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 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'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.
