This is number 155 in the blog series, “My Writing Life.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
I HAVE A NEW JOURNAL. That’s not altogether unusual. Depending on how big the blank journal is, they last me between two and four months each. I recently assembled 28 volumes of my journal in one rather disorganized pile. That does not include the several volumes of sophomorish poetry that remain packed in a different box. I have four blank journals awaiting my wit and wisdom, and a specialized memoir book for my daughter and (if any) my grandchildren.
“Words. Words. Words. Words,” as Hamlet said to Polonius.
I’ve never had difficulty starting a new volume of my journal. I even discovered one that picked up with the next sentence from a previous journal without even putting the date at the top. That was from 1969 as I bicycled from Indiana to the New Jersey Boardwalk and back as far as Gettysburg before my bicycle was stolen and I bummed around West Virginia for a few weeks before my girlfriend picked me up and we ‘vacationed’ with her family for a couple more weeks.
That might have been my first concentrated effort at keeping a daily journal. Some of my journals are focused mostly on my writing, being daily notes on what I am writing or planning to possibly write sometime. Some are travel journals, recording a trip either I took or my family took. Not all are full. I seem to have started some journals and then got interrupted someplace along the line and when I decided to resume journaling, I started a new book. Some are a version of morning pages that I used to kickstart my day in a creative mode. And some are my daily activity logs, including task lists and phone calls.
Since roughly October 2025, I have been keeping a daily journal that includes early notes on the book I was developing (
The Inheritance Paradox) and where I had breakfast. By December, I was writing out more random things, sometimes including notes for stories like
Just My Luck!, and even writing out chapters longhand of
Sky’s the Limit,
Code Kitty, and
My Name Is Vengeance. A couple of those have not been edited and prepared for release yet. But there are eight journal volumes I’ve written since the first of October.
So, why now am I concerned about having “something important” to write in my new journal?
My new journal is beautiful! I ordered it from Levenger thinking “Oh, that’s pretty, not realizing how stunning it was in reality. This beautifully bound hardcover book is 7.25” wide by 10.25” tall. It has 34 lines per page with a lovely scrollwork at the bottom of each page. The pages are all numbered. (200 of them!) The edges of the pages are gold leaf. There is a Shakespeare quote at the beginning and end of the journal. It seems almost like a sacrilege to begin page one with where I went for breakfast and what I ate!
The journal I’m replacing is 6.5” wide by 8.75” tall. It has only 24 lines per page. In other words, the new journal will hold about 30% more than my previous journal. The old journal has only 176 pages. So, there are also 24 more pages in the book, upping the capacity to about 48% more than my former journal. I am used to writing only on the recto page (right-hand side) because it is easier to hold the pages flat. However, the new journal is bound in such a way as to allow it to lie flat and both the recto and verso pages are numbered, so I feel I absolutely must write on both. Well, let’s say I expect the new journal to hold three times as many words as the previous one.
And it is just so beautiful! I should have something profound to say in it.
Today, I have released my newest short drama novel,
Sky’s the Limit. While Sky is not focused on journaling, he is an author and a great appreciator of paper books, both soft and hardcover. In fact, Sky owns and runs a brick-and-mortar bookstore. When the brother of Matthew, a customer, asks Matthew why he doesn’t just load the books he’s buying on his eReader, Matthew responds, “These smell good.”
Yeah. Just try sniffing your eReader sometime.
I wrote significant portions of
Sky’s the Limit in my journal with a fountain pen, thinking through what was going on and how paper feels beneath my fingers.
Today,
Sky’s the Limit becomes available for serial reading on SOL. It’s also available as an eBook at ZBookStore. And, of course, it’s available as a Signature Edition paperback from my Ingram Spark bookstore. Of course, my Sneak Peek and Sausage Grinder patrons have access to the pre-release chapters and eBook, long before they appear elsewhere.
That doesn’t resolve my dilemma of what to write in my new beautiful journal. As I mulled the situation over, I came to a realization: I don’t write in the journal to be profound. I write in it for the joy of writing, of feeling the paper, of seeing the ink flow from my fountain pen in multiple colors as I switch pens and load different inks.
Having a beautiful book like this to write in will give me great joy, no matter what drivel I write. Perhaps it will be what I had for breakfast and where, or the next chapter of my current WIP, My Name Is Vengeance.
It doesn’t need to be profound!
I have made a couple of concessions. I ordered new extra fine point nibs for all six of my fountain pens. The lines in this journal are closer together than I’ve used in the past, so I can’t comfortably use a medium nib to write on them. I’ve also decided to write on both the left and right pages. And finally, I’ve decided to continue with my next entry wherever on a page I happen to end the previous one instead of turning to a fresh page.
Your first thought might be, it will take forever to fill a journal like that. True. But I think of it as extending my enjoyment of writing in this beautiful book.
In coming to this conclusion, I’ve also realized how similar what I’ve gone through is to what many aspiring authors go through, whether they work with a pen and paper or with a computer and word processor. They sit around and wait for the right words to come to them instead of sitting down and writing. That is far more important than deciding the right word.
I have a motto that I live by (even though I just made it into a phrase I can repeat).
YOU CAN’T REVISE A BLANK PAGE.
A major part of the writing process is editing and revision. In my current WIP, My Name Is Vengeance, I realized the first five chapters I’d written were really too short. I’d rushed through concepts and episodes much too quickly, something I tried to remedy in Chapter six and following. Alpha reader Les even commented that the first chapter could have been darker.
I realized if I spent another six hundred words or so on it, I could make it appropriately darker, without going into graphic scenes of bloodshed. But it’s not a problem. I have content that I can revise. If I hadn’t written it, I could not revise it.
I guess this is all my way of saying, don’t wait for something important, or perfect, or brilliant, or even right to start writing. The difference between a writer and a non-writer is that a writer sits down with pen in hand (or keyboard at fingertips) and writes. If you have always wanted to be a writer, I hereby give you permission to simply sit down and write.
November is coming. Even though National Novel Writing Month is no longer an official organized event, many of us who participated still challenge ourselves to write 50,000 new words during the month of November. If that sounds like too much to you, challenge yourself to write 10,000 new words. Use a pen and paper or a keyboard and monitor. Or even dictate it into a microphone if you prefer. Use whatever means is necessary to get your creative juices flowing and write something.
Later (in December) you can revise.
Enjoy!