I did it again. I typed a whole message and something happened and I lost it. When will I ever learn? I just hate when I do that because I don't think I can recreate what I just wrote. But I guess I'll try, because I do want to post something tonight.

Day 3 of this National November writing month challenge and I've written 5,126 words. I'm on pace right now to be able to complete 50,000 words by November 30.

Writing a novel is very different from writing a short story. Usually, I've been in a class and writing a short story with a ten page limit. When you have a page limit, you really have to organize your story and start write in. You also end up leaving out alot of detail. You don't have to necessarily do that in a novel. You can more or less write about everything in detail and your story doesn't have to be as organized when you first write it. All that comes later in the editing process.

When I write a short story, I pretty much know what's going to happen and in what sequence and I know what the ending is going to be either. In this novel that I'm writing, I only sort of know how it's going to end but I don't know how the character gets to the ending and I'm finding out as I write. I have been thinking about trying to put together some kind of outline, only so I know what to write about from day to day and I still might do that. Right now, I'm just reveling in the freedom to write whatever is coming out of my head. It is just so vastly different than short story writing.

In some ways, writing without a care to length and plot is freeing and at the same time it feels like all I'm writing is crap. My short story writing is very efficient. I write the story and I don't make many revisions other than grammatical and some tightening or a little more detailed explaining in a section that's confusing. I don't feel efficient at all in this novel. I feel like I'm writing alot of backstory that will most likely be thrown out in the editing process. This thought freaks me out because part of me feels like I'm wasting a lot of time. I have to tell myself that this okay, that it's better to overwrite than to underwrite and I can always edit myself down later into a tighter story. But god, the garbage monitor seems so high. I guess I'll just have to get used to it.

I wanted to watch the world series today but I was afraid to watch because I just did not want to see the Yankees win aother world series. I know, I'm supposed to want the Yankees to win for the sake of New York City and what it's been going through after the September 11 attack. But I can't. The Yankees represent everything that's awful to me about professional sports. The Yankees are the team with the highest payroll in the league. They're also in the biggest television market in the country. The message this sends to small market and small payroll teams is that they don't have a chance in hell of winning the world series. And I think that's the wrong message to send about America's supposedly favorite sport.

Why can't major league baseball have a salary cap like the National Football league? It's worked really great for football. You never know who's going to be in the superbowl and it's really evened the playing field. Football manages at some stadiums to have over 70,000 fans. Baseball, even at the biggest stadiums, seat only 50,000. Why is there this audience discrepancy if baseball is supposed to be america's number one pastime?

I think major league baseball has a tough year ahead of them. On Tuesday, the baseball owners are meeting on whether to get rid of the Minnesota Twins and the Montreal Expos. If they do decide to get rid of these teams, it will be very divisive for the sport The contract negotiations between the baseball players' union and the owners is also coming up. With Alex Rodriguez and others bringing in millions of dollars, I believe that those talks will very contentious and that the result, will probably be a strike or at least a walkout. I don't think major league baseball can afford another strike or walkout. Baseball as a spectator sport is barely recovering from the strike in 1994.

I hope the Yankees lose the world series tomorrow, just to show that a team with a smaller payroll can win. I hope this happens for the sake of baseball and its fans.