1. Hang it round your neck as a handy alternative to an albatross.
2. Kill things with it. Depending on the thickness of the MS you can use it to kill things. Beetles, cockroaches spiders - if you’ve got a particular thick murder mystery which refuses to take off you could always actually kill someone with it. Going to prison helps book sales, look at Jeffery Archer.
3. Carry it everywhere with you under the pretence of working on it anywhere. Some people go to the gym, some people wear those funny weights under their clothes so they’re always doing a micro work-out. Most would-be writers spend a great deal of time lugging half a dead tree about under the pretence that editing it on the night bus home would be a great idea. If you’re still waiting for inspiration to get editing then you might as well leave the lump at home.
4. Hide it. The guilt of a heavy thing watching your every wasted moment is compounded by it’s heaviness. Hide it somewhere where it can’t see you. It also makes for an interesting version of hide-and-seek against yourself, in the past.
5. Make detailed written edits which you will entirely ignore when it comes to actually editing the electonic “master” copy. I did this. It was good to have read the thing - and pretty important I’d say. But all those edits and chicken-scratch marks I’ve made are pretty much ignored in the MS as I can spot them as well in the electronic copy. However, if you’ve got a couple of pens you need to run out (so you can spend more time buying pens) this is a great way to achieve this goal.
