Yes, chocolate. I might be a pantser for the most part, but I believe in preparing for writing emergencies. By writing emergencies, I mean writing a scene in the book that is an emergency, but also staring at that blinking cursor on a blank page.
With that in mind, I'd like to wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day.
If you're scratching your head at me, well, now you know how my husband feels most of the time.
Okay, back to chocolate.
First, there is cake.
Cake is an important skill because if you have food allergies or intolerances or any other kinds of specialized dietary needs, cake ingredients can be substituted for medically safe ingredients allowing you to have cake. Plus, baking is an excellent activity to engage your creativity in a rewarding way when a scene is plaguing you. There's nothing like the deadline of the oven timer to bust out a writing sprint to earn the reward before it's ready to treat you.
Beyond cake is chocolate in bar form. Like many holidays, Valentine's floods store shelves with these bite-sized rewards. Smaller portions mean small rewards for incremental goals. Breaking your writing goals and tasks into bite-sized quantities allows for the goal itself to be less intimidating and the reward to come sooner.
I'd share a picture here of all the bags of chocolate I'm going to get for Valentine's, but I'm not buying them until the 15th. Yes, the day after Valentine's. If you're brow is now furrowed, you know how my kids feel. Start scratching your head and you've become an official member of my family trying to figure me out. If you already know where I'm going with this, you're probably my agent. (Hi Jessica.) Anyway, I write a lot and I love chocolate. I also love a good deal and that means recognizing Valentine's is the biggest candy holiday of the year and everything is half price the day after.
Since I write a lot and have no qualms about bribing myself as a form of motivation, buying discounted chocolate is one more thing that helps me keep writing through whatever life throws at me.