I’m running out of words to explain, how to find ways to generate more words on the page. I’m actually really tired of talking about it. How many inspirational and motivational different ways do you need to look for to come up with a reason to write. I know all the reasons. I know all the rationale. I know all the benefits, and I know all the detriments that can from writing or not writing. It’s really just a simple matter of thinking too much anymore. Like Bruce says, “Thinking too much hurts the team.”. And yes, at the moment I am hurting the team. The team of me, the team of the family, and the team of everyone that comes in contact with me. I need to treat writing like breathing. Stop thinking so much about it, and just let it happen. Of course, that’s really just another way of thinking about it, and trying to get me to write. So, fuck it, I’m just going to do some writing for the novel here in my journal pages. My journal pages are the most consistent piece of work I’ve done in a while. Over 100K words, and currently on a 113 day writing streak, which includes weekends and holidays. I don’t think about it, I just do it. The last few days, haven’t been a total loss though. I have done some reading of my comtemporaries work, both good and bad, and it’s been sort of interesting. Interesting, how, even the bad ones have managed to garner a following for their works. The writers whose work I’ve been reading lately, are Hugh Howey, Jeff Powel, and Kyle West. Hugh is off course the good writer of the group, and wrote the Wool Silo Series. Jeff wrote The Dead Years, and Kyle is responsible for the Wasteland Chronicles. Kyle’s work, I reviewed in these journals yesterday I believe. His descriptive work is better than mine, but his dialogue is horribly stilted and stiff, with very little use of contractions. Jeff, seems to like explain everything in his works, like the reader can’t figure things out for himself. Or to be more succinct, he tends to “Tell” a lot more then just “Show”. He tells us how the characters are feeling, and why they’re acting the way they do. Instead of leaving it to our imagination. Of course, if he doesn’t “show us” much of what they are doing, then I suppose the explanations are necessary. Either way, all three writers are achieving various degrees of success, and they have published works out in the wild so to speak. Hugh is of course, the most successful, and after reading the intro to his “Sand” novel yesterday, I can understand why. It’s an incredibly imaginative work placed again in a post apocalyptic age, where ancient civilizations are covered in massive sand dunes, and “sand divers” with special sand diving gear dive through the sand like current day scuba divers in water to find this civilizations. But, apart from the concept itself, his writing is so much more eloquent then the other two. He’s descriptive in a way that blends in with the actions of the characters in the novel. And he certainly doesn’t tell us how to think about the characters, or tell us how their feeling. He let’s their actions speak for themselves. The descriptions of the characters go a long way as well to helping us form our own opinions about the characters. What they say, what they do, what they dress, and even what they don’t say all go to fleshing out these characters. It’s hard not to be intimidated by someone like Hugh’s writing, but also easy to be motivated, by the simpler writing of Kyle and Jeff. Knowing that those two have managed to achieve a level of success is encouraging. Especially, since they are writing in basically the same genre as you are. You can write at least as well as they do, and perhaps even better in some ways. You do need to be a bit more descriptive about your worlds though. Perhaps in subsequent edits, you can flesh that stuff out a bit more. I was going to write a bit more in here about the novel, but it seems, that I’m almost at my 750 words. I suppose, I will just force myself to be a free writer in the novel itself, and spew out whatever I can and get the shit done.

TIGERBLOOD: maybe DAILYMOOD: annoyed LOCATION: home office WORDSWRITTEN: 0 PUSHUPS: 2:00 plank TODO: write TV: dr who, tomorrow people BOOK: Sand by Hugh Howey, The Dead Years by Jeff Powell GAME: none EXERCISE: none WEIGHT: 175 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: big ass salad DINNER: hamburger, ceaser salad SNACKS: orange, grapes, apple, mixed nuts ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 11:30 AWAKE: 7:30