I think I learned something yesterday, about doing these pages, and how important they are to me. Or perhaps, how important writing is to me. I tried to put off writing the pages, until I had some novel pages written. Hoping, that perhaps I’d focus more on the novel then the morning pages. But, I ended up digging myself deeper and deeper mentally into a refusal to write anything. I wrote about it yesterday, about how entrenched I become with putting something off. I’ve been like that for a long time … as long as I can remember. It’s like I build up this big mental barrier, that grows day by day. The longer I don’t do something, the harder it becomes every day to not do that thing. I remember distinctly realizing that thing about myself back in grade 8 over doing some sort of math homework. I just became mentally entrenched with procrastinating on the work, and refused to do it. I do it with filing taxes every year … right now, I still haven’t filled my taxes, that were supposed to be done in April, and it’s now the middle of July. And, when I do something like that, I feel horrible for not getting whatever it is I’m supposed to do done, but I just keep building that barrier higher and higher. Putting off the morning journal yesterday, didn’t help. It just made matters worse, and I kept finding other ways to procrastinate on it. Eventually later in the afternoon, I finally relented, and let myself write some morning pages. Actually, what else I really did, was go back and reread some of my morning pages that I was going to repost to my blog, and it was scary how the particular pages I read echoed my feelings of yesterday. They were written again from another day (back around last December), when I was fighting the same sort of barrier for procrastination. But I always seemed to find a way in my morning pages, to get optimistic by the end of the pages. I’d always write, something to try and lift myself out of the ditch I’d thrown myself into, and encourage myself to write. I read through and posted like 4 days of pages, and they were all the same kind of stuff really. Get off your butt, or more like in your chair on your butt and write your ass off. It’s what I really need to do. Get writing. And they worked. They finally got me writing yesterday. Not a lot, just a little over 1000 words, but hell, at least I got the words onto the page. That’s a victory in my book, and today, we’re going to shoot again for that 5000 words before noon. That elusive grail of getting a lot of books done, and that is that magical 5K words before noon, like I did a few months ago for a week. I really did that not so long ago. I really wrote 25000 words in 5 working days. It’s what I need to do to be happy and successful with this work. What I need to do, is to make it habit forming. I need to write consistently … at least 1000 words every day for at least 30 days. Then, and only then, will this become a habit. You need to write every day. You need to get that engrained into your psyche, so that this stupid friggin mental barrier of writing procrastination never raises it’s friggin ugly head ever again in my presence. That’s the only way to get around this shit. Like how, now I’m totally addicted to writing these morning pages. That’s where you need to take your novel writing to. It doesn’t matter, if it’s a holiday or Christmas, or a wedding, or a funeral, or whatever the hell else is going on in your life. You need to be doing some writing. You may need to get to the point, where you have multiple books on the go at the same time, so when stuff like editing one book you can still be putting down fresh words in another. It’s not just about the writing. It’s therapy for me. It’s good for me. I need to put the words on the page to feel better about myself. I don’t know whta it is, but there’s just something about putting the words down onto the page, and having my fingers fly over the keyboard, that makes me happier. It’s like breathing … if I don’t do it, then I feel sick … so go write … write for love.

TIGERBLOOD: nope DAILYMOOD: procrastinating hell LOCATION: bayfield boat WORDSWRITTEN: 1003 PUSHUPS: 2 minutes plank TODO: write TV: friday night lights BOOK: none GAME: none EXERCISE: short walk WEIGHT: 170 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: big ass salad DINNER: none SNACKS: orange, apple, blueberries, 3 lara bars, 2 naked bars ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 11:30 AWAKE: 7:15