Shew me a lyer, and I'le shew thee a theefe.
I drag my husband out of bed, hook him up to a coffee to stay awake and make him listen to my plotting and any issues I may be having. I *need* his head-nodding (he's an expert head-nodder).
I read two to three books a day anyway (I only sleep about two hours a night, and I read really fast).
When I'm about to start writing, I pull up some of my all-time-favorite re-reads to feel inspired and fall headfirst into the world of beautiful words.
I'm a well-intentioned plotter who ends up with wondrous pantsing revelations and (at times) ginormous rewrites that look almost nothing like my carefully plotted plans.
While my writing does seem to ultimately have a lot to do with pantsing in the end, without the plotting, I'd get nowhere to begin with.
I'm weird - I don't really listen to American music while I'm writing. I do occasionally get an anthem song, but generally speaking, when I write, I only listen to Japanese and Hawaiian music.
Sometimes dead is better
A slick way to outfigure a person is to get him figuring you figure he's figuring you're figuring he'll figure you aren't really figuring what you want him to figure you figure.
Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts.
Beauty is a valuable asset, but it is not the whole cheese.