Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens in lots of weird genres like, fantasy (Blood of Kings trilogy), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). Find Jill on FacebookTwitterPinterest, or on her author website.

So far I’ve started out the new year with a great To Do list and a sweet phone call with my agent, who helped me get some focus on that To Do list. But there was one other thing I’ve done to start out 2014 in a strong way.

I updated my treadmill desk.

I don’t know if I told you all, but I have a lot of pain in my shoulders and hands from typing all day. A few years back I set up a bunch of things to help me get up out of my chair and move around. See this post for all the things I did. But it wasn’t long before I was ignoring those things. I tried hard not to ignore the treadmill, but the thing is . . . it was a pain. I’d have everything open on my desktop computer. My story, Google, the online thesaurus, my book guide, the map from my book, etc. And I’d have to save and shut it all down, pull out my flash drive, then pull it all up again on my laptop. No, it really wasn’t that difficult, but it was a pain. And that meant that I didn’t do it. I just kept sitting at that desk and ignoring the treadmill desk I’d spent so much time making!

But this year I had an idea. And I put it into action. Here’s what I did. I bought a second monitor—a little bigger that the first. I bought a wall mount for it. I bought a wireless keyboard. And I bought a twenty-five-foot montior cord and a VGA splitter cable. My husband mounted the monitor on the wall for me. I hooked everything up. And it worked. My desktop computer now has two screens, and one is mounted on the wall over my treadmill. Now I can walk and work and I don’t have to close down my files to do it.

I’m so happy!

As the years have gone by and you continue writing on a regular basis, what things have you changed about your workstation? What works great? What needs an adjustment? Be proactive about it. If you can get your workstation to be a location that helps you be productive, that is ideal.

And don’t forget to get up out of that chair, take breaks, and stretch. You don’t want to end up like me someday with lots of pain. Take care of yourself!

It’s a mess, but it works!

Oh, and I almost forgot! Outcasts released yesterday, and in case you didn’t see my posts about it, Omar created a comic book to give you all for free. Visit this link to see it.