10 Things That Are More Fun Than Doing Research For My Book

By

1. Dipping almonds in Nutella.

First of all, why the hell am I just finding out about this now? Was there previously some collective group memo alerting everyone to how awesome this is that I missed?  I think I might be sick. But, as my father always used to say over Thanksgiving Dinner, ‘eat through the pain Brianne, eat through the pain.’

2. Looking At Every Single Picture of Jon Snow Tumblr Has to Offer

They better be paying his hair stylist a ridiculous amount of money because his hair is glorious, some might say too glorious for the rather violent battle which appears to be taking place, but who cares? I want to touch it… tooooouch it.

3. Follow Obscure Wikipedia tangents that have nothing to do with book research

Reading about how H.P Lovecraft died in poverty and his works only became highly regarded after his death may not have been the best idea. The actor who plays Jon Snow is younger than me? What am I doing with my life? Why is there Nutella all over my keyboard? Am I crying?

4. Rediscovering guitar hero

Man, I used to love playing this game in college! I’m just going to take a quick break and play a few songs, you know, for old-time’s sake. Man, I was super lame in college….

Four hours later…

Sweet baby Jesus and all his angels, my fingers feel like someone stomped on them 50 times while wearing stilettos. Book research? I can barely see straight, the world has turned into a giant treadmill/guitar neck. I need to lie down.

5. Writing pointless internet articles.

The internet could use another article about relationships, right? Or why not waste four or five hours researching my favorite fantasy novels to write a summer book list?! Huzzah!

6. Read the comments section of my articles

Perfect, now I won’t be motivated to write anything for at least four hours, or maybe, if I’m lucky, the rest of my life.

7. Re-read Harry Potter.

How many times have I read these books? I’m not even sure that I enjoy them anymore at this point; this book was clearly written for a 12 year old. God damnit J.K.Rowling, why do you make this shit look so easy?  Maybe I should jump on the writing books about Wizard school/ Vampire bandwagon and just never look at myself in the mirror ever again.

8. Clean obscure things in my house.

Now seems like the perfect time to scrub every single one of the baseboards in my house. I mean those things are filthy. I wonder if we have any bleach left, cleaning the grout sounds positively delightful…

9. Do my real, actual job (The one that pays me money…)

Sweet gods of technical report writing, why the fuck did I put this report off till the last minute?! I’ve got three months of data to sort, reduce and turn into cohesive semi-understandable sentences. Why… just why? What was I doing for the last two weeks? Oh yeah… stupid Jon-Snow-GIFs-Featuring-Sex-hair/black-hole-of-wikipedia.

 Well, hello all-nighter, we meet again!

10. Writing short stories.

People can somehow make tons of money writing these… right?