RIDICULOUS THINGS I'VE DONE FOR WRITING

I love writing with all my heart and it has its place in the deepest corners of my little soul. The written word makes me feel safe and happy, and I feel much lighter when I'm pouring my heart out onto the paper (or onto the computer screen, for that matter).

Writing, however, is not just about writing. In fact, I probably spend the least time by doing the writing itself. More often then not, I spend the writing time doing things to either find inspiration or things that (I am naive enough to think that) would help my brain to think better. Most of these things are ridiculous, but I have decided to share them with you.

In the past months, for the sake of writing, I have:

1. started learning Gaelic and done a massive research on the history of Scotland. I've also done a great research on Scottish fairytales and myths, herbal medicine and found a book of medicine from 18th century from which I cannot read a single word but I'm still very satisfied with having found it.

2. listened to people while already imagining how I could use their stories for the one I was writing.

3. experienced awful things and my reaction was "at least I can write about this".

4. enthusiastically spoken a dialogue out loud to myself to see how it sounds.

5. spent hours in front of a mirror making emotional faces so I could "show don't tell" how the characters are feeling.

6. screamed at people for turning on the TV when I was in the room, writing.

7. sat there perfectly still trying to imagine what getting a boner feels like.

8. bought five different notebooks to write things down so I wouldn't forget them (and then ended up never writing down anything).

9. created my protagonists as Sims and played the game with them to see if the ships I'd decided there would be would sink or swim.

10. spent several minutes being upside down because I thought that more blood in the brain would help me think better.

11. attempted to read three books in one day.

12. written four different beginnings to my story, chosen one, written sixty pages, and then decided to start fresh so I deleted all of it and started writing again with a completely different plot.

13. sacrificed my social life.
14. spent more time carefully picking names for my characters than I would do picking a name for my own child.

Let me talk about this, though. If you're in need of names for your characters (or babies or dogs or plants) then this site is definitely the best I've seen. There are lots and lots of names from different languages, religions, parts of the world. There are mythology names, medieval names, names of literary characters and more. As a bonus, most of the names' meanings are mentioned and you can search for names by them. They have a "catalogue" of surnames as well. This site is just the most helpful so I thought I would let you all know about it.

15. published a story on my wattpad, got scared and deleted it. Then posted and deleted it again in a month's time. (Now I'm in the phase of being confident enough to publish things so you can check out my latest idea.)
16. drank approximately three litres of coffee in less than two hours to stay awake because I think better late at night and early in the morning and I needed to finish a chapter.

17. went for a run in really cold weather to see how the cold air would affect my lungs because I needed to see how my character was feeling. It ended in pneumonia, 0/10 would recommend.

18. assigned proper songs to scenes I was writing, making quite a nice playlist. (Also the other way round—after hearing an amazing song, I imagined my characters in situations in which the song could be played.)

19. double (sometimes tripple) checked meanings of words that I safely know just to make sure. I usually used two (or more) different dictionaries and thesauruses.

20. written.

What about you and your experience with writing? Are there any ridiculous things you've done for the sake of it? Have you ever published/thought about publishing your very own book? Do you share your writing with people on the Internet? (If so, I'll be more than happy if you'd put a link in comments so I can  check it out!)