#WriterLife TAG by @KelsNotChels

My new favorite YouTuber @KelsNotChels posted a video last week starting a #WriterLife tag. Well, I am not a YouTuber (a lot of effort and ego that I do not possess) but I loved all of the questions! As a blogger, I figured why not just answer them here?

1. Write Fuel: What do you eat/drink while writing?

- Relatively recently I started drinking coffee in the morning and found that caffeine (like alcohol) is a double-edged sword for my writing. The right amount and I can produce words like Michael Crichton. Too much and I am so useless I might as well be a monkey with a typewriter. Usually I just drink a lot of tea when I'm writing. Black tea, white tea, herbal tea, I have it all. And I find snacking next to impossible - which might be a good thing.

2. Write Sounds: What do you listen to while writing?

- If I want to get in the Zone I turn on Coffitivity and an 8tracks playlist or a Pandora station specifically crafted for writing ambiance. And then I put my super awesome Bose headphones on and it's like my muse is whispering in my ears.

3. Write Vice: What's your most debilitating distraction?

- Tumblr, no contest. Sometimes I go there to put up a short gif reaction post about my WIP and TWO HOURS LATER emerge with a queue that's three days long.

4. Write Horror: What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you while writing?

- Suddenly realizing that the pain in my left wrist has caught fire and I've ignited my tendinitis again.

5. Write Joy: What's the best thing that's ever happened while writing or how do you celebrate small victories?

- Best thing is something I can't actually talk about because of the Spoilers. I celebrate small victories by waltzing around the kitchen with my cat. No lie. My boy can confirm.

6. Write Crew: Who do you communicate with or not communicate with while writing?

- I put the headphones on so the boy doesn't distract me. But sometimes I talk to my TTT buddies or the fine folk on Twitter for inspiration and/or working out plot problems.

7. Write Secret: What's your writing secret to success or hidden flaw?

- Secret to success: trust the process and don't stop just because it gets hard. (That's not really a secret, but it is a truth that's difficult to accept sometimes.) Oh wait! My real writing secret is that when you don't know what to write, write a dream. Or a flashback. Even if you don't end up keeping it, it always seems easier to churn these out than the narrative storyline. And it can produce useful ideas!

8. Write-spiration: What always makes you productive?

- Music and tea! I am also highly inspired after reading a good book or watching a good movie. And reading about other writers.

9. Write Peeve: What's one thing writers do (or you do) that's annoying?

- Overly descriptive passages that don't serve the story. My biggest pet peeve about myself is my inability to finish something before moving on to the next project. But I'm working on it!

10. Write Words- Share one sentence from a project. Past or present.

 - From Grave of the Goddess:

He felt like an hourglass running out of sand.

(And here's the video. I love writers talking about writing!)

Fear of Writing the First Line

First writing prompt from A Year of Writing Dangerously by Barbara Abercrombie:

"What is your metaphor for fear of writing that first line?"

I go back to the world with my lighthouse for this and probably all other metaphors that concern my writing.

Fear of writing the first line means I am stuck in the forest. I can't see that it must end - that if I just keep walking I will emerge on the banks of the road that leads down to the rocky beach and my lighthouse where everyone waits for me. Although in reality I enjoy feeling lost within a forest's borders, able to immerse myself in nature, in my worlds of words that feeling turns into a muffling sense of panic. The trees around me lace close together and block out daylight. They silence the whisper of wind and water. It takes all of my fortitude to drag my baffled gaze down from their branches and look ahead. There are gaps between the trunks of those trees, and if I just keep walking eventually the sunlight will filter down to dapple the forest floor at my feet.

Most of the time when I am stuck in the forest, all I do is sit on a rock and stare into the tangle of dark tree limbs. I cannot break my staring until a bird flits through my field of vision (sudden inspiration), or - best of all - my fox appears to show me the path out again (muse brings me back to a good writing state of mind).

I spent two years working in the woods and loved it (most of the time). But getting stuck in their midst does seem the most apt metaphor I can think of for when I cannot even get one line of writing down.