First, a reminder that for the month of March my publisher is making my first Buchanan thriller, Try Dying, available for e-readers for just $1.99. With additional content, too, including various location photos I took when doing the research.

Here’s the Kindle link.

It’s also for Sony Readers, B & N and Kobo.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog, which answers this question: How do you increase your energy to write?

We are biological machines, and need energy input lest the law of entropy reduce us to non-functioning blobs of carbon and water.

This is especially true for writers, who not only have to produce but have to have minds that provide fresh ideas and wonderful characters and sharp dialogue.

So here are some of the things I do to get going. I’d like to hear your ideas in the comments section.

Like millions of writers before me, I start the day with freshly brewed coffee. I make it at home or sometimes go off to Starbucks with my laptop and imbibe there. There is as much to the comfort factor as there is to the buzz, I think. I just like having something warm to drink as I write.

I’ve been gratified by all the recent science showing the health benefits of a few cups of coffee. A few. I don’t overdo it. I remember that Balzac thought of thick, black coffee as something of a magic drug. The guy was a speed freak without knowing it. He drank up to 50 cups of the stuff a day. And died from it, at age 51.

What would he have done with Red Bull? I shudder to think.

Exercise. I shoot baskets and run around at a local park, talk long walks, treadmill, ride my bike. Keeping the body honed – which is, thankfully, a relative term (you hear me, David Beckham?) – is essential for the right working of the mind.

An added benefit of the workouts is that the “boys in the basement” ramp up their efforts, especially if I’ve spent previous hours investing heavily in a project. The BITB is Stephen King’s great metaphor for the writer’s subconscious. It pays to keep them happy so they don’t go on strike.

I’m a morning person, so like to get as much writing done early as I can. I try to do a “furious 500” words as soon as possible. Some of that will be sort of “improvising” within my scene. The faster the better here. Oh, and if you need some prodding in that regard, you can visit the ever effective Dr. Wicked.

At about 1 p.m. I tend to power down for a couple of hours—meaning I’m not at my creative best. Around 1:30 or 2 I usually take a power nap. I can put my feet up on my desk and nod off for 15 – 20 minutes, wake up refreshed.

I’ve recently tried something that has supercharged these mini-slumbers. Just before I close my eyes, I take a swig of a 5 Hour Energy drink. Not the whole thing. About a third. Then I sleep, and when I wake up I’ve got this jolt of creative energy that seems to continue without a “crash.”

I’ve learned there is something medically valid to this. It takes 15-20 minutes for caffeine to kick in, so the timing is right for this type of power nap. You get both the benefit of sleep and energy infusion.

I don’t do this every day. I don’t want to get dependent. But if I need to be working heavy on a project in the afternoon, I’ll give it a go.

Sometimes I write standing up, as I’m doing now on my AlphaSmart Neo, on a counter in my house. There’s some added energy when you write standing up. I don’t know why that is, but I don’t need to know, do I?

One last thing. I try to leave off my previous day’s writing at a mid-point of some kind, so I’m ready to fly right back into it. Hemingway used to write half a sentence before knocking off. I first read what I wrote yesterday, clean it up, then I’m ready to dive into the day’s work.

So what about you? What do you do to keep up your energy to write? (Please confine yourself to legal substances)