2. To make readers feel they aren’t alone
3. To teach
4. To widen readers’ horizons, either through the story or the language itself
5. Because it’s what I love to do

What about you? How is your writing journey similar to/different from mine?

When I moved back to the states in 1995, I was on a health food kick, so I tried Laura Scudder’s peanut butter. I hated it. I hated that I had to stir it, and I hated the taste. I still bought it once in a while, but for the most part, I didn’t eat a lot of peanut butter.

Since I’ve been living in Berkeley, I’ve been eating a lot of peanut butter again. For a while I ate the (no-stir) Skippy natural peanut butter, and then I discovered Adams. It was similar to the Laura Scudder’s I hated in that I still had to stir it, but it tasted good, so I started buying it. I ate jar after jar after jar, and began serving it to my son once he was old enough, too.

Then one day, I went to the supermarket and noticed that the Laura Scudder’s was on sale. I decided to compare labels to see how much fat/sugar/salt it had compared to Adams (which is all peanuts and has no added sugar and less than 1% salt). The labels were identical in every way, right down to the company that distributes them: Smuckers. Here I had somehow convinced myself that Adams was superior to Laura Scudder’s when, in fact, they are the SAME peanut butter branded with different labels. One has a male/sur name (Adam/Adams) and the other has a female name. One has a bright blue label with large, circus-font letters while the other uses cursive on earth tones. While one emphasizes “all natural” and says “creamy,” the other says “old-fashioned” and “smooth.” The ONLY difference between the two products is their branding. That’s when it hit home how important branding is. MORE important than the product itself. Much more.

So, when it comes to blogging, Twitter, and FB, what makes a good personal brand? Rather than quote from studies or other blog articles, I’m going to tell you what stands out for me when I look at someone’s blog/Twitter feed/personal brand.

1. Clean, simple design. Designs that are busy or too dark and difficult to read are a turnoff for readers. Clean and simple—with or without photos or other images—is always best.

2. Professionalism. A blog full of great advice, insightful thoughts, hilarious stories, or great information and links is much more valuable than a blog full of ramblings about what your cat did to the couch last night. Unless it was really funny. In that case, tell me all about your cat.

3. Consistency. Whether you post every day or once a week, it’s important to be somewhat consistent so readers know what to expect, and aren’t disappointed when they get something different.

4. Integration. It’s important to integrate your brand across multiple platforms, that is Twitter, Facebook, and your blog for starters. You can start by linking them so when you post to your blog, it updates to Twitter, Linked In, and Facebook. There are multiple ways to do this, and I’ll talk more about that in a subsequent post. But you need not only to integrate the content, but your personal brand as well. Does that mean your Twitter background has to match your blog background? Not necessarily. Mine doesn’t. But if you do have a logo or a book cover or some awesome art, yes, use it, and use it across all platforms.

5. Personalization. If you don’t own your domain name, buy it. If it’s already taken, think of something original and buy that instead. This isn’t to say that your blog can’t be JohnSmith.blogspot.com or JohnSmith.wordpress.com, but it looks much more professional if you have your own domain name: johnsmith.com. Also, don’t use a blog template (like I do) if you can afford a web designer. A professional web/blog design really stands out among the gazillion blogs using the same templates over and over.

6. Promotion. It’s important to get the word out about your brand, but not to self-promote to the point of irritating your audience. I have one friend who is ALL about self-promotion, and I cringe every time I get an invitation or update about her latest workshop, networking event, or web seminar. Don’t make people cringe.

What do you think makes a great personal brand? Can you cite examples of people who have created successful (non-irritating) personal brands?

Last summer I read a book called Stumbling On Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. If you’d asked me right after I put the book down, I could have quoted you all sorts of passages, but now the few things that remain with me are:

1. To maximize your happiness, order what you want at a restaurant. Don’t get something different from the person you’re with if you both want the same thing.

2. If the intervals between the times you have something (say Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch ice cream) are not too short, you will always maximize your happiness by getting your favorite thing rather than a variety of things. Only when the intervals are close will you get sick of your favorite thing and get more happiness out of an alternate thing.

3. People who are disabled are just as happy as people who are not, and yet people who are not think they would be miserable if they were disabled. In other words, what you think will make you happy is not always the case. In fact, it is rarely the case.

And that brings me to my epiphany about happiness. Okay, well it’s not a full-fledged epiphany so much as a vague outline of an epiphany, but here it is: Most people do not truly WANT to be happy. Wait. Doesn’t that contradict what I said above, that everyone wants to be happy? Well, I think that everyone THINKS that they want to be happy, but that they really don’t. I think people would rather fit into society than be happy because to truly be happy, you’d have to stop participating in society. And here is what I mean by that:

We’ve all read enough books/magazine articles/poems/zen koans to know that the key to happiness is living in the here and now and appreciating what we have instead of looking toward the future and striving to have more, right? Ways to do that could include:

1. Thinking daily about all that we have rather than focusing on what we don’t have (some people may do this through a gratitude journal or a meditation.)

2. Doing the things that make us happy—reading the books on our shelves, wearing the clothes in our closet, going for walks, gardening, watching a sunset, playing with a pet or a child, all the things we can do now, for free, that make us happy.

But most of us would rather work toward being more than we are and having more than we have than doing the things that make us happy. Rather than settling for the apartment we live in, we want to buy a house. Rather than being content with that house, we want to fix it up or buy a bigger house. We want to make more money next year than last year. We want to buy nicer things, take fancier vacations, invest more money. When/where does it end? It doesn’t. Why? Because if we were content with what we had, if we didn’t strive to earn more/achieve more/own more, we wouldn’t fit into society. We’d be considered unambitious, perhaps lazy, maybe even dumb. I think of the heroes on all my favorite TV shows: The Sopranos, Mad Men, Big Love. They’re all smart, ambitious, and striving to get ahead. One could even argue that our economy would fall apart if people stopped wanting and buying new things. If everyone were happy with what they had, what would make the world go around? And not only that, but what purpose would we have in life? Striving to get things gives us something to do; it keeps us busy. Without that we’d be left to live like our primitive progenitors: feeding and raising families would be our main purpose for existence.

When I think about writing, I wonder how many of us are content to write regardless of whether we ever get published. Most of us want to get published—badly—even though we know we won’t make much money and that it’s very unlikely to allow us to quit our day jobs. My question is why? Do we write because it truly makes us happy? Are we TRULY happier agonizing over dialogue and character and story arc than we would be out watching a sunset or reading a book? I can’t say I am. I do love to write, but if I were going strictly for happiness, I may bail on my book at this point. I have it in my head that getting my book published will garner enough happiness to make up for the unhappiness I’ve endured through countless revisions. But will it? Really? Happiness tends to be short-lived while unhappiness endures. I find that when I achieve a goal—like run a half marathon—I feel good about it for a few days and then I move on to think about the next thing I want to achieve. I don’t relish in it for weeks the way I do after a great vacation. So why are we working so hard and not taking more vacations? I suppose it’s mostly about self-worth—about feeling like we’ve accomplished something and made something of ourselves rather than focusing on what makes us happy. Why is self-worth more important to us than happiness? Is it something inherent—or egos? Or is it societal pressure to not be considered a slacker? Because if it’s inherent, maybe there’s no way around it. But if it’s societal, then removing ourselves from that part of society (Do not read beauty magazines; they will only make you feel ugly) and instead surrounding ouselves by like-minded individuals whose goal is happiness would be the solution. Either way I’m convinced that if we’re not happy—truly happy—it’s because happiness isn’t truly our priority, as much as we think it is.

What do you think? To repeat the SAT question: Do you think people are capable of finding happiness or are they always searching for something beyond what they have?

1. Blog
2. Do your laundry
3. Read a book
4. Do the dishes
5. Go running
6. Make some tea
7. Get something to eat
8. Check your e-mail
9. Balance your checkbook
10. Shop online
11. Read/comment on other blogs
12. Read the newspaper
13. Walk your dog
14. Take care of your kids
15. Go to the bathroom
16. Watch TV
17. Clean the house
18. Organize your desk
19. Call a friend
20. Go shopping
21. Clean out the basement
22. Take a nap
23. Take some photos
24. Download those photos
25. Organize those photos
26. Upload those photos
27. Look at Facebook
28. Twitter
29. Update your website
30. Sync you iPod/iPhone/iPad
31. Do some yoga
32. Bake some cookies
32. Eat some cookies
33. Start a photo album
34. Send a birthday card
35. Do your taxes
36. Go out for dinner
37. Check the mail
38. Pay your bills
39. Write a To-Do list
40. Respond to an e-mail
41. Water the plants
42. Make a doctor’s appointment
43. Go to the doctor
44. Go to the dentist
44. Browse for books
45. Return something to a store
46. Go grocery shopping
47. Cook something
48. Go to the dry cleaners
49. Buy someone a gift
50. Send someone a gift
51. Meditate
52. Feed your cat
53. Play with your kids
54. Donate to a charity
55. Go for a walk
56. Go out for coffee
57. Plant a vegetable garden
58. Take out the trash
59. Start a worm compost bin
60. Plan your next vacation
61. Think of ways to save money
62. Look at stocks
63. Listen to a podcast
64. Research baby products
65. Research cars
66. Book a camping trip
67. Take your cat to the vet
68. Plant some flowers
69. Knit
70. Wash the windows
71. Skype with a friend
72. Call your Mom/Dad
73. Kill a spider
74. Watch the sunset
75. Splash in a puddle
76. Backup your documents
77. Read a magazine
78. Iron your shirts
79. Change a lightbulb
80. Go on a vacation
81. Go for a hike
82. Go to the beach
83. Go for a bike ride
84. Give your dog a bath
85. Put flea drops on your cat
86. Make homemade gifts/cards
87. Make candy
88. Go to a movie
89. Google exes
90. Look up gradeschool friends on Facebook
91. Learn a new language
92. Download some apps
93. Play a video game
94. Play with your Wii
95. Play Farmville
96. Change your profile picture
97. Go out late and sleep in late
98. Take a long, hot bath
99. Host a dinner party
100. Restock your disaster bin
101. Write a list of things you are grateful for

What about you? Can you think of any more ways to procrastinate?