In the days leading up to publishing The Unknown Missing Piece , I thought of what I wanted to do in my much-needed two-month hiatus from writing fiction: spring cleaning, arrange travel plans, and watch movies.
I also wanted to eliminate caffeinate. After all, I hadn't planned on writing for a while.
Around 2020, I replaced my morning Diet Coke with an energy juice. In using them, I learned I needed only a small amount of the mix with a small amount of water and strawberry was my favorite flavor. Yet even this super-conservative amount got me wired. I couldn't always easily concentrate on my writing. Am I one of few authors who doesn't need caffeine?
Although I didn't write any fiction during those two months, I still wrote voraciously in my journal between 4am and 6am. This time, however, I drank Gatorade or something similar.
Thirty days passed. I was on a roll. I'd gotten past that challenging 21-day habit-breaking phase and reached a higher level of discipline. It was easier than I thought to grab another drink instead of the usual.
Around the 60-day mark, I resumed writing novels. I reveled in writing Kill the Locust without drinking one drop of caffeine and how much better focused I was. That kept me planted in my seat, my laptop booted up and my file of my novel in progress open.
It takes 90 days for something to become a lifestyle. I'd gotten used to the caffeine-free life and was proud of myself for resisting all the urges to drink some energy juice. If this was going to be my new way of living, I was on the right track.
But my concentration derailed. I would either write senseless things or blankly stare at the screen. Although I do both from time to time, this concerned me. I kept falling asleep a lot, too.
For the past three mornings, I drank the energy juice. And I'm not jittery. Instead, I feel a little more alert, more focused. On Fridays, I spend more time writing. I've had an excellent morning making Kill the Locust more structured. Best of all, for the first time in nearly a year, I've written a blog post.
With apologies to Dr. Seuss, oh, the thinks I can think, oh the places my mind will go when I have that little bit of early-morning wild strawberry juice.
