This writing shit is getting harder. I have no idea what to write. I thought it would get easier as time went on but it’s not. Here’s how you make it easy: start writing. Check the brain and get going. Let’s start, let’s bring that confidence back up to maximum and blow right through this. Fuckin do it here it is:

The fire flickered and clicked against the cobalt darkness high up in the mountains. It had been a hot day. Too hot according to everyone who was there, which was everyone. The sun had vanished and with it the blistering temperatures. They were all huddled around the source of heat and light, this ancient magic, poking their sticks without purpose into the flames and watching the embers pulse like some wizard’s spell.

There was Tom: the mountain man, the man with the plan, the ax and the propane. The man’s man. He planned all these nature exploits, chopped the wood and built the fire. He took time to show the others what he did and why he did it that way. He had eyes for Meg but told no one for although his easy manner was likable and pleasant he was not in touch with his emotions. His best friend was Marvis.

There was Marvis: the gangly guy, the guy who made the food, the brooding depressed college dropout who found work at a restaurant. He was an unhappy man who loved to cook. He had a fear of going blind and one cannot cook without sight. His girlfriend had left him and he still had not recovered. That was four years ago. Marvis worked with Jimmy.

There was Jimmy: the boy frightened of the forest. He had fears of the trees swallowing him whole so to overcome this nightmarish possibility he came along on this weekend’s camping trip Into The Forest. A hellish experience with LSD years ago had created this fear in the first place, nurtured it, encouraged it to become a debilitating phobia that Jimmy did not want to worsen. But he did want to face it. He was Amanda’s brother.

There was Amanda: the tall pretty blonde who played the guitar and liked to weave white lilies into her hair as though she emerged fully formed out of a Led Zeppelin ballad. She enjoyed portraying these romantic mythic images that no rounded human could ever fully embody but it did not bother her. She floated through the world as if subtle gold dust fell off her shoulders, and men followed her as if they saw it. She lived with Meg.

There was Meg: a
dark-skinned
dark-haired
dark-eyed
dark-humored
dark-SOULED art maven with an intense love of Wayne Barlowe and Zdzislaw Beksinsky. One wall of her apartment was mapped with prints by HR Giger. She was a quiet girl and enjoyed any opportunity to spend time with interesting people who knew things she didn’t. She had no interest in camping in the mountains but had a reluctant affection for Tom and his confident way in the world.

Tom tossed another log on the fire with one hand and took a swallow of whiskey with the other. Marvis stared unblinking into the fire, his thoughts inscrutable. The back of Jimmy’s head was crawling as he imagined unseen demons of the darkness reaching out to him from the blank nothingness of the trees. Amanda strummed on her guitar idly, muted E7 chords ringing out into the cloudy starless sky. Meg traced the lines of her newest tattoo on her forearm and wondered if she should ask Tom for the whiskey bottle.

There how’s that. Writing isn’t so hard. Just do it.