What do you need, baby...just tell me *wink*

I will also take this opportunity to name my two Pimp the League Contest winners, chosen by the totally scientific method of counting comments to my post, assigning everyone a number in order, and having my six-year-old daughter pick two numbers. It's scientific, I promise. Really. Edison worked that way.

So, Wendy (sassyjinx) and Melissa (mela-lyn), come on DOOOOWN! You've both won "The Yezer Made Me Do It" magnets. Email me--you can click the linkies to the left, my name then "Email me", and give me your street adresses so I can send the Hellhounds to force you to buy my book mail you your fun magents, totally suitable for your refrigerator or any weapons other metal you may have lying around and not at all deadly! They're fun! They're magnety! You can use them to pick up pins from the carpet!
(BTW, remember when you were a kid and you got to do that magnet lesson in school with those big black magnets? And you'd spend ages magnetizing, like, a safety pin because it seemed like it would be such a cool thing to have? I love magnets. Anyway.)

So, my wierd needs and pet peeves. Um...

Honestly, I'm pretty normal when it comes to the writing. I just need a keyboard (well, one that's connected to something, obviously, otherwise I'd be like Jingle Dell just imagining I'm making my lunch.) I like to have noise in the background. Sometimes I use my iPod, sometimes I don't. Mostly I don't because I like to have it up loud and I need to be able to hear if one of my girls decides to try and kill the other one. But I don't need absolute silence, I don't need to be able to concentrate--honestly, I can concentrate no matter what's going on around me if the story is flowing, and I tend to write in bursts anyway.

I do hate when I'm interrupted, though. Especially when I've been sitting in silence for several minutes, then the minute I start typing again somebody needs something.

I need to take a break before I start writing. I check my email or whatever, then I take five minutes to read or have a snack, then I start.

I write all of my story ideas in longhand, not typed. My very loose synopses (I'm not much of a plotter), lines of dialogue that come to me, scene sketches, all that stuff goes in a notebook in longhand. I like black ink, not blue, but it's hard to find a really good dark, thick, black. So much of it comes out sort of grayish. Unless you get those ones where the ink is really liquidy but I don't like those because they tend to spread.

I prefer to type in Courier because it's a little bigger, but lately I've not been bothering to switch from TNR.

I like my laptop because the keys are quieter and less effort to hit, which is good because the fingers, they do get sore after a while.

Pet peeves? Trash in an ashtray, especially gum. I hate that. Oh, writing pet peeves? I have a tendency to re-use good lines from book to book, and I must ruthlessly tamp down on that. I get very irritated with myself when I do it and have to go have a drink to calm myself down before I say something to me I'll regret.

Wow, I had no idea I was so bland. I need to go cultivate some eccentricities right away. "I must write in a silky negligee, and I must have a perfectly mixed martini on the elephant-foot table, and if my toenails are not painted correctly I can't write a word..."