Your drug of choice?

In the past, I drank. A lot. I still do but not as much. It's much harder to get into the zone without it but I can still manage.

Coffee for sure. Much more now that I do more writing in the morning than at night.

I think psychedelics every couple years really helps too, providing you're doing some deep thinking while tripping, not staring at pretty lights.

chocolate covered coffee beans. So much drier than the wet version.

We're alike in the music department. I have separate playlists for each WIP to not only get me in the groove for writing but to get me in the groove for writing that particular story.

I have set places and times to write. That helps both fit writing into a busy schedule and it forces me to be productive during those times. Unless I'm chasing rabbit trails down AW . . .

Walks/drives. If I've dedicated a day to writing, a walk in the middle of it keeps my creative juices flowing. If I'm really blocked, I'll take a "road trip" around my state, plugging in music that might inspire me, and just think things through.

Color coded journaling. I've just started this. When I'm brainstorming, stuck, faced with a problem, I journal it in a physical notebook with my favorite colored pens. The switch in medium + fun colored pens really seem to keep my thoughts moving.

For me, the thing that most helps me to write is...writing. And I don't mean that in some obnoxious "butt-in-chair" way! But if I'm stuck or not in the mood, the thing that gets the gears turning is to sit down and write, even knowing it'll be awful, even knowing I won't keep it. I'm like a crank engine, maybe - rusty and full of friction until my brain turns over, and then I can work more smoothly.

Also caffeine.

My drug is thinking about attractive women...it's fun to build stories around them (as both of my novels do); they help with my creativity, and I like embedding them with qualities that I wish I could find in a real-life woman but never do.

I absolutely cannot write with music playing because I LISTEN to it and it takes my concentration away from my story.

Beyond that, coffee of course... lots of it. I drink at least a pot a day even when I'm not writing.
Peanut M&M's... love those things.

Of drugs in general - my parents were dealers to the Haight-Ashbury crowd back in the 60's, so I was around that stuff a lot as a little kid. Pot and Acid were my drugs of choice at a teenager and into my 20's. A lot of the bikers I hung around with were doing Crank... but that was never my thing. And of course the usual, beer and moonshine way back when. These days all that stuff has been left behind.

1) Keep amply hydrated.
2) I use pocket-size, spiral notebooks. I bring these almost everywhere to jot down ideas.
3) I create custom Word and Excel documents to help organize the chaos I create from brainstorming.
4) Change of environment. I walk for exercise and do quite a bit each day. Changing venues helps me think differently, creatively speaking.

Caffeine, hands down. I've never been a coffee drinker, so I get mine through tea, loaded with sugar for the double whammy. Coca-Cola does it for me too, especially when paired with pizza or a cheesesteak for the carbs.

Walking is excellent. Gardening also.

Dan Rhys said:

My drug is thinking about attractive women...it's fun to build stories around them (as both of my novels do); they help with my creativity, and I like embedding them with qualities that I wish I could find in a real-life woman but never do.

Click to expand...

Charming objectification there dude.

AW Admin said:

Charming objectification there dude.

Click to expand...

Whatever works, right? :-D

I like listening to very quiet music I've heard a lot (so I'm used to all the sounds and they don't pull me out of my focus), but I also found listening to certain streamers playing video games actually helped me focus really well, which was a surprise.

I mean, it's in large part due to me actually writing stuff in the genre, but my current "drug" is magical-girl anime. Feminine (and the occasional tomboy) protagonists kicking butt in pretty outfits, while coming closer together and growing as people in a cheerful, optimistic fashion? Yes yes yes. Gives me all the good happy vibes that make me a good happy writer.

(And it's doubled if there's lesbian vibes in it too. I've found myself wishing I could include some cute gayness in my current WiP, but cannot...yet. :3)

Sweet tea and chocolate milk. Perfect for the overweight diabetic who sits in a chair all day.

Jeff

tea

Hm.

Being in a good mood. If I'm in any kind of a funk, I really can't write. It just feels like a bridge too far, to make the effort to write. I know that if I do try to write in these moods, it'll be flat because I feel flat, and feeling that I'm writing flat, useless junk will only make me feel worse. Of course, knowing or thinking it's pointless to write doesn't help my mood much, either. On the other hand, if I can work through that and it turns out well, it can turn around a bad mood. But it doesn't always turn out well, and it's basically a big ol' catch-22.

But if I've had a good day, or I'm feeling optimistic, then I will cheerfully sit and write, and the cheerier I am the more relish I take in writing heavy, tragic shit. I was in a super good mood when I wrote a particularly sad death scene. It turned out well.

As others have said, a nice walk to clear the head helps tremendously. It gets the blood flowing and gives your brain a chance to break away from the thoughts you were having.

The only caffeine I have is a cup of green tea in the afternoon, or the occasional soda--never coffee--because I'm pretty sensitive to caffeine and value my sleep. I'm a social drinker, so I don't write under the influence of that, and actual drugs are not my thing, so that's a no. I would say chocolate, but that's just part of my regular, nutritiously-balanced diet, so....

Sleep.

I get enough sleep, I write well. I don't, I write crap that needs to be revised later on a day when I did get enough sleep, thus creating more work for me to do.

Best time to write, afternoon after a 1/2 hour nap and a cup of tea. But the nap's the important part.

Sorry to be so boring (but not very ) but I had severe insomnia and was nursing a baby at the same time and now I just think sleep is such sweet nectar I can't wait to get to it in the evening. Truth.