Today is Halloween and we added that new Chucky balloon to our menagerie at the kids’ request. The weather has been unseasonably warm and I’ve complained about it a lot, but today for trick or treating it will be nice. Then it’s supposed to drop down into proper fall temperatures this weekend. I’m hoping to finally get to the apple orchard. It just hasn’t felt enough like fall to go lately.

Spenser and I will be spending Halloween at the movies. We’re attending a screening of Halloween Kills with a pre-movie Q&A with James Jude Courtney who has played Michael Meyers in the last three Halloween films. This follows us going to a meet and greet with the star and director of the Terrifier films, which was awesome as well. I always see my friends who live in LA and NYC going to stuff like this, so I’m happy for once to be able to do it in my little midwestern suburb.

This stuff also really inspires me to get back to work on my current book so I can finish it and then write the competitive eating romantic comedy next so I can get to work on the feature screenplay and TV scripts I want to write as well. I do not lack for ideas and I don’t even really lack for time. I just lack wildly for discipline. So I’m working on that. My therapists keeps telling me medicine alone can’t fix it and I have to take some personal responsibility for that myself. I continue to ignore that advice.

One thing I have been doing more of that he encouraged me to get back to was journaling. I switched to the morning pages model instead of just venting whenever and it’s been very helpful for my mental health and creativity. I switched to a different journal because the traditional style was hard for me to write in. I got a spiral bound one with fewer pages and it’s made a huge difference. I try to start every day this way to clear my head before I do anything else. I highly recommend it. And even though the convenience of online journaling was overwhelmingly positive, writing by hand can’t be beat for it’s therapeutic and inspirational effects. I highly recommend it.

I went back and forth on journaling for a while and whether it was worth it or not, and just when I needed it the most, this bit from one of Jami Attenberg’s ( a vociferous defender and fan of journaling) newsletters hit me right in the feels:

I just know that whenever I’m at my most distracted or stressed out, if I can make just a little time to scratch a few things down, I always feel better afterward. Because my feelings will have been held for a moment, captured and examined, seen in a new light. Writing allows us to see ourselves when we most feel lost or consumed by the world.

I often refer to it as a gift we can give ourselves , to take a look at ourselves like that. But lately I have been thinking of it like this: as a fight for ourselves. To make time to write is to make sure we’re all still here. And we are, we are!

We are all still here.

I printed that out and put it over my writing desk and taped a copy to the inside cover of my journal.

One other thing I’ll be doing this weekend is going to vote early. I want to avoid the chaos of election day and take care of it now. I will be spending much less time watching TV news and scrolling on social media this week and will instead be immersing myself in my glorious deluxe hardcover copy of Iron Flame so I can finish before Onyx Storm comes out in January and I pick up my copy at the midnight launch party.

We have a very large Hindu population where I live and they have been celebrating Diwali, a festival of lights the celebrates the victory of light over darkness. I can’t think of a more apt metaphor for this election. The fate of our country and the people you love hangs in the balance with this election, so do your part. Make sure you vote and make sure you vote for the party that wants to protect democracy and protect the vulnerable not the party that wants to shit all over everything and do the bidding of a few billionaires and religious whack jobs.