Dissecting A Villianess

Many times in romantic suspense – or even suspense with romantic elements – the bad guy is exactly that, a guy.  Every so often the scarlet woman traipses through but it’s rare the reader is treated to an honest to goodness salt of the earth evil woman.  While the White River Killer is most definitely the evil in Blood Roles, there’s also a villainess and if you’ve already read the book, I’m sure you know exactly who I’m talking about:  Rita Keeps Fire.  

Cruella DeVille
The Only Cartoon Evil Comparable To Rita.

Now, yes, there are literally thousands of villianesses to choose from in the movie and television world, some truly evil, others campy and funny.  But I've noticed over the years, within the literary world, ultimate enemies are either usually male or if they are female, they're more a danger to themselves than anybody else.  I knew before even starting Blood Roles that Rita was not going to be like that.

When creating Rita I wanted to relate to the reader just how vile and sleazy this woman was - and to what lengths she would go to get her own way.  Rita is a heartless attention whore who will do whatever she can to keep the attention on her while using a cause, a person, a need, something, anything, to hide behind.  Think Angelina Jolie only much more black-hearted. (I think it is no coincidence that Ms. Jolie was chosen to play the evil fairy, Malecifent, in the live action version of Sleeping Beauty...just sayin!)

Totally Unrelated But Thought-Provoking Nonetheless!

Back to Rita - I get so many comments on this character!  I have gotten dozens emails asking specifically about Rita:  Surely this is a charicture? Surely this woman can’t be real? Nobody would really act like that – would they?  It’s always interesting to see people’s responses to a life form they’re unfamiliar with. LOL   I am also often asked why Rita is so bad and if I know anybody really like her.  The answers to those are "because she can be" and "yes". 

 

For those who are totally confused because they haven’t read Blood Roles yet, Rita Keeps Fire is a secondary character with a bad attitude.  Within Indian Country her type of persona is called a “wannabee activist” - someone who is almost always a BQ Nazi.   The individual wants to be an activist for Native American rights but they don’t want to do it for Native Americans – they want to do it for the attention it garners them.  To quote my late husband “i.e. an attention whore of the highest caliber”.  

 

My buddy Jon Joss.
The Inspiration For Taylor Rains.

At one time Rita was involved with our hero, Taylor, who was actually a true activist who ultimately walked down some wrong paths due to peer pressure.  Rita holds it against Taylor because he dumped her and she holds it against him even more that his heart really belongs to another woman – a white woman, Andie Prescott. 

 

Jon's gorgeous wife, Brandy!
The Inspiration For Andie Prescott's Take No Prisoners Attitude!
Andie's Love Of Shoes Belongs To My SisterInLaw Marcia!

Last week we talked about BQ Nazi’s, well, Rita is the epitome of the consummate BQ Nazi.  And, again, yes, Rita is very, very real.  Rita is a composite of not one but several people, male and female, that I’ve come up against in the past five years.  Of course their most common denominator is that they all feel that Natives should only stay with Natives and have nothing to do with the any other race at all, save for taking money from them. 

 

They actually have more than that in common, though – first, they’re LOUD.  They can’t say anything quietly, it has to be hollered, male or female, there’s no such thing as quiet in a Rita’s world. 

They’re also rude – they don’t care what they say or how they say it, in their mind they’re right, they don’t care who they hurt or how much damage they do as long as their point is being made. 

 

They’re also passive-aggressive and many times fueled by alcohol or drugs.   Out of the various BQ Nazi’s available to choose from  (let’s just say there were more than three and less than twelve for Rita) only ONE did not post drunk or make drunk harassment calls to people they felt were offending their tribes by being married or dating a non-Native.  Their favorite MO was to make a comment of some sort knowing that offended people would comment back, this, in turn, usually produces a full scale diatribe from the BQ Nazi. 

Professor Umbridge
Would Have Made An
Awesome BQ Nazi Had She
Been A Native!

They’re also vicious. Again, there’s no concern for others or their feelings.  It wouldn’t be fair to label them narcissists because not all of them are, but there were two from that round up I know for a fact were. It was all about them. It had nothing to do with being Native or wanting to fight for the rights of their people. It had everything to do with being seen, being heard, having their picture taken and they didn’t care who they had to step on to get it done.  I know of two BQ Nazi’s who had to have their own radio blog shows to feed their attention fix  - it was interesting they rarely, if ever, had over sixteen or seventeen listeners tops but that was enough for them to get that fix.

They also have family issues.  Not your normal dysfunctional welcome to America family problems.  The Rita’s of the world spend so much time campaigning for their cause du jour that they neglect their family relationships to a point where there’s barely anything salvageable there.  One mother had four kids, two were left to their own devices, CPS took the kids away and she didn’t even bother to go to court to try and get them back – she had a “protest” to go to that day.  Another had a mentally challenged child who kept running away, she’d have to drop whatever she was doing and go get the teenager who was very often caught hooking for survival.  Yet another cut their children out of their lives because they married white people…all SIX of them – and I’m pretty sure two of them did it out of spite.  And yet another has limited relationships with her grandchildren because they’re half-white. AND YET ANOTHER (see a pattern forming here folks?) has not one but several children heavily into booze and drugs because she was just too busy to pay attention when they started drinking and drugging – at ages ten and twelve respectively.  These types of people will drop everything to go showcase themselves at a protest clear across the country that has nothing to do with their tribe but they won’t drive two blocks down the street to scrape their drunk highschooler up off the pavement.

I got a fan letter asking me if I hated Rita.  To quote Blood Roles heroine,  Andie Prescott, "I’d have to give a shit about her to hate her" – or the people she is based upon.  I don’t have that kind of time or energy.  But I do feel it’s important that people know these types of individuals are out there because they aren’t just affecting Indian Country.  Many of them have off the wall ideas regarding what should be done to whites for taking the country away from Natives and some of those ideas are NOT pretty. 

 

One BQ Nazi told my late husband that they would be more than willing to kill any white person that got in their way. Now, yes, it could have been an idle threat, but given what we knew about that person in particular (bear in mind, within Indian Country there are very few strangers, there is always somebody who knows somebody in question and police records are not hard to obtain when one goes through the proper channels) we knew that mixing alcohol meant instant idiot. 

 

BQ Nazis don’t just pose a threat to their fellow Natives. They pose a threat to everybody else just on the merit of their deep rooted anger at whites and their penchant for using the wrong outlets to get their points across.

 

Ultimately, I’m not going to sugar coat anything – if you’ve read Blood Roles, you already know that.  If you read last week’s blog, or any of the responses to it, again, you already know that I laid out the truth in a no-nonsense form that was easy to understand. Creating the character of Rita is the ultimate extension of that.

At the end of the day we have a woman who trusts nobody, can’t be trusted herself, is pompous, arrogant and FULL of righteous indignation to a fault, so much so, readers literally cheer when she meets a fateful end.  She’s rude, she’s bitter, she has way too much self-worth and is unable to empathize on any level.  She hates anybody that’s not Native, to the point that she’ll endanger a whole tribe that, technically, isn’t even hers, because she doesn’t want a white person involved with the case AND because she wants people to pay attention to her.

At the same time – Rita is a sad figure, even pathetic.  As Andie says, "it’s a sad thing when not even your fellow troublemakers don’t miss you".  This is yet another circumstance both Rob and I were privy too. There’s relief, even gratitude, on not one, but on the part of many, when a BQ Nazi moves on. 

 

Yet, there’s always the fear that something else will re-ignite them, something else will tick them off or send them over the deep end yet again.  In Rita’s case, the only thing that ultimately shuts her up is the White River Killer, and then, in more ways than one. 

When you get down to the core of this villainess one realizes that while she’s a bitch with a capital “B” she’s still slightly different from other women in this category – and not because she’s a Native or because of her proclivity for hating others with such a passion – ultimately it’s because she’s hollow. 

There’s nothing going on inside.  All she has to believe in is herself and that person fails daily no matter how hard Rita screams or demands to have her own way. When it comes right down to it, she’s soulless but not quite a sociopath.  But then again…

 

What's A BQ Nazi??

I’ve been speaking about Blood Roles on various blogs for the past month and one question that keeps coming up is that of blood quantum and exactly what a BQ Nazi is.  This week’s blog is going to address that a little bit.  At the heart of blood quantum, ultimately, is racism - not only by whites against Natives but by Natives against whites and Natives against Natives as well.  This is the underlying issue that Blood Roles addresses.

 

Many in Indian Country believe that Columbus created BQ. That he was damned and determined that he was going to “bleed out” their race. 

This is not true.  Not only because BQ’s documented beginnings are well into the 1700’s but because, frankly, I don’t think that Columbus, or any of his later contemporaries for that matter, were that smart.  They saw land they wanted so they took it by force.  No science or chemistry involved.

Just as many also believe that BQ was started in the late 1800's as a result of the Dawes Act. This is not true as well.  While the government made good use of BQ at that time, it wasn't exactly responsible for brainchilding it into reality.

 

BQ was actually started in 1705 in the Virginia colonies.  Its purpose was to limit the rights of Native American Indians of half or more Native ancestry.  BQ wasn’t applied as an umbrella term until the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.  At that time the government used it to establish which individuals could be recognized as Native and, in turn, be eligible for financial benefits under treaties or sales of land.   At that point in history there were roughly 450 federally recognized tribes and BQ was used heavily to determine who could be a federally recognized tribe and who couldn’t be.   Ironically, back then, BQ wasn’t the hard and fast rule breaker it is now – and it was the Natives that determined that, not whites or the government.

Fast forward to the 21^st Century.  At this point tribes all over the country have determined their own rules for tribal membership and there’s no cut and dried determination. Every tribe is different. Some, like the Cherokee, have lowered their BQ requirements so as to welcome all who can prove their ancestry.  While others, like the Pechanga, use BQ to exclude people from tribal roles in order to increase their casino per cap.  Some of this is based upon greed, some of it is based upon blatant racism, either way it’s wrong because, in essence, they’re discriminating against their own people based upon a fictional practice that really has no merit.

My own experience with BQ is fairly recent – in the last five years I’ve actually learned exactly what it is, where it came from and the bitterness that has derived from it.  In spite of writing Native based romance for many years this was one factor I was not personally acquainted with. 

 

Let me share a little background here. Some people, of all races, are under the impression that those of us who write interacial romance have some sort of romantic notion of what it's like to be Native. 

I think I that can say with some authority that there are at least two of us that don't share that notion that some hot Native hunk is going to come riding up on a horse and grab some chick and make for his tipi for hot sex.  Kathleen Eagle certainly doesn't write to that end.  Mrs. Eagle taught and lived on the Standing Rock Reservation for many years.

The Lovely Kathleen Eagle & Her Hubby Clyde Eagle
(c) 2012 Kathleen Eagle

She's been married to her Lakota cowboy  hubby, Clyde, for over thirty years.  She, more than any other writer I know who writes Native romance, has an excellent grasp on what it is to live and function within the rez world. 

As for me, having studied with various tribes and written about them as well, I would like to think that I have a pretty good grasp on rez culture myself.  (If the reviews for Blood Roles thus far are to be believed, I nailed it pretty well.) I have always had an interest in Native culture - I grew up around Penobscots, Abanakis and Micmacs. My first friend in school was a fun little Native girl named Dee.  Back then she wasn't Native to me, her tribe didn't matter, I didn't even understand she was a Native American until many years later.  All that mattered was that she was my best friend and I thought she was great. 

Dee & I Circa 1973

As I grew older, I appreciated what I saw and what I learned and always felt that the culture deserved attention and the injustices that were so blatantly ignored needed to be brought to light - which is where my storylines came from.

The Hiawatha Asylum For Insane Indians
Never Heard About It? You Need To.
http://www.miafisher.net/HiawathaPg1.html

My friends and colleagues who were Native respected my work because it many times brought attention to issues they felt were often ignored.  I’d never had any problems, never was I treated differently because I was white or because I chose to write about Native life. I did my research and I did it well. I presented a world that others had been deprived of learning about in history class in school. I mistakenly believed that my reputation within that world was secure. Then I met my late husband and all of that changed.

We’ve all heard of those moments where one finds out who their true friends are. Well, this was one of those moments for me.  My husband belonged to numerous groups regarding Native issues and many was the time that arguments arose about Natives dating or marrying non-Natives.  Robert was Cheyenne/Lakota and a full blood.  He was also a person not opposed to dating or marrying non-Natives.  He used to like to say that when he lived in New York City he dated the United Nations roster.  Because of this mentality and because he embraced diversity while still making it a point to know his history and traditions he was many times a target for those who felt that Natives needed to stay ‘with their own kind’.  It didn’t matter what tribe anymore (which was actually rather comical because in the old days some tribes would have absolutely nothing to do with each other) as long as a mate wasn’t another color other than “tan”.  

It was during this period that the term “BQ Nazi” was coined.  There was a woman who had begun to harass Rob unmercifully because he was married to a white woman.  Every discussion ended with her chewing him out for “forsaking his People” and “not marrying a strong Indian woman so he could have Indian babies”.  The last part we found rather comical because I was done having children and Rob couldn’t have children.  He never revealed that save to close friends but it was a factor that made all her ranting and raving a bit humorous.  Still, her behavior had a dark side and the scary thing was she had people that backed her outrageous mentality.  One night, annoyed with her carrying on regarding “Natives need to only be with Natives” he called her a BQ Nazi. 

The term stuck and spread like wildfire.  Within a month it was all over the internet and surfacing throughout the reservations.  My husband was very proud of this accomplishment – one he didn’t even aim or try for. It just happened.  Now, he said, now there was another name for those people who hovered in the background, unwilling to socialize with non-Natives but more than willing to take their money in a business situation, unwilling to let other Natives be with who they loved without throwing very loud, very obnoxious tantrums about it, unwilling to leave the husbands, wives or significant others alone and pegging them for harassment, unwilling to embrace their own people if their BQ was lower than their desired limit.  Before it had been termed “lateral racism”, a term that was easily overlooked and lost in a flow of words within groups based around oral tradition.  BQ Nazi gave this practice not only a term but a title as well, one that was pretty hard to ignore. (I don't know about you but whenever I hear or see the word "nazi", I tend to do a doubletake, just to make sure I heard or saw what I thought I heard or saw).  

I lost friends and colleagues because I married Rob. And no, not the white friends and colleagues, they had no issues with Rob at all.  It was the Native “friends and colleagues” who, all of a sudden, had an issue with me for “breaking the rules” and marrying a Native.  To my knowledge, there were no “rules” but suddenly it seemed that there were.  I was harassed, I was publicly raked over the coals in more than one instance because I “had shown blatant disregard for what Indians believe”.  To my knowledge, this ‘keep to your own kind’ thing had not been an active and important part of Indian Country.  I was proven wrong.

Interestingly, while the mentality has existed, it was never really actually addressed that much.  More often as not, you saw cartoons that addressed the vanishing Indian or there would be the occasional article that would bring up lateral racism as something that needed to be addressed yet nothing ever happened because of it.  A great example of this was Alfred Walking Bulls’ article on the topic where he stated:  “lateral racism exists in Indian Country and that, more than anything, needs to be seriously addressed”.  Unfortunately, the article was all but ignored.  Rob’s oddball coined phrase sort of changed that.  

Over a two year period two camps would form in Indian Country – the very loud BQ Nazis and the more quiet “independents” as Rob called them.  Independents felt strongly about their ties to their past and their history but felt a person should be allowed to be with who they want to be with, as long as history and traditions, along with ancestral lines, were taught to the children if there were any.  These two camps are still very much present within Indian country, albeit as unorganized forces.  Rob made it his job to try and educate people who needed educating.  He felt that this topic was extremely important and too blatantly ignored for it to not be a real problem.

When we began discussing the NABSU series, Rob stated that he wanted me to address BQ in the very first book because, in his opinion, it was the most important issue of all in Indian Country because it was definitely messing with peoples’ lives, heads and hearts.  After what we’d gone through – and in all honesty, what we had gone through really wasn’t as bad as some – I could see his point.   In that aforementioned two year period I had seen a full blooded Creek woman publicly state that she refused to acknowledge her grandchildren because they were half-white.  We met the wife of a Native artist who was harassed and stalked so much by BQ Nazi-types that she left him. He, in turn, cut off all ties with their only child, stating publicly that “the kid is half white, he really shouldn’t have anything to do with her”.   We found out that one of our very close friends who was slightly less than half-Dine had tolerated a childhood of abuse because of her BQ, putting up with beatings by both children and adults when she went to visit her father’s family – she was even hung off the side of a cliff because she "wasn't Indian enough". 

"Less than a quarter can get you killed if you're not careful"
~ Firewolf Bizahaloni

There were also the 'business' acquaintences that suddenly got a little squirrely as well.  A Native entertainment agent I had known for years went off the deep end and joined forces with a fairly well-known BQ Nazi and proceeded to eliminate any client with less than a ½ blood quantum in her client roster because she “didn’t want to work with people who weren’t real Indians”.  A well-known Native activist was pegged for annihilation by BQ Nazis because he was married to a white woman – they not only harassed and stalked the man, they tried to cause trouble for him by calling his job, sending the cops to his home on a bogus report and trying to publicly discredit him by harassing him on whatever talk show he happened to be on.  See a familiar pattern here?  When White Supremacists do this it’s called a hate crime. When Natives do this sort of stuff BQ Nazi’s call it protecting their culture.  Still doesn’t make it right. Just saying…

Ultimately, this is what Blood Roles is about.  The chasms created by blood quantum and the lengths some people will go to insure that the required allotments remain at status quo – or better.  Because it is so deeply embedded into the lives of Natives at this point in history, it is unlikely that blood quantum will truly ever be done away with, especially when so many BQ Nazis out there hold onto the hope that they’ll completely rebuild their tribe with the intent of overthrowing the government in order to send us all back to Europe where we belong.  It’s a very real sentiment and a very real goal – albeit a totally unrealistic goal. 

As my husband said “there’s no hope of sending anybody anywhere but we can sure as hell learn to live together a little bit better”.   I agree with this as well and ultimately this is the other aim of Blood Roles, learning to accept the differences, learning to pass on important knowledge and information so that what is important in one’s history is never forgotten while embracing what there is now and learning how to work with it.  No society is perfect, but it would sure help if people would, at the very least, try to get along, no matter what color their skin is.

Stress? What Stress?

Okay, after a few sidebar trips into urban exploration it’s time to get back to business!
 

This past week has been one of THOSE weeks. It started with the cops kicking my door in under the assumption that some guy that used to live in my apartment was still in residence. 

The week pretty much went up and down from there.

 

 

Then the electric company screwed up my bill and informed me that I owed $400 (took two days but I got that one worked out).  And then I had transmission issues that basically wiped my savings and most of my start of the month budget out (that screwed up my rent for the month, ugh).

 

And then a vehicle place I visited last weekend took it upon themselves to charge my debit card for over $200 so I had to deal with that (that took me another two days to take care of).

 

Then I had three job interviews, one of which I was pretty much dismissed from because I wasn’t a size 12 anymore. 

 

 

And THEN I was informed by some loser on a supposed Christian dating site that I wasn’t good looking enough to be there.

 

 

AND THEN – last but not least, just when I was making headway on catching up on edits for my next book one of my adult kids called all upset over something my ex-husband had done so I ended up on the phone for over an hour getting them calmed down and by the time I was done it was well after midnight and I had to be up at the crack of dawn to take my daughter to school.

So, um, yeah, I was a tad stressed this past week and it did not help my writing at all. As you can see, my blog is a whole 48 hours off schedule! LOL

Stress can really screw with writing. It can upset word flow, character development, proofing, editing, even language development and when you’re in the business of making stuff up for a living that’s not a good thing.  Our readers depend upon us for clear and concise stories.  Stress completely undoes clear and concise for a lot of writers, me included. 

 

Although, I can usually plug through under stress (the last of Blood Roles was written while sitting in the family waiting room of the ICU while my late husband was in the hospital) I know some authors who literally can’t write when they’re stressed or they write the wrong thing.  A colleague once told me about how one time she was SO stressed that she wrote an entire scene from another book she was working on in her current WIP. It was only after it was done that she discovered that she’d written about 90 pages of a paranormal romance into a regency. Um, yeah, she wasn’t too happy about that any more than I would have been.

Stress makes us feel drained under the most normal of circumstances, when trying to write under stress it can leave a writer totally exhausted and completely unproductive.  When juggling writing and life (or in the lovely Larissa Reinhart’s case, juggling writing, life AND Lu the future Olympic Badmitten Champ) ‘regular’ stress is tough enough. Couple that with unexpected disasters such as illnesses, computer crashes, car accidents, it could be enough to push a writer away from the computer permanently. 

Because of this I think it’s important to always remember that not only do we have each other – no writer is ever truly alone – we also have plenty of tricks in our personal arsenals whereby we can help each other out.   I’ve compiled a great little list of things that have helped me cut stress while writing:

   1. Try to cut out distractions or sounds that bug you. If you need quiet, ask to be left alone for a while and shut your office door. If noise doesn’t bother you, or you need it to write, headphones are great for blocking out all other sounds. Sometimes I like to play nature sounds while I’m writing while stressed, ocean and rain sounds are extremely soothing.

2. Deep breathing techniques are extremely helpful.  They calm your nerves and take the edge off.

 

   3. Make your writing space your own.  Not everybody has an office.  For many years all I had was a corner of whatever room had the least amount of furniture.  I hung a bulletin board in that corner and put whatever I wanted on it. Sometimes it was story outlines, sometimes it was Garfield cartoons, or sometimes it was a great shot of the Dude of the Day.  Set up your area as your area to the best of your ability, move the furniture in whatever is conducive for you to write and write comfortably.  Feeling at ease in your writing environment puts you at ease and will aid in making you more productive.  Add candles, incense, and unique décor to bring about a relaxing and peaceful atmosphere that will help you forget your worries and focus on writing, even when you're under stress. 

The Lovely Rosemary Harris' Office
(c) 2007 Jungle Red Blog

   Do the same once you have an office – it’s your space to be creative. Make it your own, even if that means a ton of stuffed animals, shots of hot guys, a cluttered desk, bulletin boards, and bookshelves galore…um, ah, yeah, that’s my office. LOL

   (The "Cleanest Office I've Ever Seen Award" has to go to Kathleen Eagle. She has THE most spotless writer's office I've ever witnessed!)

4. Sometimes it’s best just to get up and walk away.  Not permanently, but long enough so you can find your focus again.  Take a walk, have a drink of something, play with your cat or dog.  Focus on easing the stress level before you go back to work on your WIP. 

    5. Be inspired by whatever it is you’ve already written.  Jennifer Cruise spoke about this at a conference I attended and I’ve never forgotten it.  Look back at your previous works and think about how you could develop it.  You’re expounding on what you’ve already written, not developing a whole new idea to further your story arch.  Further your story by taking the creative pieces you already have and making them work together to move the story along.  It really does work!

   6.There’s nothing wrong with white noise!! Low music, mini fountains, even having the television on on a program that you would never watch in a million years can provide just enough background noise for you to focus and forget your stress.  (Never use a show you’d watch as background noise, you’ll always end up watching it.  If Law & Order SVU or Big Bang Theory is on I know I will NOT get any writing done.)   

 

 

    7. There’s nothing wrong with using colors to cut your stress.  It’s been proven that what color you paint your walls can have a direct effect on your mood.  Now, I’m not saying you need to completely repaint your writing space but you can still use color to your advantage.  Curtains, chair cushions, throw pillows, a sand art bottle, stained glass window hanging, there are dozens of things that can be used to colorize your space and aid in reducing stress. Yellow is known to be a happy color, green makes a person feel energized, blue is a calming color, purples are known to inspire creativity. 

   If you’re in a room that has no windows or is just generally dull and drab, there’s nothing wrong with hanging a brightly colored print on the wall. Better yet, buy one of those paintings of an open window and that can be your window and sunshine!
  

    (Avoid red when you’re under stress, it’s known as an angry color…hmmmm, since my whole kitchen is done in red, my pots and pans must be REALLY pissed off!)

   8. If your stress is causing you to feel angry, instead of feeling worn out or helpless, use that anger to get "fired up" and write a fight scene.  Use the stress to your advantage.  There’s one scene in Blood Roles that was written while my husband was dying and my in-laws were being unnecessarily difficult.  I went home and wrote a kickass fight scene that I’m still getting great comments on so, yes, sometimes stress can produce some awesome writing while lessening the actual stress that you’re feeling.  

9. Now, this is going to be a tough one.  I’ve heard many times that when stressed it’s best to avoid drinking anything sugary or carbonated.  These hype you up and make you jittery and supposedly you won’t be able to concentrate.  For somebody like me, who lives on sweet tea, I have no problem focusing.  But, there ARE people who do so if you know that this type of stuff makes you jittery? Try to avoid it while you’re stressed so you’ll be able to focus.  On the other hand, I know a few writers who can’t focus without Pepsi or Diet Coke (ya’ll know who you are…) so if it’ll help you focus, drink up!

   10. Eat carefully. Food impacts   your ability to focus.  Eat things that are healthy for you if at all possible.  NOW YES – I KNOW – this is a hard one, stress or no stress. I know writers that are on major deadlines who’ve eaten Reeses Peanut Butter Cups with Mr. Pibb for breakfast so they could get that deadline done.  (Don’t lie, you know we’ve all done it…)  When you’re stressed, especially if you’re an emotional eater, there will be a desire to chow down instead of focus.  When those moments arise, try to stick with fruits and veggies if at all possible.  

 

These are just a few ideas and they’re not written in stone, remember, very little is written in stone. So the next time you’re faced with too much stress and not enough focus, try a few of these ideas and hopefully you’ll be able to focus and keep writing!  

Anybody else got any good ideas for cutting stress while writing??