While Chris Baty drives thousands of would-by novelists batty by encouraging them to write 50,000 words in one month, those wacky kids at On The Media have come up with something a little less taxing for those of us with somewhat shorter attention spans. Their Novel Challenge has just one rule: write a novel in 12 words or less. There’s precedent for this, of course. Haiku. And Hemingway’s famous six-word story, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn,” is an archetype of what some refer to as flash fiction. Regardless of what you call it, here’s my entry, submitted just before OTM’s deadline of midnight tonight:

“Twelve words?”
“Twelve!”
“Too much pressure.”
“You’d rather 50,000?”
“I’d rather nap!”

No, I’m not going to win any awards for that one. But I’m not about to reach the Nanowrimo finish line either, so at least I’ve contributed something to the annual November challenge. And now for that nap.

One of the first rules of just about every personal productivity plan is to avoid constantly checking your email. It’s part of the GTD credo, it’s mentioned about a dozen times a week on Lifehacker, and I recently caught the latest iteration of it in Michael Hyatt’s blog, courtesy of (of course) Lifehacker: “Unless you are in a customer service position where you have to be “always-on,” you should check email no more than two or three times a day.” Hyatt’s advice is very similar to a tip I made about ten years ago on iVillage, as part of a set of Five Tips for Email Users:

Checking your email frequently is one of the big time-wasters of the modern office. Avoid it if you can! Set aside two periods when you know it will be quiet—once at 8:30 in the morning and again at 6:00 p.m., for example—and check your mail then.

Sage advice, from Perton then, and Hyatt today. Unfortunately, I’ve almost never followed it, and I suspect Hyatt hasn’t either. In today’s always-connected world, with Outlook, Blackberrys, Gmail Mobile, text messaging and all the rest, it’s impossible to stay away from email. And the worst part of the always-on environment isn’t the mail itself, it’s the culture that has grown up around it. Even if you somehow have enough discipline to avoid email all day, chances are good that doing so will be detrimental to your career. Colleagues, clients and the rest of the connected world expect everyone else to be connected 24/7 as well, and that’s even truer now than back in 1997 when I was at iVillage.

Must read: Paul Boutin’s How to coast to a writing career in Valleywag. Paul, a veteran journalist and blogger, lays down the law in a series of hilarious and dead-on points, including this classic for bloggers who want to make the move to what Paul calls the “real” media:

“Don’t troll other bloggers for links, or try to get onto Techmeme by posting about whatever’s already there. NEVER try to win a fight with Dave Winer. People in the real media don’t care what your Technorati rank is, they’ll just Google you to see what you write.”

Of course, to really make it as a freelance writer, one part of the work you can’t coast on is self-promotion. Paul may make it seem easy, but it’s not unusual for successful freelancers to spend as much time pitching as writing. That’s an even harder skill to master than getting your drafts in a day early and within 10 words of the requested count—and one reason I’m in a staff position, rather than freelancing. Guess that makes me a real slacker.