Coffee & Writing

I have certain rules for writing that may prove useless to you.

1. Drink a pot of coffee (for writing or enjoyment) or tea, but not Red Bull or any other funky energy drink. And for goodness sakes, do not take pills unless they are prescription! Fun fact, I had to write a paper for school, and I had trouble staying awake, so a friend and I made a midnight run to Kroger to get a Monster. (She was familiar with the brand.) I drank the Monster and took a 30-minute nap.

2. Always have the TV or music on, but it must be something you’ve seen or heard a zillion times so your mind isn’t trying to follow it. It’s a good way to keep time. I, personally, watch “Doctor Who” or sometimes “Sherlock” and I have made a mix with Dave Matthews Band, Pharrell, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, Alanis Morisette, Beastie Boys, etc.

3. If you are awake in the middle of the night, try writing for 30 minutes or longer, should your muse strike you down.

4. Write in your pajamas at least once.

5. If you are on an hours long streak, get up and stretch every 45 minutes or hour.

6. Remember what you are writing is the first draft, so don’t beat yourself up if something sounds bad, you can fix it later. Also, remember that if you have a certain word count you want to reach, that can be fixed later too. (Something I’m struggling with right now.)

7. If you have grammar check, sometimes it’s wrong, so don’t always pay attention to it.

8. If you write in a chair, I highly recommend a laptop cushion for your lap. Amazon has tons to choose from. Choose wisely.

9. If you write at a desk, make sure you are completely comfortable because you may be there for a while. I haven’t found a comfortable enough desk chair, so greetings from my sofa chair.

10. Don’t necessarily print out everything. Save old versions and work from that, otherwise you will be wasting a lot of ink and paper. Folders on the computer are brilliant! Label everything! If you have a chapter, don’t just save it as the chapter number, save it with the chapter number and the title of the chapter (if you have one).

11. Try to read books similar to yours. This can be difficult, I know. I have a comprehension problem, so I’m the writer who doesn’t read and the vegetarian who doesn’t eat vegetables. Yes, I do know how absurd that makes me.

12. (Gosh, you’re still reading? Thanks!) If you have a pet who is crawling all over your computer, don’t feel bad if you have to push them away. They will still love you. If you have children, I don’t know what you do. Sit them in front of “Finding Nemo” for the umpteenth time?

13. If you find you have writer’s block, start a blog, that way you can still write (the more you write, the better you get) because you aren’t focused on anything but something in your life: your kids, writer’s block, your pets, cooking Spagettios because you don’t have time to put together a charcuterie board along with Oysters Rockefeller and all the fixin’s, hobbies, work, anything.

14. Most importantly, don’t spill coffee on the computer, because that’s bad. (I have some experience) If you think you might do this, get a container that does not spill, even when turned upside down. I have a toddler sippy cup called the Munkin Miracle; however, I constantly forget to put my coffee or tea in it. I’m an Einstein for sure.

15. If you have a pet who likes to crawl on your keyboard and stands on a letter (my cat chose to get to page 72 with the letter “b” recently), I recommend taking off the autosave. If you save constantly (which I highly recommend, like after each sentence) youcan just close out the document and you will be where you left off, if you have the autosave on, you will have to hand delete what your beloved pet has decided to add to your story. Deleting 50 pages was not fun.

16. Make a backup of your work on a thumb drive after every writing session that way you have it in case something happens to your computer.

17. When you look for an alpha reader or a beta reader be careful of the ones out there who charge money! You can find alpha or beta readers on Facebook for free, but even still beware of people trying to charge you money. Those are probably fake. I looked at a beta reader and she had something spelled wrong on her page. Bad sign.

18. Here is a dangerous suggestion. Writers are supposed to spit on AI, but I have found if you write in, “Is this good:” then paste your work into whatever AI program you are using, it will give you helpful information, like about pacing and character development, things like that. However, if it gives you suggestions on what to write IGNORE IT like the plague! That is plagiarism. It is not your work or your writing style.

19. Long story short (too late), just have fun!