What's your writing totem?

"Dead" cats laying all around and the judge shows on in the background.

If I'm really into something I'm working on, I try to change my environment as little as possible while I'm still at the keyboard, which often means doing things like putting the same song on repeat so I don't get distracted. That's not quite the same thing, but I do get wary of stimulating other parts of my brain and suddenly derailing.

I like to listen to the music that my main characters' listen to while I'm writing; I've made some stations at Pandora.com to listen to while I'm writing. One of my MC's is into Tool and I've gotten a lot of initial inspiration from Maynard, the music, and lyrics alone. It actually helped me understand my character who was strange to begin with.

My other series has a heavy metal undertone to it, so I'll listen to stuff like Megadeth, Pantera, and of course my main characters’ (who are succubus twin sisters) favorite, Metallica. Occasionally they'll get into a heated argument about pre and post Black Album Metallica and take my word for it, it’s funny.

Like others, I need my glasses to write:

Beyond that I don't know that I need anything, though having an IM open to one of my writing buddies can speed the process. I can write perfectly well without doing that, but being able to dump an updated word count in every 500 words or so makes me trundle along that much faster.

Otherwise, it doesn't really matter so long as I'm comfortable and not getting interruptions every couple of minutes.

Clothing is optional. coffee is not.

Light and my computer and my stick disk where I save my WIP. (Don't have a laptop right now, unfortunately.) Sometimes I put on music, sometimes I can't stand it.

Now if I had a laptop, I'd go to the teashop that I've started to hang out at to do my research reading. This way, I'd be less distracted by my TV and crocheting projects.

Oh, and I was also confused by the term "totem", pretty much for the same reason Tehuti was.

Cranky said:

So long as I can see, I can write. I write a little more easily with music playing, though.

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That about sums it up for me, too.

As an actress, I have two totem objects that live on/in my dressing room table/cubby during the run of a show.For writing, nothing.