Set Your Mind

Yesterday, Steph talked about Thinking Write, a book she's been using to help get in writing groove. She also mentioned that I'm the one who spotted this book and forced it upon her, because - seriously - it's like the author went out and a wrote it just for our favorite Dallasite (Dallasian? Dalliance?). What Steph didn't mention is that, while over at her house a few weeks ago, I may have cracked up while watching her do one of the guided meditations the book comes with. Because I'm both easily amused and a horrible friend.

Here's the thing: there's a reason I bought the book for Steph and didn't pick up a copy for myself. Writing is personal. What helps one author won't work for another. Steph and I may be best friends, but we have processes and routines that are wildly disparate. Which is how it should be - writing is an intensely private act at the beginning. We're pouring every little piece of ourselves onto that page. How we go about preparing for that release should be as unique as we are.

Personally, I have a definite routine to my writing. There are a few pre-writing steps I go through nearly every day that help my productivity.

• Shut The Internet Off. Okay, I love the web. A lot. Which is precisely the problem! Inevitably, I write for a bit and then automatically click the little Firefox icon to check something. Thirty minutes later, I have gone through every site in my favorites: Twitter, Blogger, Gmail, Jezebel, Anderson Cooper fan sites. Everything. Luckily, with the touch of one button, my new laptop (small, pink, named Antoinette) turns off and on my wireless without the normal rigmarole. It's a godsend...even if I do find myself opening up blank browsers before remembering my ban.
• Pick a Soundtrack. From years of writing at noisy coffee shops, I have grown accustomed to listening to music while I work. This has become a helpful habit. Music is such a great way to set the mood of a scene or character. Of course, the wrong music can also knock you out of writing quicker than anything. To prevent that, I make soundtracks for my books - playlists that help me convey the emotions on the page. By the end of writing Into The Woods, I had 107 songs on the list and, the moment I pressed play, I could go into super-productive mode. It's a trigger for my creativity.
• Visualize The Story. Like my playlists, I have inspiration folders for each of my books. In these, I drop images I come across that evoke my story and characters. This is actually an idea I co-opted from the wonderful Maggie Robinson (Mistress By Mistake hits stores on April 27!) who blogged about her routine of flipping through image sites as daily inspiration. For the life of me, I cannot find that blog post now, but it struck me as a genius idea. Since then, I've collected images for each book and flip through them when I need a good dose of inspiration. It worked so well that I now make collages for each book that serve as my laptop backgrounds (my newest one, for CAIRO, is below and will get bigger, if you click!).
• Free Write. Most of the time, I stop my day's writing at the end of a scene or chapter. This is great for my peace of mind, but can make it a little hard to jump back in the next day. I've found that, when starting a new scene, it's really helpful to grab a piece of notebook paper and free write what comes next by hand. Inevitably, I end up halfway through, before I'm so in the book that I have to stop and type it all out. There's just something about pen and paper that gets the words flowing. If I wrote the whole book that way, my hand would probably fall off, but it's great for starting out.

These are just a few of my little daily little rituals, but each one has evolved into an important part of my routine. It would seem crazy to non-writers, I'm sure. Yet every writer I know has these little steps of preparation, whether it's picking the right music or going over the words from the day before. The steps are different for what kind of writer you are, but whatever works for you is the right way to go.

What is your pre-writing routine like? Do you need a perfect cup of coffee to start or do you pre-plan your next scene while shampooing your hair?