The 50K version of my novel is finished. I came in at 50,088 words. I received a certificate and a winner's icon, that I will update on the blog tomorrow.

Now if I can just finish the novel to the end, I'll be very happy.

I've been writing all night. I want to finish my 50K total tonight, and take a break tomorrow. I'm not done with my novel yet, but I plan to keep writing till it's finished.

I was thinking of relaxing the 1,667 words per day pace, but I know if I do that I'll never finish the novel in December. And I do want to finish the novel before the end of the year.

If I finish the novel, it will be a first for me and I think it's an important stage for me to get to in my writing life. A novel is such a big undertaking, such a big step to take for me as a writer. I've finished writing short stories and even a 110+ page screenplay, but a novel is different.

A novel is more involved, and it's definitely longer than a screenplay as far as word counts go. My novel, double spaced is 169 pages. I have five more chapters to go. I can see the novel going into the 200+ page range by the time I'm through. Darn! That's a ton of pages.

My first goal is get the novel done by the run off election date, which is Tuesday December 9. I have a writing seminar to attend that night on character development, which means I'll have to be done during the day or finish when I get home from the seminar.

Ending on December 9 would mean adding 15,000 more words to my novel. I hope that's enough to finish the five chapters. If not, I guess I'll keep going till I finish. But I have to absolutely be done by December 31st. If I keep up the 1,667 words a day pace, and I have more to write, I'm sure I'll be finished way before the end of December.

I heard this song at the gym today, and it brought back so many good memories. The song was "Lips like Sugar" by Echo and the Bunnymen. I was trying to dance while running on the eliptical trainer, what a riot!

I want to hear Joy Division, New Order, The Style Council, and Pere Ubu!

I hate this. The secret is out. SFGATE.com has an article in their food section on sparkling lemon soda. I've been buying it for months now, and my brand has been rated # 1.

"The top choice was Galvanina Lemon Soda ($1.99 a liter, Trader Joe's) from Italy. It won praise for its "nice strong lemonade taste." Fans of this drink said "lemony and quite tart" and "good and bubbly.""

Galvanina Lemon soda is so addictive. Once I started drinking it, I couldn't stop. I have to have it in the house all the time.

I'm going to an early turkey day luncheon with the rels tomorrow. Then I think I'll skip out and go to the movies. I like my relatives, but only in short doses during the holidays.

My aunt called tonight and told me that she thought she was coming down with the flu, but she wasn't sure. And I'm like, great! Just don't cough on the food.

I found this SFGate web page about my new hood, The Sunset and West Portal. I used to live a few blocks from West Portal at one point in my life, so it's kind of fun to read what the web page has to say.

There's an incredibly expensive neighbourhood above West Portal, called St. Francis Wood. The hood has fountains, a roundabout, and huge houses on big plots (mansions), with expensive cars like hummers and rolls on every block. West Portal has 4 banks, its own satellite Charles Schwab office, antique stores, and a few investment bank offices.

A friend who grew up here told me West Portal is where the rich people go to live, when they've gotten tired of living on Nob Hill or in Cow Hollow. And if they really get tired of the city, they move to Hillsborough in Burlingame and buy a condo on Nob Hill for when they want to party in the city.

Here's a map showing how the City and County of San Francisco voted during the November 4th mayoral race election.

Neighborhood math puts Gonzalez in hole

I'm surprised Newsome won hoods like Noe Valley, Portrero Hill, Upper Market/Eureka Valley, and the Inner Sunset.

The Inner Sunset is part of Gonzalez's district. Noe Valley, Potrero Hill and Upper Market/Eureka Valley run pretty left and progressive most of the time.

And the Western Addition was close, Newsome lost by only one point, and in North Bernal Heights he lost by two points. The Western Addition is part of Gonzalez's district, and North Bernal Heights, is totally hippie like the Haight.

Here's the statisical page of my new district of San Francisco.

The Sunset

This is my old district.

The Richmond

I lived in this district too for awhile.

Chinatown, Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, Waterfront

I don't usually go in for this kind of stuff, I'm trying to get a seat to see Al Gore speak next week in San Franciso.

I just have to see what this guy is really like in person, and if he's as awkward a speaker as everyone says he is. He was the vice president of the country for 8 years after all, and then there was that historical election debacle in 2000.

A girl friend of mine emailed me this article, Women Needed to Test Orgasm Machine, and wanted to know if I'd be willing to sign up.

It does sound intriguing doesn't it? But I don't know about having something inserted in my spine.

What I really need to start worrying about is my stupid novel. I have five more days to complete my novel and I'm only on Chapter 7. I had 12 chapters planned. DAMN!!!

I can't believe I was silly enough to think I was going to be finished with the novel early, and that I needed to stretch the time out. Now I'm behind, way behind.

I think I can at least get to Chapter 9 by November 30, and then I guess I'll just have to keep writing until I've finished the last three chapters.

I was so sure I would be able to complete a whole novel in 50K words and 30 days this year, but again I need more time and more words. At least I'll be almost finished and not 30% finished like the last two years.

A 50K novel would the equivalent of "Catcher in the Rye", which I think today would be considered a novella.

One writer I've been reading says that her ideas for stories are so big, her novels end up being very large.

I don't know if my ideas are so big or I've been writing a lot of crap that doesn't belong in the novel, and which I'm going to have to take out later.

I even wrote a brief outline for the novel this time, but I'm thinking I should have spent more time outlining exactly what would happen in each chapter and scene. I know there were times in my writing when I didn't know where my chapter was really going, and I didn't really like that feeling.

I like that I was able to be so flexible with my outline, but I was getting the feeling I was repeating information and writing contradictory things about my characters. I've done it in a ten-page short story, so I'm sure I'm doing it in the novel big time.

But this is all good. This experience is confirming something for me what I've been thinking is my biggest obstacle to completing a story. I need a good outline. I was only able to finish my screenplay because I spent a ton of time working on the outline. I wrote 20 drafts of the outline before I even started writing. The outline made the writing fly, and I was able to concentrate on writing a good scene instead of having to think what the heck the character is doing.

I heard a quote by some famous female writer, where she says if she doesn't outline her stories her characters go out of control. My stupid characters are like that. Sometimes they'll talk about everything else, give me every frickin' detail of some other aspect of their life that has nothing to do with the story I'm writing. It's like they're so happy to come alive in my writing, that they'll do anything to make sure I spend more time with them so they can stay alive and keep blabbing.

It's spooky to think that my fictional human characters have the same real human instinct for survival, and they will do anything to survive. And the only way a fictional human character survives is in a story, a long story.

And some of those fictional freaks haunt me too. If I get an idea for their story and I don't make an effort to write it down, they bug me until I can't take it anymore and I have to sit down and write their story.

I know it all sounds trippy, but this is the way the writing process works for me. Fictional freaks bugging me till I write their story down, and then when I do they are talkative and so out of control.

One thing about not working in an office and working at home is I miss the day before a holiday.

If I was in an office right now, I'd be goofing off and talking to people, and there would be lots of snacks and food to eat. Then in the early afternoon, management would annouce that we could go home early.

But I'm already at home, and I'm working because I don't have a party and holiday atmosphere to distract me.

I don't know why I'm letting myself get so upset about the San Francisco mayoral. I'm politically stupid as hell, and since I've lived here, I've never voted for the person that eventually became mayor of the city, and has it affected my life. NO!

The KPIX poll shows Gonzalez ahead is that his lead is among likely voters or people who are eligible to vote. But at the end, KPIX had to admit that Newsome has the lead among probable voters, or people who actually vote.

The saddest thing is people don't vote. We would have totally different elected individuals if we had 100% participation.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to vote for mayor, since my track record is so bad. But early training is hard to escape from. My left wing hippie teachers and my dad taught me all through my life that it was my civic duty to volunteer, protest and vote. I had only one vote, and if I didn't use it I'd lose it.

I wish more people thought this way about voting. As it is they don't, and maybe lucky for me I'll have voted for the winner of the San Francisco's mayor's race.

But I'm not counting on it. And to think I still fantasize about being a political consultant, which is a hoot and half because I'm so politically ignorant!

I'm starting to smell a media hype regarding the SF mayoral election, and I don't like it. Yes, yes, I know they've got to pay their bills but I'm an analyst and I'm adding up the facts here that they're just not adding up very logically.

I was paid by one company traded on the NY Stock Exchange and one company traded on NASDAQ for my analytical skills, and my meager abilities to put thousands of random facts together in a way that made sense. All I can say is that something is out of whack here with the election reporting and coverage.

I'm getting the same feeling I got when the media was hyping the 2000 presidential election in California and insisting that the state was in play for Bush, and when they were hyping the long term financial future and prospects of the dotcom stocks. And we all know what happened with those media predictions.

I hate when things don't make sense. I hate when the numbers don't add up. I used to be able to add up and balance $2 billion dollars in sales down to the pennies and be able to tell you a minutae of detail as to why we made the sales, and I'm telling you the SF Mayoral election media coverage feels like they're cooking the books.

I know San Francisco is whacky, but we're not that whacky enough to break the laws of math and science.

The polls don't look good for Newsome, but thank god for blogs. I found a reputable SF political blog that said the KPIX numbers are suspect.

"KPIX Poll Not Worth the Paper It's Printed On

A couple of days ago, KPIX-TV Channel 5 released “poll” numbers that purported to show Matt Gonzalez leading Gavin Newsom by a few percentage points in the Mayor's race.

Unfortunately, the results had absolutely no bearing on reality. Indeed, this “poll” has so many problems that it's hard to know where to begin - but let's try anyway.

First - the thing wasn't done by human beings. It was done by machine. People simply responded by punching buttons on their telephones in response to automated questions. These types of polls are well known to be useless, absolutely unreliable and highly inaccurate.

More importantly, though, the KPIX poll didn't sample likely voters, or even registered voters. It simply asked participants whether or not they were likely to vote - and of course, the overwhelming majority said they would, so their response counted.

Let's put this in context: 52 percent of the folks polled in the KPIX poll said they were “certain to vote” and another 44 percent said they were “probably” going to vote, which means that, if these numbers are to be believed, the turnout for the Dec. 9 election will be somewhere around 96 percent.

That ain't gonna happen.

Even in the best years, voter turnout barely breaks 60 percent; the turnout in the general election on Nov. 4 was only 45 percent and historically, the numbers for the runoff are always lower. If more than 35 percent turn out next month, that would be a strong showing.

Yet, no one at KPIX saw fit to put the numbers in the proper context when the results were reported. Instead, KPIX and the station's partner in crime, the San Francisco Chronicle, simply reported the “poll” results as if they were statistically valid, which they clearly are not.

To say that was a disservice to the station's viewers and the paper's readers would be an understatement, at best. "

KPIX used Survey USA at the time this article was posted, and they used the same survey company again for the November 25 poll.

Thanks to FJGallagher for the info.

That SF Bay Guardian story got me so fascinated that I decided to check out the San Francisco Ethics Commission website. Contributions made to a campaign is public information, and candidates have to list who contributes to their cause.

What's great about the SF Ethics site, is you can look at previous searches that people did. Sure enough, there were recent searches done on the campaign contributions for both campaigns. I haven't found a summary yet, and I wonder if some poor schlep from the Bay Guardian had to add everyhing up in excel.

Anyway, here's some interesting contributors I found while glancing through the donations list. You have to list your profession and employer.

Some of Newsome's contributors:
Kirk Hammett - Lead Singer, Metallica
Non-Profit Executive, Habitat for Humanity SF
Priest, St. Gregory of NYSSA Episcopal Ch.
Self Emp Writer (wish this was me!)
Self Emp Singer/Songwriter
Self Emp Tech Entrepreneur
Not Employed

From the San Francisco Bay Guardian, maps to contributions to the Newsome and Gonzalez mayoral campaigns.

The SF Bay Guardian is trying to say that Gonzalez gets backing from the Westside neighbourhoods, but if you read the legend of the map, 13-23 people gave money from my hood 94122 and from the adjacent hood of 94116, 8-12 people gave money. And my hoods aren't the richest ones either; it's very working class.

If you look at Newsome's map between 132 - 235 people contributed to Newsome campaign from zip 94122 and from zip 94116.

How do you compare over 100-200 people to 13-23 people, and say that he has contributions from the Westside?

The maps are eye-opening though. That's a alot of people contributing to the Newsome's campaign from all over the city. I had no idea that many people contributed to political campaigns.

If people really liked Gonzalez, doesn't logic tell you that he should be getting as many contributors as Newsome, especially from the hoods he won? I'm impressed and truly suprised, that so many San Francisco people gave of their hard earned money in these awful economic times.

But logic never seems to have any credence in the media or politics.

If the Bay Guardian were really fair, which they're often not, shouldn't they be reporting on the discrepancy betwen the number of people sending in contributions to Newsome versus Gonzalez?

Now either the SF Bay Guardian can't make maps and they've got the Gonzalez map wrong because $64,500 contributions plus $64,023 doesn't add up to the total of $99,500. The map so doesn't make sense, and why is that I wonder.

But the real story is the amount of contributors. Not the amounts, because rich people always give more, but the sheer numbers of people contributing to Newsome compared Gonzalez.

I know the state of Cali is in a big bad budget mess, and cuts have to be made but why do the budget cuts have to affect the poor, disabled and helpless in the state.

From the LA Times, Gov.'s Cuts to Hit Poor, Universities.

Here are some of the grim highlights:

Schwarzenegger's proposal would save $282 million by eliminating music, art, camping and other nonmedical therapy programs for the roughly 626,000 Californians who have mental or physical impairments that make it difficult to learn, speak or care for themselves. Another cut involves suspending the Lanterman Act, which guarantees myriad services for the developmentally disabled.

Another reduction would save $385 million by cutting cleaning, transportation and other in-home services that the state provides to the elderly, blind and disabled to help keep them out of nursing homes.

A smaller cut — $77 million — would freeze enrollment in several programs, including Healthy Families, which provides health care for children of the working poor, and which Schwarzenegger praised during the campaign. The freeze would create waiting lists for that program.

You may not be familiar with my home island of Kauai in Hawaii, but if you've seen these movies you've seen my island.

Here's a list of all the films shot on Kauai, Kauai Moives.

I couldn't sleep last night, so I decided to listen to Bernie Ward, a radio late night talk show host. He is the best Shrub bashing anti-Iraq war radio commentator on the airwaves, and may be the only one in the country for that matter.

He was so fun to listen to during the 2000 presidential election. It was night after night of total all out Bush family bashathon. Bernie is an unashamed left wing progressive, and will take on anyone who's willing to call into his show. Ward is smart as heck, and he makes mincemeat out of callers who can't logically back up their positions. He's like the snarkiest prosecuting attorney there is, only he's a left wing progressive.

So naturally, I was shocked as hell to hear him endorsing Newsome for mayor of San Francisco and arguing with the Gonzalez suppporters and making them sound like idiots on the radio.

Bernie, the left wing Rush Limbaugh, supporting Newsome, that's weird!

I find it interesting that almost all of the Latino groups in San Francisco, a nationality group that is the most sought after and wooed voting bloc of voters of the last ten years, isn't backing someone of their own nationality in the San Francisco's mayor's race.

I wonder how not having their endorsements will be explained, seeing as how everyone including George Bush wants their precious votes and how nowadays
if you're anti-Latino, you're considered a racist.

Can any politician criticize the Latino Groups without being called a racist?

So I just heard a politician interviewed on the radio, and either it was the worse spin job I'd ever heard in my life or the guy is just nuts and has no qualms about lying his butt off.

I mean, you'd think a smart politician would be at least try to spin himself out of a controversy. No, this one just out and out lied. It's trippy!

I take that back. Actually the worse spin job I'd even read was Rainbow Grocery trying to spin the "israeli products controversy". Boy, was that just bad, bad spin.

Whew! I'm all caught up again for the Day 23 word count of my novel which is about 38,300+ words. I was four days behind counting today, but I made myself get all caught up.

I could write and get ahead, but I'm exhausted. I've been writing off and on all day, and I think I've reached my limit. My brain is all mushy. I'll probably try to get ahead this week and maybe even finish before the deadline on the 30th.

It would be nice to have the weekend off, and not write. Writing every day is tough. You have to take some days off, otherwise it just becomes such a slog! I was alwasy skeptical of the writing 5 days a week method, but you know it's not a bad schedule. If I wrote during the week, I could have the weekends off.

The problem for me is always finding the time to write during the week, so I think at least maybe one weekend day could be a writing day and one day would be off. That sounds like a more reasonable schedule to me. I kind of like writing on the weekends because I get longer blocks of time.

It's interesting that it's the 40th anniversary of the assasination of JFK, and how the Kennedy Museum in Dallas is in my novel, as well as Dealey Plaza.

My characters will have a "date" at the Kennedy Museum, and my female character goes and sits in the Dealey Plaza every morning to contemplate Kennedy and his assasination. Her parents were big Kennedy fans, and she grew with her parents' obsession.

I visited there in spring 2000, while I was in Dallas for a Gartner Group conference. I went to the Kennedy Museum, which was within walking distance of the Hilton at Reunion Tower where I was staying.

There's a room in the museum where you can watch the Kennedy funeral procession, and while I was in there watching it some women starting crying very loudly. She didn't look old enough to have even been alive during the assasination, but she was obviously very moved by watching the funeral procession.

I've always wanted to write the weeping woman at the Kennedy Museum into a story, and now I've got a perfect opportunity. It was so weird to me that in the year 2000, some woman who wasn't even born when Kennedy was shot, would be mourning his death.

Someday I may even write a story where a female character find herself weeping so noisily at the 6th Floor Museum and Dealey Plaza. There's got to be some kind on interesting story leading up to that moment.

And now I'm thinking, my nanowrimo novel character could be the weeping woman at the Kennedy Musuem. What a perfect place to ball your eyes out over a failed love affaire. Isn't losing love like death after all, and if you were watching a funeral procession, it would like watching the funeral procession for your love.

And I did go there on a Friday morning before my flight back to San Francisco. Wow, then I could write myself in as a bystander into my own novel. I could describe myself as a background character. What a riot!

It's been so cold here, I went to the grocery store wearing long underwear under my jeans. I haven't done that in years, and I've only ever done it when I've gone up to Tahoe for the snow or when I'm back east for the winter.

It was the 20's last night, and that's really cold for San Francisco. I've even dug out my down coat just in case I'll need it. I've just worn the coat around my apartment, because I don't want to leave the heat on all the time. I was going to buy a down robe, and then thought I'll just use my down coat that I hardly ever wear.

I've been searching for down booties as well. I used to own some kind of animal hair booties from South America, that I received as a present years ago. They were really warm, but I was kind of freaked out wearing all that animal hair and fur. The fur kept my feet really warm, but the long animal hair used to totally trip me out. I didn't like it.

From the LA Times. I would hate to think this, but I could fit into the definition of a South Park Republican.

"Blogger Andrew Sullivan dubs the fans of all this cable-nurtured satire "South Park Republicans" — people who "believe we need a hard-ass foreign policy and are extremely skeptical of political correctness" but also are socially liberal on many issues."

I hate political correctness of any kind, I do like the US to have a strong foreign policy, and I tend to be socially liberal.

Here's a link to the LA Times article, Right wing's mass-media insurgency heralds a real change.

The sunset is this amazing beautiful reddish orange colour tonight. I haven't seen a sunset with these colours in ages here.

It's so beautiful!

I think I'm becoming what I'm calling a "political Darwinist". Darwin's theory, as you may remember, was that only the fit, the smartest survive.

I think I'm a political Darwinist, because if people want to vote ofr politicians who will do nothing to insure their own survival, than they deserve to not survive. Nature isn't a welfare state, remember? That's just a man-made construct.

I mean, if you're not intelligent enough see that your political choice will lead to your being unable to survive in your chosen habitat, and you have to move, then it's nobody's fault but your own.

I like being a political Darwinist, it's kind of like karma. People deserve everything they get. They have choices to make at all levels of their lives, and if they make wrong choices, they should reap their karma big time.

All the psychics are warning that karma is speeding up. If you make a wrong choice, instead of taking years to reap the the effects of that wrong choice, you'll reap it instantly. I hope they're right. The City is still way too crowded and there's definitely still too many people living here.

I hope my theory of Political Darwinism is right, and that more people be forced to leave because then the rents will come down, and hopefully so will the prices of everything else.

A high jobless rate and an economic recession should be good for something right? It's nature's way of stabilizing populations and putting things in balance.

There was a report on the local morning news show about how the SF Bay Area Food Banks are running out of food. I'm sure they did it for dramatic purposes, but the news camera man showed the empty shelves at the Food Bank in San Mateo.

I felt bad. The reason for the empty shelves, the reporter went on, was because the food banks have had to feed more people. One client also remarked that the food boxes were getting smaller and smaller, because there's just not enough food to go around.

This is the kind of stuff that makes a Sunday morning news show that nobody watches, and doesn't make the 6 pm news. There are more and more people in the SF Bay Area who are jobless and can't afford to feed themselves.

These are the issues that the local news commentators should be focusing on, and not on Governor Terminator or Michael Jackson.

It is a crime, in every sense of the word crime, that there are starving people in this very affluent part of the world and no cares enough to report on it very much.

I decided that everytime I go to the store, I'll buy extra cans of food and put the stuff in the food barrels. You know it's a sad sad world when people's basic needs like food are not being taken care of.

There's a definite kind of anger out there, that says government and politicians are not taking care of people's basic needs. It's why someone like Arnie was elected to lead the world's 5th largest economy, because if local politicians are more focused on ideologies instead of luring businesses to the state and the community so they can hire more people, maybe a Hollywood action hero can get the job done.

He does it in the movies, after all. And since most people are so removed from the political ideologies, what's the difference between the movies and politics. It's all the same, isn't it? A fantasy world that the common person doesn't inhabit or exist in.

At least in the movies, the action hero always wins and doesn't get beaten down by nonsensical political rhetoric and government beaurocracy.

I just checked the Nanowrimo site, it's only November 23 but already there are 9 pages of people done with their 50k novel. Unbelievable! I thought the point was to get in the habit of writing a certain amount of words every day, and not speed to the finish. Whatever.

This year my novel writing is going very slowly, but I'm determined to finish. I have all of Thanksgiving weekend to get cranking.

Next month, I was hoping to bring all this Nanowrimo energy into finishing my second draft screenplay, and starting the outline and rewrite of the third and final version.

I want to finish the second draft version just to finish it, and I'll probably register it with the Writer's Guild to see what that process is like. The third and final version will be sent off to that UCLA screenwriting professor review, and then I'll register this version of the screenplay with the Writer's Guild as well.

Then sometime in January or February at the latest, I'll start editing the Nanowrimo novel and rewriting it and then comes the fun job of trying to sell it. I'm scheduling myself to take a bunch of seminars on selling your writing next year.

I went to an early Thanksgiving dinner last night, and already I have turkey and gravy in the fridge.

I made a really yummy maple glazed carrot dish from Bon Appetit. Carrots boiled in butter, with a butter, maple syrup and brown sugar glaze and sprinkled with chopped italian parsley for colour.

Totally heavenly and so darned fattening!

I suppose one thing I am grateful for, if I can be grateful for anything about my writing, is I've never not had a year where I didn't write at least write one story since I started exploring writing as a creative expression in 1998.

I should make a timeline for myself of when my stories were produced to prove to myself that I am somewhat productive.

This is so funny to me. A client from the southeast region of the country sent my boss an email for a project they want us to do. The client writes in the email that they would appreciate a week TAT on the project. I get the memo because I'm working on the request.

My boss sends me another email asking if I knew what 'a week TAT. meant, and I said no. I figured it probably was a shortcut for a phrase, but I'd never heard of it.

I googled TAT, and didn't get anything. Then I googled TAT acronym, and found a list of acronyms that stated TAT meant 'turnaround time'.

This made sense because later in the memo, the client stated that the company was under pressure to deliver the project in the first week of December.

I kind of feel so behind the times that I didn't know what TAT meant, but at the same time it's amusing as heck for some reason.

Listening to the Ronn Owens Show, I heard that the Santa Barbara DA has a vendetta against Michael Jackson. Apparently, this is the same DA who was trying to prosecute Jackson back in the early 90's for child molestation when that case was settled out of court.

Owens said that on one of Michael Jackson's records, there's a song about the Santa Barbara DA. Interesting.

So now all the legal eagles are involved. Johnny Cochran of the OJ Simpson trial fame is giving statements, and Scott Peterson's lawyer is supposedly taking Michael Jackson's case. Owens called Peterson's lawyer the Johnny Cochran of 2003.

But the question, will Michael Jackson surrender? I can't imagine him in jail. I hope he gets his own cell, and they keep him away from the other prisoners.

YEAH! Now I'm all caught up with my novel again. I was two days behind and now I'm current for tonight's headcount.

It took four hours of writing to produce 5,000 plus words or about 9.5 pages of single spaced typed text.

Oy! I'm exhausted. I could keep writing more, but I know I should stop. I've heard writers say that you should make yourself stop writing when you're reached your goal, even if you want to keep writing. If you stop yourself from over writing, then you will give yourself enthusiasm and incentive for writing the next day.

Writing is such a slog. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't find some other way of expressing myself, that's not so labor intensive and single minded.

To write, I guess if you write at home, is to sit in front of your computer all night staring at your screen. I guess I could write at a coffeehouse with other people. Many of the Nano people do that just so they don't have to write alone night after night. But I can't do it that way. I've tried it. It just doesn't work very well.

I do my best writing at home by myself with my stereo blasting music. Sometimes I can write in public, but it's hard. Although now that I think about it, I'm wondering which is harder. Writing by yourself or writing with others. It's all hard! Doesn't matter which really.

The only good thing about being at home and writing is you can at least suffer in private. That's about it.

Okay, now back to the country music station. I'm now playing the soundtrack from "O Brother Where are Thou." That was such a great movie, especially the music.

Blame it on "Bend it Like Beckham", but now I'm listening to The Spice Girls. Yes, I own both Spice Girls cds, and I'm so bummed I didn't have the foresight to get The Spice Girl Dolls. My friend Ruth has all of them, and I am totally jealous.

And yes, I love Sporty "Dikey" Spice. She's got the best voice, and she's my favourite. But I liked Baby Spice as well. She was so cute!

Now I have some Reba McIntyre on. Maybe I need to go out and buy some Garth Brooks cds. I kind of like him, and I wouldn't mind have some of his greatest hits.

This Reba cd that I have has some of the most depressing songs. It's kind of a depressing cd to listen to, but I do like her voice and she does have the right accent for what I'm writing.

I found another article talking about "The Mustangs of Las Colinas", The Mustangs of Las Colinas.

Aren't the horses beautiful?

Back to writing, and I had playing some Brahms but decided I needed to listen to some Dixie Chicks because I'm on the chapter where I'm in my Texas boy's brain and I need to hear some honky tonk sounds to get me in the mood.

I have the boxed set CD of Patsy Cline's hits, and tonight may be the night to listen to the whole thing.

There's some huge white blimp that says "Sanyo" on it flying around the city. Is there a game on tonight? Those things only fly around if there's a game.

I guess here's another good reason why it's good to work at home, and why I should be grateful . No one at work knows what I'm looking at or doing when I'm on the internet.

From Blogger, How Not to Get Fired Because of Your Blog.

Thanks to Gordon Zaft for the heads up.

That whole Michael Jackson scandal is pretty weird! I listened to the press conference given by the Santa Barbara County people, and they were very condescending.

I wonder if Jackson will turn up, or as some people are speculating, commit suicide.

What some people are asking, and I think their question is valid, is why would parents allow their children to even be with Michael Jackson given that there is rampant speculation that he may be a child molestor.

And what about those children of his. What happens to them? At least with all his wealth, the children will be well taken care of financially.

Here's a link from "Booze R Us", Beverages and More on one of my favourite wines, Beaujolais Nouveau.

"Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé."

It's beaujolais nouveau time again. The release date is November 20.

I'll try to find wine reviews and post them.

From the NY Times,

"The word from France is that the nouveau is rich and fat, with outstanding color and structure. "

So why is the Schrubmeister so hot to visit merry old England, espeically when it's obvious the people don't want him there?

Okay, so he gets to sleep in Buckingham Palace, and I guess that's a big deal. I think it's maybe because there's like a knighthood or some or other honour from the British realm coming his way. Can't think why the hell else he wants to go where he's obviously not wanted.

And as predicted the steriod scandal is starting heat up, although the mainstream media seems to be ignoring it.

The Mercury News does have a section on their website for The Doping Scandal.

No media coverage on this, at least I didn't see it.

Here we go. Let the f-bombs fly.

Bono remarks were not indecent, FCC rules

"When it comes to cursing, the government says, it's all in the delivery. That's the view of the Federal Communications Commission in its decision that U2 singer Bono's colorful language during the Golden Globe Awards didn't violate federal indecency rules.

The FCC rejected complaints from the Parents Television Council and more than 200 people, most of them associated with the council, who accused dozens of television stations of violating restrictions on obscene broadcasts by airing portions of the awards program last January.

The complaints objected to Bono's uttering the phrase "this is really, really, f--- brilliant."

The FCC, using the F-word more often to explain its decision than Bono did on the air, said the word "may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities." That distinction is a key test to measure whether a statement meets a federal standard for broadcast indecency."

I listened to the inauguration ceremony on the radio and I'll say one thing about Governor Terminator, he's got a heck of speech writer.

It makes me wonder why all the candidates running for public office can't have good speech writers. Aren't their enough unemployed people in the country to choose from?

I am the laziest person I know. I didn't write on Friday or Saturday, and today is my chance to get caught up on my novel and I don't want to do it.

I wrote enough tonight to cover Friday's word count, and I know if I just keep writing till I get sleep I'll be all caught for Sunday's word count. The problem is I just don't want to do it.

I don't know why either. It's not like I don't know what I'm going to write about because I do. And it's not like I'm having trouble writing either, because getting the word count for Friday earlier this evening was easy.

I just have such a desire to not write. It's crazy too, because I was just telling myself this morning that I've achieved my goal of being a writer, if a writer is someone who writes almost every day and produces stories. I've done that.

Now my new goal is to be a paid writer, which is a whole new way of writing and a whole new process. My goal has always been to be a paid writer, but being paid for writing is an entirely different proposition than being just a "writer" I've decided. I needed to become a writer first, before I could tackle being a "paid writer".

My new writing book gave me the inspiration. The book plainly and simply states that you cannot call yourself a writer, unless you write and produce product. It doesn't give define the quality of the product you produce, because that's not the point if you're a writer. A writer is simply a person who writes regularly everyday.

My chapter 5 is 11 pages. I don't want to switch chapters yet, but that's a ton of pages for a chapter.

My characters are running away from outline, but I guess that's okay. It happens sometimes.

I went to see the movie Billabong Odyssey today.

"The feature film release "Billabong Odyssey" documents the dramatic life-or-death adventures of a team of surfer/explorers who search the seven seas on the quest to find and ride the biggest wave on the planet."

It was pretty cool to see these huge waves being surfed, but I wonder what surf purists think about being towed out to a wave instead of paddling out.

Whenever I see surf movie, I feel like I'm honouring my Hawaii home roots since I grew up watching surf movies, and thinking surfers, skateboarders and windsurfers were like so rad and cool!

The movie website has videos you can watch, which are small bits of the movie.

I just listened to an interview with Brit actor Colin Firth, who played Mr. D'Arcy in "Pride and Prejudice" and "Bridget Jones' Diary". I love Mr. D'Arcy, like what girl doesnt'?

I didn't know this but the interviewer said that the scene in "Pride and Prejudice" which made Colin Firth a heart throb, was the one where he dives with his clothes on into the lake at his estate and emerges in his wet shirt. I didn't think that scene was sexy at all, but apparently many women did.

Colin Firth also writes, and one of his short stories was published in a book called Speaking with the Angel, edited by Nick Hornby.

Colin Firth, one of those totally yummy bickie Brit boys, is a writer. He says he writes as a hobby without any ambition to be published, and that Nick Hornby encouraged him to contribute his story to the collection. He's brilliant, isn't he?

Warning, unedited bad first draft fiction ahead. Below is the excerpt I posted for my novel on the Nanowrimo site.

Title: Texas is a State of Mind

Chapter 1.
It all started innocently enough. Just a series of random events that started happening in my life that could have turned out another way. I was writing articles on the ceo’s of various dot com companies that had failed during the crash of 2000. You know the guys who promised internet startup riches to venture capitalists, and the hapless public who saw the internet boom as the next get rich scheme. These same guys then proceeded to lose more than a trillion dollars worth of money during the crash. And not their money mind you, but the money of countless investors, companies and the greedy public. Yeah those guys.

Those guys were smart. They made their money in the beginning, gave themselves nice golden parachutes so in case the companies went belly up as all of them did, they would still have enough money to cook up their next get rich scheme. Ah golden parachute, now there’s a nice term that I should explain.

A golden parachute is the deal, the package, a ceo, usually the founder of a company demands in case for whatever reason he is let go, wants to leave or is fired. See, the guy has leverage in the beginning because he’s the one with the ideas and it’s his startup company.

The deal is usually lots of lots of cash, sometimes things like a plane, the company car, the company house, you know all the goodies the guy at the top should get and keep getting, never mind that the company’s stock is sinking lower than the Titanic.

And these ceo’s, they were great interview material. None of them were bitter. Would you be bitter if you walked away with millions? No, they were positive, upbeat, great talkers and salesmen and believers of their own dreams and visions. After all this time, after all the money they lost and people they let down, they were still willing to sell their dream.

And the public loved them. Loved reading about them. They were modern day Horatio Algers. These former high flying ceos were the guys everybody wanted to be, wanted to know, wanted to follow. That is until he came along.

“You’ve got to interview this guy Jane. He would be a great counterpoint to all the other people you’ve interviewed so far.” John my editor told me one morning during our weekly Monday morning assignment meeting. It was John’s idea to do the ceo articles, and he was the one who arranged for me to meet these people and interview them.

“Raker? Never heard of him.”

“That’s the point. Nobody’s ever heard of him. He’s the CEO who never was, who got there right at the top of the dot come wave, right before it was to crash. He was just about to hit it big, his company was about to go public at the end of April, and the boom, the crash happened.” John was up out of his chair now, his arms flying about like a bird who’s trying to take off.

“So how you’d hear about him?” I said in an even toned voice sitting back in my chair, hoping to calm him down. John standing up like that made me nervous; he was too excited. John sat down and smiled like a kid with a secret.

“Businessweek.”

“Businessweek? You’re stealing a story lead from them?”

“It’s not stealing. They just did a paragraph on him, when they were doing a special on the business climate in Texas after the dot com crash.” John was shuffling through the papers on his desk to find the magazine. It was buried under a pile of about twenty other journals at the bottom of his desk. He plopped the magazine down in front of me.

“Here’s your next assignment. I’ll get my secretary to schedule the interview. You might have to fly to Dallas to do the interview this week. He doesn’t like California.”

"Wait a minute. I don’t know anything about him. I need time to do my research about him.” I hated going into an interview blind and not knowing anything about my subject. An interviewer has less control that way.

“There’s not going to much information to research. I told you he wasn’t famous. But if it would make you more comfortable, I’ll try to get the interview scheduled for Wednesday of next week. You might be able to do more research once you’re in Dallas, so think about flying there on Monday. I expect the completed story on my desk the Monday after you get back.”

“What made you pick him?” I asked thumbing through the magazine to find the paragraph about Mr. Raker.

“He’s bitter about the whole experience.
You haven’t found a bitter CEO yet. This will be your first.”

After leaving John’s office, I went to the corner coffee shop to get breakfast and read about his latest discovery. A bitter failed dot com chief executive officer. A guy who almost made it, but never did. Marshall B. Raker was my next assignment, and even I could tell he was going to be a doozy.

More 60's music with The Doors first album. I think I mentioned sometime ago that my mom was a serious Jim Morrison fan. The woman was so distraught when he died.

Okay, so now my characters are driving to this restaurant in Dallas called The Mustang Cafe at Las Colinas. The horse sculptures at the place are beautiful.

Jim Morrison is crooning "Come on baby my light fire, come on baby light my fire, try to set the night on fire." The Doors are also definitely stoner music.

My sixties mood continues. Now I'm listening to Bob Dylan's album, "These Times They are a Changing."

I saw Dylan in concert a few years ago with Van Morrison as a guest. He was great, old looking, but fantastic. The guy is still rocking after all these years, and he was very energetic.

I'm listening The Byrds greatest hits. I heard their song "8 miles high" on the radio the other day, and it reminded me of my friend B from Chicago, whom I lost touch with when she moved to NYC. "8 miles high" was her favourite song, because she loved being high and walking around in her hip huggers and skimpy shirts with all the guys staring at her.

She was really tall, couldn't gain weight to save her life and had a naturally flat tummy. Chick never exercised at all. She was hypoglecemic and had to constanly eat, and it was ill how she just never gained weight. She had the opposite problem of most women. She had to be careful she didnt' get too thin because she lost weight so easily. The woman ate like a horse because she had to, not because she wanted to.

She was always telling me she wished she didn't have to eat so much, and how her health was such a problem. She was a total trip! B had the problem most women would kill for, I would kill for, and to her it was the biggest pain in the butt!

The Byrds are such stoner music! Or tripping music, if your prefer. Them and Jimi Hendrix.

The Byrds are mood music for my novel. The parents of of my female character were anti-war protestors during the Vietnam War and met at an anti-war demonstration at Cal on Shattuck Avenue. Her dad was a member of SDS, that group that used to blow up things during the late 60's. SDS blew up the B of A at UC Santa Barbara.

My character still has the dog tags that her mother gave her, that belonged to a missing POW. People use to wear them during the Vietnam War as a form of protest.

I saw these doggies at the Asian Art museum a few weeks ago. There were so cute and life like.

So I finally got around to seeing the movie "Bend it like Beckham", and it was so cute. I was surprised how attractive Jonathan Rhys Meyers turned out.

I've seen him in movie roles before, and I wasn't that impressed. But this movie actually made him look quite attractive in his own way, and his acting was very good as well.

I loved the soundtrack to the film, and am seriously thinking of getting the CD. I love all that modern indian music.

All that football/soccer reminded me of those soccer guys I dated; the fun english bloke from Southport who used to play in the English minor leagues and that really tall guy (6ft 5 in) from Austin whom a friend of mine tried to fix me up. Tall Austin guy played for various minor league soccer teams throughout Europe.

I didn't write yesterday, and I got behind in my word count but I'm all caught up today. I'm on chapter 5, and it's taking longer to write than expected. I'll probably at least another on it. This may mean chapter 6 may take three days to write as well.

I'm trying not to be too rigid about chapter length. I'm getting into the heart of my story, so it makes sense that these next chapters are going to be longer because more of the story is unfolding.

My story is so far 34.5 pages single spaced. I'm aiming for 120 -125 pages.

Don't know why, but I've been thinking about books recommended to be my past loves.

M - first love, wanted me to read "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, said it really changed his life.
J - poet, wanted me to read Dylan Thomas.
B - first guy who was a total best friend and love interest, recommended "A Prayer for Owen Meany", any Dickens and "Moby Dick".
J - the ex-husband, recommended Will Durant the historian, Sri Aurobindo, Plotinus, and Marcus Aurelius.

So I signed up for Film History, because I was talking a guy friend of mine last night and he said it would be a good class to meet guys. My guy friend is always bugging me about dating, and trying to get me to go back to online dating. He says I'll never meet anyone if I don't put myself out there.

So after arguing about online dating, we compromised and I said I would take the film history class.

Well now I'm freaked out. The last time the birdies tried to talk to me, I got into a car accident a week later. Those darn robins were knocking on office window daily, like they were trying to tell me something or warn me.

And now this little greenish brown birdie was doing the same thing on Saturday. I don't like it.

On Saturday I was sitting and eating pizza in the alley way between Embardero 4 and The Hyatt Regency, when a birdie landed on the chair next to mine.

The birdie was so cute. It just plopped its birdie butt on the chair like it was a person. The birdie was looking at me and chirping like it was trying to start a conversation. The birdie was so frickin' adorable!!! Such a little bitty thing in a big wooden chair. And it looked like a cartoon birdie too.

The the birdie flew off, and I was wishing it came back. Five minutes later it landed on another chair across from mine, and started chirping at me, and flapping its wings. I loved that birdie, it was so cuuuute!

I was looking at what class to take next year, because I'm supposed to register tomorrow.

My choices were:
Musical Appreciation - I used to always wonder what they teach you in this class.
Film Study - A friend took it and said it was really cool because you get to watch movies during class
Intro to Astronomy - always a fascinating subject
Intro to Physics - never took it in college, so why not.
Tragic Dramas of Greece - took the class in college and I feel like reviewing.

I'll probably sign up for Tragic Dramas of Greece, since it relates to screenwriting and writing. But Film Study and Musical Appreciation are tempting as well.

I'd really like to take a class on Japanese Art or Japanese Literature, but I can't find a class.

Now I know why I think today is Veteran's Day. I don't have art class tonight, because for the college today is Veteran's Day. Duh!!!

I just saw the trailer for that new movie that's coming next year called The Day After Tomorrow. It looks like it's going to be a cool movies, at least the awesome special effects portion of it. I love the title too!

The Day After Tomorrow
Logline: A climatological disruption of inconceivable proportions ravages the world, sending millions of terrified survivors surging South. Heading in the other direction, however, is a brilliant paleoclimatologist whose own son may still be alive in New York City, now a frozen wasteland.

From The Mercury News today:

"Bravo has announced it will be doing a spin on its hit show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy'' in which five straight guys will offer manly advice to a gay guy. (The one-hour special will be called, naturally, "Straight Eye for the Queer Guy.'')

Among the things the straight guys will offer tips on: power tools, proper garage decor, the basics of pro football, doing your hair in less than two minutes and, of course, sports event etiquette."

What about "Queer Eye for the Straight Girl"? I want the guys to tell women "Say No to Crack (butt crack). G-String Sightings, and Belly Hangings."

I worked out for an hour at the gym this afternoon on the elliptical trainer, and for forty minutes on Saturday. I'm trying to exercise more, because the weight is not coming off despite the fact that I'm eating very little. My jeans are also getting really tight, and it's freaking me out.

When I was working in an office, I walked on my breaks and ended up doing 4-5 miles a day. I don't walk as much now that I work from home, and it's really making a difference in my ability to lose and maintain my weight.

I can't wear tight jeans anymore, not after all these months of them being nice and loose.

I'm trying to do the Oprah/Bob Greene way of exercising. Greene wrote that the only way to lose weight was to exercise at your correct training rate. The gym machines are good for keeping track of my heart rate, since my dinky heart rate monitor is a joke.

I try to exercise with my heart rate at 126-143 beats, which is 70% of 80% of my training rate something that Greene recommends. My gym shirt was soaked today, and the machine said I spent 52 minutes in the 70% to 80% zone. Greene also says that if you're not sweating, you're not working.

I'd like to work up to start running again, but even on the treadmill, running is really hard on my knees. The elliptical trainer is supposed to simulate running, without all the pounding and stress on your legs and feet, so it's what I'll use for now.

So I'm finally caught up to my day 9 Nanowrimo word total. I've written 15,000+ plus words, and finished four chapters.

I had to force myself to sit down and write. I had to keep telling myself that I had chosen to do this, that I wasn't a victim. That I signed up to write 50K words in a 30 days, because it's a good thing, because it proves to me that I can write practically every day if I choose to, and that I can get a ton done if I put my mind to it and choose it.

That's one of the gifts of the Matrix Trilogy for me. To remind me that I choose to do all the things I'm doing, that I'm not a victim, that all of this (my writing obsession) is my choice, and I can choose differently if I want to at each and every moment.

And boy, do I need reminding constantly that I'm choosing to be a writer, which means I have to write, write more, and then write some more, and then keep writing every day of my life probably, until I get a great product.

I just logged into the VPN at work to check if Monday really was a holiday for my company. Damn! It's not. I'm like so bummed.

I don't know why I thought we were going to get Veteran's Day off. Good thing I checked.

I saw "The Matrix Revolutions" at the Imax theatre this morning. Wow, I loved it. I was shopping at Macy's Union Square afterwards, and having non-stop insights, and thinking this isn't really the best place to have philosophical insights.

You can't help but think that everyone is just a program when you're walking through the center of the Macy's cosmetics aisle, or when you're listening to a Green party long haired hippie boy nut case trying to chat up some chick on Muni. I'm not sure which program is scarier.

I definitely need to see the movie again in about a week, when I've had a chance to properly think about everything I've seen.

One question keeps coming up repeatedly in my head.

Chocolate or Vanilla? Choose.

I'm behind in my word count, but I have the weekend to make up for it. I only finished half my word count for Thursday, and now I'm too tired to write. ARGH!!

It really helps me to think about what I'm going to write about before I sit down. I haven't been doing that, so I got stuck and came up with a blank.

Thank god for weekends, and Monday is a holiday at work as well.

I've been having strange dreams every night. Maybe it's because of the lunar eclipse that's happening this weekend, Stargazers Await Weekend Lunar Eclipse, or because of the Harmonic Concordance or because of all those darned sun flares.

If you're so inclined, this is the weekend that's supposed to very good for wishing and or meditating for what you want out of life and for the world.

I'm going to wish for good things to happen for everyone and for peace for our troubled world. And for myself, I'm wishing what I've wished for since I was young child; to fulfill whatever purpose God has planned for my life, to do what I born to do.

There must be some divine reason out there, why my life turned out the way it did.

It's a rainy night in San Francisco, and I went to First Thursdays with a friend of mine. Here's the SFGate's review of First Thursdays, Art's not the only thing on display 'First Thursdays' draw scores of people for galleries, free wine . . . and each other.

Drank way too much bad white wine, and now I have the munchies. All that art, and still I didn't see anything I'd by dying to have if I had the cash to buy it. Sad!

Nanowrimo progress. I'm still a day behind, but I've caught up now for Day 5 count at 8,381 words. I'm now on Chapter 3, and hopefully tonight I'll finish the chapter.

I'm trying to decide if I want to post my novel somewhere, so people can read it if they want. But I don't know. It's a first draft, and a production oriented first draft at that, which means I don't have time to edit or go back.

I'm thinking, there's enough bad writing on my blog page and one the web. Do people really want to read more bad prose?

Plus, then there's the pain of uploading the darn thing every day. Issues of copyright. Not to mention the endless bad punctuation, bad spelling, bad dialogue, bad everything that makes up a first draft of a novel.

On the Nanowrimo site, people are posting excerpts of their novel. Some people are even posting their whole novel on the Net. I like the idea of it for sure. Seeing a novel unfold is fun, akin to reading a blog journal I suppose. But I don't know.

The Chano Dominguez concert last night was amazing. Dominguez is a fantastic pianist. I loved how he fused jazz with flamenco. The juxtaposition of the two different worlds for me was mind boggling.

Listening to Dominguez play jazz last night made me realize all the associations I make from jazz. When I listen to jazz, in my mind I see cities like NYC, Chitown and Philly, I see smoky bars, I see dark alleys and streets, and I hear the noise of rush hour traffic.

I also kind of think of bad sex, but that's only because I was introduced to jazz when I was 18 by this guy I was sleeping with occassionally in college. It wasn't a dating thing. He lived on my floor, I was a freshman, he was a senior, he had a mercedes, and if the two of us happened to run into each other late at night on the floor, we'd eventually end up in bed. It was all very light, very casual, and mildly amusing at times.

Anyway, he had a huge jazz record collection (he was a total purist) and a to die for stereo set up in his room and he'd always have the music going during our interludes. The sex was awful, but the music was fantastic and since he knew I didn't know anything about jazz he decided to educate me. The whole thing with him probably wouldn't have gone as long as it did without his music and his willingness to share it with me.

Back to Chano Dominguez. So I'm hearing Dominguez play these jazz riffs, and I'm thinking NYC, and then I hear his singer belting out a flamenco style song and his dancer doing the flamenco hand claps and then getting up and dancing during the piece. It was wild.

Jazz combined with moorish influenced flamenco music is just a bizarre combo, but I loved it.

While listening to the music, I kept thinking of a modern Spanish city filled with tall buildings and all the trappings of any major metropolis. And if I was going to film a movie in Spain, I would have to have Dominguez's music on my soundtrack.

Here's a link to one of his cds, Hecho a Mano. Listen to Retailia, which is a bulerias, to see what I mean.

I would love to see Dominguez play his music in Spain, just to see what his hometown crowd thinks of his flamenco/jazz fusion.

There's also another cd of his worth checking out called 10 de Paco, especially the track "La Tumbona".

Is it ill if to get in the mood for a jazz/flamenco performance, I listen to Enrique Inglesias' song "Escape" in english and spanish? It's like a favourite song for me.

Si decides dejarme
No te voy a suplicar
Alla tu si mas tarde
Aunque corras, te escondas
No puedes escapar
Aunque corras, te escondas
No puedes escapar

Did I tell you my fifth generation West Texas man speaks, reads and writes french and spanish fluently? I've already got digs in about leftist San Francisco politics, dotcomers, and the french.

And yes, he's a tobacco chewing, whip cracker smart, SUV driving, former bull-riding rodeo wannabe, ex-Dallas the series extra, single malt scotch whiskey sipping, life long, Bush voting republican, oozing with heaps and heaps of guy-guy non-metrosexual animal charm.

He's somebody any Cali girl worth her salt knows she shouldn't be attracted to, but is anyway because it's like an animal and/or a karmic thing.

For looks, think Steve Croft from 60 Minutes, or Tom Ridge, Director of Homeland Security, only younger, with reddish hair, but not so chubby and wrinkled.

I didn't write yesterday, but I just finished chapter 2 and I'm now caught up for my word count for Day 4. I'm at 6,700 words. I still have to write for Day 5, which means the start of Chapter 3. That's 13 pages of single spaced text. Yikes!

Chapter 3 and 4 is Day 1, first meeting in Dallas, lunch at the Hyatt Regency Dallas. I stayed at this hotel the last time I was in Dallas. It's a great hotel, and within walking of the site of the Kennedy shooting, the book depository and the infamous grassy knoll.

So it's finally starting to dawn on my ultra thick head, that the only way I'll ever make significant process as a writer is to work like a bow wow, a doggie.

I had the same realization when I was working at one of my corporate jobs, that if I worked my bunnies off I would get promoted and make more money. And it worked. I worked 60-80 hours, went into the office every weekend, and got promoted and huge raises every year.

Writing looks like it works the same way. Maybe other people have it differently, but my karma is definitely to work like a dog to get anything I want.

And I hate my work karma, because I'm essentially an incredibly lazy, lazy person. That's what the Dreamworks SKG guy talked about, working hard and having passion. Mostly he emphasized the working hard part. That's the only thing you can control in life, the amount you work. Everything else is fate and being in the right place at the right time.

I'm still in the beginning stages of writing my new novel, and already I'm thinking what I need to do to improve what I've written, never mind that the novel writing is actually going really well.

The work I need to do on my writing seems never ending There are things I left out in chapter 1 and 2 that need to be put in, and I want them to revealed by action or conversation bit by bit to move the story forward. The groundwork is there, but I'm still going to have to do a ton of rewriting and filling in and work.

Writing is work, work, work, just like all my jobs, and I hate it, I totally hate it!

For tonight's entertainment, I'm off to see to see a jazz/flamenco performance at the Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina.

A friend called me and said I had forwarded her a NYTimes article about one of the performers awhile ago, and now that same man is here in town performing.

My friend is an avid student of flamenco dance, and even spent a couple of weeks in Spain studying flamenco last year.

The performers we're seeing tonight are Chano Dominguez with special guest Jerry Gonzalez.

If the mayoral candidate that I've voted for doesn't get in, it wouldn't be the first time. I hated Willie Brown, and never once voted for him.

Is San Francisco that progressive? I've lived here for a long time, and I don't even know the answer to this question.

The ex-catholic brother, who goes to my church, was telling me that the majority of San Franciscans call themselves catholics, and attend very conservative catholic churches. He said he was even surprised by this fact, since San Francisco has a such a vaunted reputation for being a liberal city.

I was shocked by this little factoid myself, and I've lived here for a long time. I still don't know how to fit the whole catholic conservative thing with the way the city votes. It's a mystery that I'm trying to figure out.

It shouldn't have been that shocking I guess, because I did see more than a few Bush/Cheney signs here during the 2000 presidential election. And there's still a ton of people who are flying high their american flags.

But I like that we're a mix of all kinds of people. It's the way a city should be, diverse and full of people with different opinions, who have to work together to get things done.

But I grew up in an ethnically and politically diverse neighborhood, so I'm used to it.

If the democrats can't win the mayor's seat for the city and county of San Francisco, then you can bet the mortgage that Bush will win reelection in 2004. It's what happened in 2000. Bush got in because in the split of the left between the Greens and Demos.

The battle for the soul of the democratic party continues, while the rest of the country is electing republican governors. Heck, the state just elected a republican governor. The democrats are imploding from the inside out, and that's a sad thing for democratic candidates across the country and in California.

I got invited to hear an interview tonight, like how it's done on Inside the Actor's Studio, with some exec from Dreamworks SKG.

The guy serves as Steven Spielberg's primary executive reviewing projects that Spielberg is considering as a director. "Bottom line, Adam is at the heart of the decision making apparatus for one
of Hollywood's flashiest studios.  He is one of the most savvy, creative, and accomplished executives at any of the majors."

His credits include preDreamworks, Home Alone, Pelican Brief and Get Shorty, and Dreamworks, Galaxy Quest, Gladiator and Meet the Parents.

Screenplays aren't my thing anymore, but I'm going because I'm curious to hear what he things make a bankable Hollywood movie. And it will be interesting because Dreamworks SKG isn't the multimedia behemoth it promised to be.

I got tired to listening to news talk radio, so I'm listening to Live 105 and they're playing all this 80's music like The English Beat, Depeche Mode, and The Smiths. They call the program Flashback Rewind.

The music makes me want to go DC and listen to ska bands at the 9:30 Club, which is across from the National Portrait Gallery. It's so weird that the club is still there. They had the best bands, and a really great tarot card reader upstairs.

Here's some website said about the place.

The 9:30 club is an alternative rock club that can accommodate large crowds, with a moveable stage that can change capacity instantly. A four year old state of the art facility, it has three levels, three bars, and a full food menu. Once located in downtown Washington, the club has become legendary for hosting every alternative or modern rock band that has been around for the last sixteen years.

I used to hear on the news stories about people who never received their absentee ballot, and had to vote on a provisional ballot. It used to make me wonder what was up with these people, like did they lose their ballot or accidentally throw them out.

Well, now it's happened to me. I went to the polling place, and they told me that I was supposed to have voted by absentee ballot. I was so shocked because I never got one in the mail. I tried to explain my situation to the polling people, and after much discussion they let me vote by provisional ballot.

While I was waiting for my ballot, one of the workers said I was the 5th person today that didn't receive their absentee ballot. When I heard that I didn't feel so bad, but they told me to make sure to call the Department of Elections to make sure.

When I talked to the Department of Elections, they said they had sent one to me on October 6 and that my ballot probably got lost in the mail. I told the person I received my absentee ballot for the Recall election, and I wanted to make sure I received an absentee ballot in case there's a run-off election in December.

I was assured that they had my correct address, and if there is a run-off election I would get an absentee ballot. I hope they're right. I totally flustered the poor polling people.

But I wasn't the only one. As I was leaving, some woman was in there wanting to vote but forgot to reregister when she moved. They told her she couldn't vote, and she was making a big fuss. Poor polling people. I'm sure it's going to be a fun day for them.

Time to vote for the next Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco. Yes I'm a real San Franciscan, and not one of those people who say they're from San Francisco but live in some other part of the SF Bay Area. You're only a real Frisco person if you get to vote in the city elections.

And I'm bad and can be a tough as nails fiscal conservative when I feel like it, because I'm voting down any proposition that increases city spending. The City is financially strapped, yet there are props on the ballot to increase spending.

How whacky is that? Where the hell is the money going to come from? Silly people!

Day 3 Nanowrimo word count - 5,096 (day 3 should be 5,001).

I'm in the middle of chapter 2, and it's okay. The beginning went well, and then I kind of got bogged down in a conversation I wanted him to have with his ex-wife.

Now I just have to figure out how to end the chapter tomorrow. The first two chapter are supposed to introduce the two main characters, so the reader gets a feel for the two different viewpoints of the story being told.

I'm not sure if I'm getting their personalities across all that great, but I'm writing too fast to worry about it. The writing for each chapter sounds different anyway, so I think that's a good thing considering they're supposed to two totally different characters.

It's an opposites attract love story after all.

A friend just signed us up for a 3-performance ballet subscription for the San Francisco Ballet next year.

We signed up for their two full length features, Don Quixote and Sylvia, and a short program with ballets we don't think we've seen yet.

I love ballet. It's so beautiful to watch.

Stephen J Cannell said in his writing lecture that if what you conceive in your head doesn't match what you've written down, then it's just a matter of improving your writing skill and craft. I've been thinking about what I've been writing these past two days, and I can see that my writing skills are improving. Maybe not by much, but they're definitely getting better.

What I'm coming up with in my head is kinda sorta starting to look like what I'm writing. It's definitely not 100% there, but it's so much closer than it's ever been.

Maybe it is true what all the books and writers have been saying. To write well you have to write a tremendous amount, more than you thought you'd ever want to.

Day 2 Nanowrimo update - 3,388 words. Still ahead of scheduled word count total of 3,334, but not by much.

I think I'm at also at the end of Chapter 1, which is where I expected to be. I start the story from the guy's point of view next. I get to be a 5th generation west Texan man for a couple of days. Lucky me, huh?

I was supposed to start writing my Nanowrimo novel last night, but went to bed instead. It's a good thing, the novel started writing itself in my head yesterday on the train ride home.

I was trying to think about what I was going to write about last night, and then all of a sudden my main character Jane started talking in my head and dictating the novel. I think about the character, and all of a sudden it's like I hear them talking in my head and telling me their story.

My first chapter is on Jane and introducing her character. The second chapter will be introducing Marshall, the other main character. I actually have how his chapter starts in my head as well.

So this morning I sat down at my computer, and tried to remember and type up what Jane said last night. I ended up typing up 1,811 words, which is way past my daily word count of 1,667. I need to type another 1,667 words this evening for my day two count.

So far so good with the novel. I woke up freaked out that I didn't start it yesterday, but now that I've started writing I think it will go okay.

I had the worse headache yesterday. I kept thinking I needed to drink some coffee or have some kind of caffeinated drink, and I was even craving a latte which I have done in ages.

But I ignored by caffeine craving, thinking that maybe I had a hunger headache instead because I had a busy morning and hadn't really eating anything by 5 pm.

But by 9 pm, I had the worse headache and went to bed. I don't even think I drink that much coffee, just two cups a day every morning before work. But if I don't have it every day, I sure as heck get a headache.