Yay Weekend! and Other Randomness

I am so grateful for the long weekend... I finally recovered completely from my cold about midweek, and was so delighted just to sleep in this morning.  I hope this Saturday finds all of you having a glorious time, staying warm and safe from January's bite and maybe making productive headway on your WIPs?  *cough* I have been procrastinating myself, which I'm going to talk about more in a minute.

But first! A few bits of random writing/blogging news.  My first piece of news is that there is no news yet on the partial request on my novel.  Alas, waiting is the writer's bane.  Second, I wanted to draw your attention to all the pretty blogfest buttons to the right - yes, I am participating in 3 fests in one week! Kind of like a blogfest triathlon or something.  My first blogfest was the Be Jolly By Golly last month, and it was so much fun I decided I wanted to do more. 

Third, I have been awarded the Fair Dinkum Award by Rachna!  I am really stoked about this one because of its Australian goodness.  Rachna, thanks, you rock so hard!  If you are not familiar with Rachna, please go check out her blog.  She always has great posts about writing, very educational and uplifting!

I am passing along the Aussie joy to:

Carol at Artzicarol Ramblings
Lydia at The Word is My Oyster
Joann at It's Dark, Dark in Here
Shayda at Shayda Writes
Erica and Christy

So, now we come to procrastination.  Notice I managed to talk about lots of other stuff and procrastinate talking about procrastination? Now that's skill. 

Is procrastination part of your writing process?  In one of my favorite movies of all time, Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances describes her writing process as thus:  "The procrastination is coming along fabulously. Soon it will breed abject self loathing, and then I'll become a writing machine."

I tend to procrastinate a lot.  Especially since I started blogging!  For me, it works to set deadlines, because I work better with a clear goal in mind.  When I first started writing my current novel, I was working full time and taking online classes to finish my degree, so I wrote pretty sporadically for a year or so.  My characters and story were constantly pounding in my head to come out, but I was just too busy most of the time.  Then, when I finished my last semester, all of that pent up writing desire came pouring out, and I went from 70 pages to 300 pages in a month.  I had decided I wanted to finish it by March 1, 2010, but ended up finishing at the end of January.  Having a goal in mind really helped me focus my energy and get it done.  For editing, I tend to make lists of things I need to work on and then tackle them one at a time.

So, do you procrastinate?  If so, what helps you beat it?