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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Habits of the Species Writerix Fictionalus

The species Writerix Fictionalus has many strange but noteworthy habits.


The subject to your left is one of this strange species. Note the wild look in the eyes. Apparently this one's muse is loose and sharing.


Today in a scientific breakthough, we will discuss three of those notables:

Auditory:
I'll admit it—I eavesdrop, especially in line at the mall. If you're lucky, you can catch two conversations at once. In that case, you may have to incorporate the "new-mother- sway" to catch both without being too obvious.

Someone once told me, "Thou shalt not eavesdrop." But since they couldn't show it to me in Scripture and since I'm a writer, I ignored them. Besides, you can find wonderful fodder for fiction by listening in on conversations of which you're not a participant.

Oh come on. Don't tell me you've never sat in a restaurant, trying to ignore that toddler in the booth behind you. You know the one who stands and drools down the back of your collar. Just as you're about to turn around and ask the parents to kindly restrain their little darling, you hear the dad say, "If only Uncle Harry hadn't left that axe where Bobby Jo could find it."

Now if you're Brandilyn Collins, you suddenly have a serial axe murderer, and in the time it takes to wipe the drool off your neck, you've got a three book series plotted. And if you're Diann Hunt, you've got a stand-alone about a quirky hair stylist who couldn't find her scissors.

A single word gleaned from an overheard conversation can spark a "what if" that becomes a full length novel. My friends and family know when I glaze over, no longer hearing them, my muse has awakened and is running with that "what if". They just smile indulgently, knowing I’ll rejoin them eventually.

I have a tee shirt that says: Careful or you'll end up in my novel. Hmm, I wonder if that's why conversation suddenly stops when I join a group of friends around the coffee kiosk at church.

Dietary:
Relevant to writing, there are two basic dietary needs: caffeine and chocolate. The caffeine keeps the writer awake and the chocolate is their reward. I have it all figured out. I get one M&M for every 25 words written. If I write a thousand words, I get 40 M&Ms.

Coffee can change by the species' genre. While there may be exceptions to this rule, on the whole, romance and women's fiction writers prefer flavored coffees often containing their other dietary staple – chocolate. Suspense and thriller authors are hard core, dark roast or espresso imbibers. It fuels those black thoughts needed to create the criminal mindset.

Habitat:
From cave to garret, a writer's lair is as individual as the author. I once had a nest – I mean office of my own. Until my grown son moved back home for a time of regrouping. Now I have a corner in the master bedroom. Habitat doesn't seem to inhibit writers, but they do have some strange quirks about their space.

A feathery yellow duck pen that lights up when the point is pressed against paper, my special coyote coffee mug, a bamboo backscratcher, several different colors of sticky tabs (okay, I'm anal)—all are essential to my creativity. Should one be missing, my muse won't come out to play.

So what are your writer's habits? Do share – I know you have some quirky ones. And those who share will be entered in a drawing for two book, both humorous:
Only Uni by Camy Tang


and





Stuck in the Middle by Virginia Smith.

25 comments:

  1. CONGRATULATIONS to Virginia Smith who was named Writer of the Year at Mt, Hermon last night!

    A fitting tribute is givin gaway ehr book today.

    Congrats, Ginny! You deserve it! :D

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  2. Oh, I love reading about what other writers do!

    One of my requirements for writing is a great chair! You can't write if the chair you're sitting is in uncomfortable. I had one chair that I loved so much that I finally wore the seat out of it. I don't mean just a little either! There was no seat left, no cushion, nothing but the bare metal poking through the bottom. Since that chair, I've moved all over the place trying to get comfy!

    My cup is also an essential of my writing ritual. Don't give me a tiny little cup of coffee. I need a MUG! And by MUG I mean one of those that holds half a pot of coffee. My favorite? "What Deadline?"

    Thanks for the post. This was fun!

    In Him~
    Jae

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  3. The walls around my desk are camouflaged by all sorts of tacked-up papers: maps, floor plans, outlines, pictures, flowers, portraits . . . I'm not sure I know the colour of the room anymore! I feel as if I'm huddled in a tent all etched over with secret messages.

    Add a haunting celtic strain and a lamp spilling dim golden light and voila! the atmosphere for a writing session!

    Oh, and an ice-cold can of diet coke. I'm all for the caffeine and chocolate! :)

    God Bless!
    Jenna

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  4. I have to zone out before I can zone in. I do that by playing a few rounds of Snood. It's a somewhat mindless game you can download from the net. It clears my head and then I can zero in on my task at hand. (Love those "z" words.)Oh yes, I also need the required coffee with a dash of cream of course.

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  5. Solitare is my game of choice to mentally unwind. I put on the headphones, play a couple of hands on the computer, and when the kids are asleep, then I can start to write.

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  6. Maybe a little quirky, but I have a stash of different types of bubble gum that I keep in a hidden desk drawer!! I chew it, get the sweet out, and reach for another piece. I go through a lot of bubble gum!! LOL! The other thing I must have is a window to see out for daydreaming. Luckily my desk faces 6 windows. Gotta love it!

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  7. Oh, what a hoot!!

    I watch the paintball scene in Failure To Launch (DVD) on my puter before I write. It clears the palate, gets me laughing and ready to write comedy.

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  8. What a fun post!!
    And I do like my coffee straight, usually. But sometimes I like a Carmel Latte. :)

    What do I need to write? My laptop (duh!) my lapdesk, my fuzzy (in case I scare myself and want to snuggle), my PDA with earphones to drown out the sounds of the house and my mind, movie music and some uninterupted time. Now I plot and everything without the earphones and I have storyboards and post it notes for that.

    I already have Only Uni, just loaned it to my neice who was waiting for me to finish it, lol. I just couldn't resist posting.

    Hugs!

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  9. Coffee, glorious coffee!

    But I do a great deal of my writing late at night. When I started (seriously) my daughter was 5 & I'd write from around 9pm until midnight or 1 am. Sometimes I'd go to work early and write for an hour or so before my scheduled work time. Now that's a strange habit!! Now I go to bed around 11:30, sometimes even earlier. I work from home now but still have a preschooler to deal with so I get very little writing done during the day :-)

    My one habit that I think is strange is that I like writing rough drafts on paper. The notebook isn't important and I'll have parts of various stories all jammed together in 3 or 4 different notebooks. What's important is that I use a pencil, which isn't all that strange. What's odd is this: my friend says pencils are great because you can erase mistakes (so no one sees them). But I don't erase, I cross out! So what's the point of using a pencil? Especially considering how much I have to squint to read it later?!

    I'm having a bit of writer's block right now. Got the first chapter started but it doesn't have a spark, yet. I think maybe the problem is that I've been typing it, or working with a pen. I need a pencil - preferably a mechanical pencil, with a nice eraser that I'll never use!

    Gotta go work for the paying job now - but I'll be back to read more of these fun comments.

    Tammy Doherty
    She's Mine - 2007 TBL finalist

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  10. I have many strange habits, but the first that comes to mind is that I eat my way through the entire beginning of a book. Gotta have chips and chocolate to draft out the characters and do the outline. Must have a ice cold coke or a Starbucks Mocha Frap to work through the plot. Lately it's girl scout cookies as I fill in my GMC (goal, motivation and coflict) chart.
    Then when I get to the end of the book where I'm trying to wrap it all up, I eat nothing. Literally, I've typed ten hours straight holding my bladder and not eating. Dying from thirst and looking pretty ugly.
    Somehow the pounds aren't balancing out in the end. The cookies are winning.

    Rhonda Nain
    Visions in Print, ACFW Southeast Chapter
    Issues of the Heart, coming Dec 2009

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  11. My writing habit? Habit what is a habit - is that a cousin to the Hobbitt? Or is it Nun clothes? Don't have that - just my favorite jenas with a hole in the pocket.

    Hmmm. On my way to the store to look for a good habit.

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  12. Cheetos. Hot Tamales. Hazlenut Coffee. A big leather chair. And my laptop. What else could a girl need?

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  13. Oh my goodnes,, all of you have me laughing! Jae, I hope you find another good chair, just don't go for that Hawaiian one. :o) See YouTube.

    Jenna, I have a board like that, too. I'm visual, totally.

    Karen & Monica, if I start games first, I never get to writing. LOL They're my reward along with the M&Ms. :o)

    Do you blow bubbles, too Maggie? ;)

    Pammer, a fuzzy incase you scare yourself? ROFLOL!! Yep, I can see that! :D

    Tammy, when I write on paper, I prefer a pencil, too. It seems to write smoother than a pen.

    Rhonda, those are some strange dietary habits! LOL That's got to be one of the funniest I've seen.

    Patricia, I hope you can find that habit. Snicker.

    And Ariel, hot tamales and hazelnut coffee? That's weird!

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  14. One of my quirks when I was homeschooling my son at a young age and meeting a deadline was to put a small purple sock over the doorknob to my office. That meant Mom (or Wife!) was serious about writing right now and not to disturb her (if at all possible). :)

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  15. You know, I really wonder if anyone else does this.

    I mentally TYPE all the time. I catch myself, especially while watching cable news, typing that crawl that's always going along the bottom of the screen. I even have the little icon-y picture of FoxNews, saved and hit, Control V to paste it in...this is all in my head. I catch myself making typos, too and have to stop and back up, then the crawl has moved on and I start at the new spot that's on the TV.

    I sometimes find myself mentally typing dialogue on TV and even dialogue in real life.

    I can't stop!

    In fact I miss stuff because I'm typing instead of listening.

    It's like a bright light burned into my retina, only it's typing burned into my finger muscles.

    Does anyone else do this? I write a LOT, at least 1,000 words a day and often 3,000, and I'm pretty fast from my years working on a newspaper, so maybe it's like a song getting stuck in your head, maybe if I'd quit writing, I'd quit typing and the 'song' would fade.

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  16. My laptop is currently stationed at the edge of a busy great room in house containing 9 other people. Two other computers are to my left, a pair of parakeets to my right, and a movie tends to be playing behind me half the day. Headphones are a must. I usually keep my mix of Christian rock and soundtracks on random, but choose specific albums when I need to concentrate. My best writing, however, happens at night, when the birds are quiet and my siblings are in bed.

    I already own both books, so feel free to opt me out of the drawing!

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  17. Fun post today, Ane!

    I share a lot of people's habits. Is that scary or what???

    I spent WAY too much on my ergonomic chair from Soma. However, I was vindicated when even my husband commented how comfortable it is.

    In addition, I will stand when I write. I have boxes I put my monitor, keyboard, and trackball on so that I am ergonomically correct as I stand in front of the computer. It's great for my back. When my feet get tired, I go back to sitting (everything comes off the boxes pretty quickly and easily).

    I have a bowl of M&Ms next to my desk because they completely took me through my third manuscript in the Sushi series, SINGLE SASHIMI (it'll be out in August). I think I should buy stock. I have bought out the rest of the bags in Target before, so don't think I'm exaggerating.

    My beverage of choice is tea. I drink up to 4 liters of tea a day (have you guessed I'm a chick of extremes???).

    I also write with Post-It notes stuck on my closet doors. Here's a pic for anyone curious.

    I better stop before people think I'm reeeeeeealllly loco (no comment from YOU, Ane!)

    Camy

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  18. Mary, I thought I was the only one who typed in my head! I also see, in my mind, which words can be typed completely with the left hand (not too many work with just the right hand). How weird is that?

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  19. To Blissful - smart thinking! :D


    Mary, I would say no one but you, but then Linda chimed in and she does it, too. I'm staying away from you two. snicker

    Katie, I don't know how you do it. I suppose it's like the white noise at the coffee shop. But home noises are very distractring to me. They usually mean someone wants me to do something.

    mrfph whhtmmmpst. Thanks, Camy. snerk. :D

    Watch tomorrow morning for the winners. My son will pick the numbers.

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  20. I have a writer's desk tucked into the corner of my bedroom. My laptop fits perfectly. I've taken a simple bedroom chair and use it for the desk, I actually had to slip a pillow under the cushion to raise it high enough to sit comfortably at the desk.

    In all, it's a wonderful little world that I've created. Once I sit down here and start working the time just flys by.

    -Suz

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  21. I am not aware of many quirky writing habits. I look at old emails sometimes while my mind is wandering. I imagine the author's faces and listen to their voices. Other times, I look around the room and think about what it would be like to be a major appliance. Sometimes, I just let my imagination run wild and let the images run through my head with reckless abandon.

    I am such a big kid:).

    Have a cup o'joy
    and a fresh taste of the bread of heaven...

    Lynne

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  22. Oh my goodness, Ane, you are a GENIUS!!!! You eat an M&M for every 25 words!!! So THAT is the secret to getting my daily word count up!! I'm going to try it.

    You are my inspiration!

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  23. Lynne, wild imaginations are the first prerequisite of a fiction writer. Congrats! :D

    Diann, it was you who first inspired my M&M habit. But I also told you where it can lead. Muwhahaha. :D

    Okay folks, the winners are:

    Blissful and Diann Hunt. Blissful, please email me at ane@anemulligan.com so I can get your snail mail address.

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  24. Great post, Ane. Ha. Ha.

    Mary and Linda. I had to laugh at the mental typing thing. (disclaimer: I don't mean mental in the negative way, at all, really!)

    I don't do that, but now probably will since you introduced it to my twisted mind. When my dad writes long hand he will air write... sometimes entire paragraphs...before his pen touches the paper. While ghostwriting (is that where that term came from? ) his tongue does this weird contortion thing that seems to go along with the words he's writing. I did inherit the tongue thing but only if I'm VERY focused.

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  25. Kelly, I also inherited a tongue thing from my dad. My kids tease me if they see me doing it, so I try not to let them see it.

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