I sit and stare at my desk, littered with books like Bird by Bird and Fight Club and a plethora of notebooks. Quotes and notes of encouragement are tacked to my bulletin board. Confucius and Ferris Bueller rooting me on to write.

It's funny how many notebooks you have when you write like me. It's not that I've gone through all the paper in them. It's just that I need to have a lot of notebooks for different ideas and stories. I have one for my thoughts. I have a small notebook for story ideas. I have a writing pad that I jot down the beginning of stories on. As the ideas and stories escalate, they move on to the bigger notebook, allowing more room for the thought to grow. Start small, build big.

There are times when I have to be totally secluded and isolated like a monk to write. I get too caught up with what's going on around me and it's hard to focus at the task at hand.

Then there are times when I have to surround and envelope myself in the hustle and bustle of life. You sometimes have to write through example and experience.

It has come to my understanding that many people, including myself, want me to succeed as a writer. Why? I don't know why they want me to, but I can tell why I want to. It is my way of life. It is how I like to live my life. I love to observe events happen and then turn them into fiction, a wonderous fiction at that.

But it comes and goes. There are endless hours where I just sit and stare, a lot like these, words evading my grasp.