I recently discovered something a little odd: I write faster when I need to pee. I am capable of writing quickly anyway, when I have a story that makes me feel like my head is on fire. I wrote the first draft of Ugly and the Beast in six ten-hours days.
I had another of those episodes, as the THIRTEEN project burned through my brain like a wildfire. I stayed up late to write, snuck time at work to write, and think-wrote every spare moment of the day, when I was walking to work, showering, driving, chewing food. The first thirty thousand words took less than four days.
Gotta Go
But needing to pee? It actually produces words even more quickly. It sneaks up on me. I’m at the computer, pounding away at the keyboard and I can’t stop. I don’t dare interrupt. I don’t want to interrupt. At some point, I realize I’m writing faster, typing faster, holding my breath, and crossing my legs as a preventative measure.
Of course, I have to get up and pee, and when I come back, the story picks back up, but it loses some of that strange sense of urgency. As though my body had become convinced that I had to finish the story before I could empty my bladder.
I know, you appreciate the over-sharing. It’s one of the hazards of knowing me. Eventually, inevitably, I’ll say something inappropriate.
Bryn Greenwood 
I definitely need whatever you got, Bryn. I get that sense of urgency toward the end of a book, but it’s never something that arrives at the beginning and pushes me through a whole WIP. I’m envious.
Maybe I’ll try drinking more coffee before I write and see if that does the trick. 🙂
I second Amy. Admittedly, we co-wrote our novels in 3 months, but… in DAYS! my gods, Bryn, how do you not suffer from burn-out????
I get meaner than usual when I need to pee. Some people get mean when they’re hungry. Mine’s peein.’
I don’t know why, but that just slays me, MT.
Jy: I suppose I don’t burn out because usually when I’m doing the book-in-a-week kind of thing, it’s because the story has me by the throat. I’m eating, drinking, sleeping it, so I might as well spend every waking moment writing it. Not every project works that way for me, though.
Needing to pee makes people write faster…
In that case I’m gonna drink a pint of water every day, along with a couple of bottles of Oasis, alongside my prodigal caffeine intake all through November.
Hell, I might even hit my NaNo 50k in a couple of weeks. 😀
Alas, I was a lousy pre-natal person, I failed to do my pelvic floor exercises enough and, as a consequence, I can’t hold back a pee for very long. When I gotta go, I gotta go or……
Ummm…no, can’t say I’ve experienced this particular phenomena! When I need to go, I just…gotta go. But whatever works!
Well, it takes practice, let’s just say that. 😀
I hate stopping anything to pee, lol. I think it has to do with delayed gratification. 🙂 Now, I just need to tell my bladder to whip my writing mojo into shape!