Writing Quirks

I’m not one of those people who has writing quirks or rituals. I don’t have a special blend of coffee or tea I need to get started, I don’t listen to a certain kind of music for inspiration, and I don’t have that one special notebook.

In fact, I don’t think I have any writing quirks. What I have, my friends, is an editing quirk. What is this quirk, you ask? It’s a nothing-special, purple mechanical pencil that happened to be close by when I started editing Pippa. It didn’t start as much. I just liked it. It wrote smoothly; it wrote small. It was always sharp.

But it wasn’t a quirk. I didn’t need the pencil. I could put it down whenever I wanted.

Then I lost it.

No big deal, right? I sat down with a chunky, yellow #2 that never sharpened on center, and I got to work. About two minutes later I tore the entire house apart looking for that mechanical pencil. It was while I was ripping the comforter off my bed I wondered if I might have a problem.

I never found that pencil. Luckily, I did find its green brother, and thanks to it my manuscript is ready to be sent off to Jeni in November.

Do you have any writing or editing quirks? Any special coffee mugs or notebooks? Or maybe you’re more of the ritual type. Do you need to drink a full pot of coffee, watch a few cat videos on YouTube, and then only write when it’s partly cloudy with a 60% chance of rain?

Tell me in the comments! I love to hear from you.