The Writer’s Life Tag!

I was tagged to do this by the ever-amazing Tracey Dyck. I love doing tags during the school year because they are so easy to put together, which is a huge time-saver for me. Speaking of time… on to the questions!

Write-fuel: What do you eat/drink while writing?

Nothing! I find that I get too distracted by the food or tea or whatever and can’t get any words down. Plus once I’m in the writing zone, I tend to forget about the outside world, and then my tea gets both cold and over-steeped. I also have a fear of clumsily spilling it all over my laptop and loosing everything. It happened to one of my friends at school this year and it was really bad.

Write-sounds: What do you listen to while writing?

Anything and everything! I listen to whatever I feel like, and I usually put on a playlist of songs I already know or love, or a movie soundtrack. For example, I listened to Chicago by Sufjan Stevens, In My Arms by Jon Foreman, and Yellow and Clocks by Coldplay while typing up this post.

Write-vice: What’s your most debilitating distraction?

YouTube! Or really anything on the internet. It’s a distracting place, and I procrastinate writing more than anything else. Is that a cat video in the sidebar?

Write-horror: What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you while writing?

Writer’s block. I know it’s not a physical thing, but there is nothing worse than sitting down to pump out some awesome words and ending up staring at the screen in defeat for half an hour.

Write-joy: What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you while writing, or how do you celebrate small victories?

I love finishing things! I love finally writing scenes I’ve been envisioning in my head for months. I love those writing sessions where I get completely wrapped up in my own story and I almost forget that I’m the one writing it. I usually celebrate things by doing a little victory dance.

Write-crew: Who do you communicate with or not communicate with while writing?

While I’m writing, I tend to talk to nobody, because it’s hard to multitask holding a conversation and writing. When I’m not writing, I usually bounce ideas off of my writing friends  online, but whenever I happen to be in the same province/country as them I love talking face-to-face with real-live friends (it’s a rare occurrence, I know).

Write-secret: What’s your writing secret to success or hidden flaw?

Define “success.”* My hidden (or not-so-hidden) flaw is that I am a perfectionist, which makes it hard for me to even start writing a lot of the time, because I’m afraid of not getting it “just right.”

*We spent a whole week in my philosophy class this semester discussing what success was. It was painful to say the least. The answer? Who knows! : /

Write-spiration: What always makes you productive?

Nothing makes me more productive than a random bout of inspiration on a day where I have time to write. Inspiration could come from anywhere, but I find it usually comes from interesting books/movies/news stories that get me thinking “what if…”

Write-peeve: What’s one thing writers do (or you do) that’s annoying?

Over-dramatizing the writer’s life. I find that on a lot of writing blogs, my own included, we writers tend to over-emphasize how weird and crazy we are. I’ll be the first to say that writing is awesome, but being a writer doesn’t justify being rude or anti-social because you think you’re a Fancy Introverted Writer with Magical Writing Powers and everything must be Just So for those powers to work so magically. Like I said, I’m guilty of doing this myself, and really it’s my own insecurities and self-doubt showing through when I think that I need to emphasize how Writerly I am because I do x, y, and z. Really we writers are just people. People who like telling stories, a lot.

I tag:

You! Go forth an be tagged!

 

Thanks for stopping by! What write-things do you do when you need to get some work done? Tell me below in the comments!