So back to the dentist today because my crown still doesn't fit right. I hate this I get jaw headaches now. I think my dentist hates me because it's taking forever to get the crown to fit right.

He wasn't too happy the last time I came in, and I'm like I'm not happy either. My jaw hurts, and I wake up with headaches constantly. Please just fix it!

My horoscope for today:

Don't underestimate your talent. Don't discount your ingenuity. Don't overlook your perspicacity. You're a smart cookie and you have many resources to draw on. You may lose the odd battle in your ongoing struggle with adversity but there's no way you are ever going to lose the war. Lately you have accomplished something truly excellent. You ought to be proud of yourself yet you are too conscious of the other areas of life that this victory did not seem to touch. Fear not. Now, you can turn your attention to those.

It's a great horoscope, but I have no idea what it's talking about.

I'm trying to save more money, and it's so hard. I'm like so struggling at 10%, I don't know how people do it.

I'm also going to try and up my 401(k) percentage as well. If I increase my withholdings, I can up my 401(k) percentage and not feel it too much.

I wish I could be like my brother. The man has an empty house, very few clothes and books, very few of anything, but he's got a Scwab One account with $50K in it, and that's just his regular savings. I'm sure his retirement accounts have even more money than that.

He's so cheap on everything except for eating out, travelling first class and collecting antiques and old books. I don't know how he does it. I don't how he lives with so few things, but that's why he's got way more money than I do and he owns his own house.

I'm glad I just rented "Once upon a Time in China" before I saw "Kill Bill Vol. 1". "Once upon a time in China" starring Jet Li is your classic Hong Kong Kung Fu movie. The kung fu fighting is just amazing, but parts of it are really, really bad.

The dialogue is bad and stilted, but all Hong Kong kung fu action movies have bad dialogue. The movie music is like this bad 70's drivel, and I laughed when I heard it because I'd forgotten how bad the music gets in these kind of movies. And some of those characters, you just want to slap them all sometimes because they're so silly and stupid. But overall, "Once upon a time in America" is one of the better Hong Kong kung fu action movies.

Talk about time warp though. Watching the movie made me feel like I was 14 years old again, and in a movie theatre at home with my parents.

So I'm watching "Kill Bill Vol 1", and I get the same thing; bad stilted dialogue and horrifying yucky 70's music. And I'm like, this is cool, this is just like watching a Hong Kong kung fu action movie, especially the really, really bad music.

If you're not used to watching Hong Kong kung fu action movies, you'd never get why the bad stilted dialogue and bad cheesy music are so great. The reviewer for the NY Times didn't get it.

And all that blood spurting and limbs flyjng around, I mean that was really funny, and again classic Hong Kong stuff. In fact the whole movie looked so familiar, like I'd seen those scenes somewhere but it's been a long, long time.

Watching "Kill Bill" makes me want to watch every Hong Kong kung fu and japanese samurai movie I can get my hands so I can get the references I know Tarantino is making in this film.

There's even a japanese teenage assassin that I know is a ference to something. She's the stereotypical looking girl that's depicted in japanese movies, even in the porno ones. Guys love to fantasize about young japanese school girls in their uniforms, with those big eyes, straight hair and bangs, and those long eye lashes. She was such a classic.

I went to check out the Nanowrimo party in the Mission this afternoon. I'd never been to any of the Bay Area events before, and it was fun to see all the people from the forums.

Chris Baty, the founder of Nanowrimo, was there and gave a little talk about how Nanowrimo founded in 1999 during the heady days of the dotcom boom. Did anybody even guess back then that about five months later the dotcom boom would all come crashing down and a trillion dollars would be lost in the market, and many more trillions to follow.

Lots of businesses and ideas are gone now, but Nanowrimo is still going strong, five years later with people participating from all over the world.

There were writers from all over the Bay Area, with municipal liaisons for San Francisco, the East Bay and the South Bay. The liaisons organize writing parties at cafes all over the Bay Area, as well as other get togethers.

Writing is such a lonely endeavour, and if you're a group person Nanowrimo is a great thing to do. You can write in groups, participate in online forums, go to informal get togethers, and be part of huge write group for a month.

I've never gone to the writing parties. I've written with other people before in cafes, but it hasn't been that productive for me. I have to be by myself, with my thoughts, in my head to write.

What I like about Nanowrimo is the thought of other people all over the world, struggling to do exactly the same thing I'm doing. I don't have to know them, I don't have to meet them, I just have to know they're there struggling along like I am.

Because writing is lonely, and you always feel like you're the only who is struggling, who is trying to write and be creative with a full time job and a thousand other life distractions.

But just for one month, I'm one of thousands of participants (14,000 did it in 2002) and I don't feel so lonely anymore.

From the Fox Sports site:

For New Yorkers, what McKeon and the Marlins did was almost that disastrous, given that Florida ($54 million payroll) defeated the most celebrated team in sports ($164 million payroll).

I'm glad the Florida Marlins won the world series against the game's highest paid team. I'm glad that money can't buy the best team in baseball.

It's been two years now that the NY Yankees have lost to lesser paid younger teams. I wish I knew where the Marlin payroll stands compared to the rest of the league. I hope they're a small market team like the Oakland A's. I know from the news stories that their payroll took a big hit in 1997, and they had to rebuild from scratch.

Heads are probably going to roll in Gotham City, but who cares! The Florida Marlins won the world series and the Minnesota Twins won the central division chapionship after being on the verge of almost having their team closed down.

Maybe now things will change in major league baseball. Maybe now they'll think about revenue sharing and even parity in the league. Maybe that huge steroid scandal brewing in Burlingame that the mainstream sports media seems to be avoiding like the black plague will really shake the league up. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Talk about having Watergate like overtones; that steroid scandal will be huge,

Tonight I listened to a 3-hour seminar on writing given by Stephen J. Cannell. He's the guy who came up with all those TV shows like Wise Guy, The Rockford Files, Hunter, etc. He's also written and published 10 novels.

Cannell started out by saying he is severely dyslexic, but it didn't stop him from being the successful Hollywood writer he is today. He writes five hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, even on vacation. The guy is definitely a workaholic. When he's working on a novel, he writes a chapter a day.

Because of his dyslexia, Cannell writes with a selectric typewriter, then has his secretaries type the pages into a computer document. He said that David E. Kelly, creator of Ally McBeal and The Practice, writes all his episodes in long hand.

In the middle of listening to his seminar, I realized what was wrong with my second screenplay and why I was having such a hard time finishing it. Thank you Mr. Cannell.

Cannell said you know you're a professional writer, when you can finish your writing projects whether they're good or bad.

My revised second screenplay definitely sucks. It's not fully developed, my second act drags, it's too talky and I don't show enough. And I think deep down I knew it, but I didn't know why. And even if I knew what was wrong, I didn't have enough skills in craft of storytelling to fix it last year.

Now I know, but I would have to completely replot my whole screenplay to fix it and start over from the beginning.

So I'll finish the sucky second version of my screenplay, just to practice the art of finishing my work. Afterwards, I'll rewrite another outline, treatment and beat sheet, and start what I hope will be a third and final rewrite.

I went to a screenwriting seminar last night taught by James Dalessandro, a working writer and teacher who has had over 500+ pitch meetings and selling 25 screenplays to Hollywood in about 21 years. The guy had some serious screenwriting street cred.

He just sold a screenplay called "1906", about the San Francisco earthquake, to Hollywood. His screenplay was the subject of a bidding war by the studios and sold for around half a million to Warner Brothers. Barry Levinson is directing the film.

The screenplay was based on a fictional novel he also wrote called "1906", which is due out in Spring 2004. Dalessandro said he thought the movie would outsell James Cameron's "Titanic".

He is currently in the process of creating some kind of TV show for Court TV called "Citizen Jane", which he says was paying $75,000 per episode. Dalessandro also went to the UCLA film school.

The seminar cheered me up considerably about my own writing and where I was in the process. Three things he said which struck me:

1. According to him, Aristotle said that "we cannot understand art before we understand its science." I love this because I was good at science and I'm very good at learning. Maybe one day I'll figure the writing thing out.

2. The best story to write is never the story you know, nobody cares and nobody is interested. I love this! I hate writing stories which too closely resemble my life. I don't want my private life opened up for criticism like that.

3. A character doesn't necessarily have to change or transform, but can just have a realization at the end of the story. I like this because real life is like that. Things happen in your life, and you don't always change. You get realizations, insights, maybe even epipanies, but you don't necessarily change your behaviour.

I have my modern art history mid term tonight.

Does it really matter that I know by heart Harold Rosenberg's theory on abstract expressionism - action painting?

Does anyone still care about Harold Rosenberg's abstract expressionism - colour field theory, or any of the art that came out of this movement?

Will I get extra points at a cocktail party because I can tell you the similarities and differences between Ab-Ex Action and Ab-Ex Colour Field?

What about extra points for knowing the differences and similarities between Ab-Ex New York and Art Informel in Europe?

I received a hooded sweatshirt from BloggerPro today. Should I wear it out? Do I want random strangers to know I have a blog? Does the general population even know what a blog is?

No writing today, and I feel guilty. I was on such a roll this week. I may write in my journal before I go to bed.

I did read two essays on writing by Octavia E. Butler, a black female science fiction writer. I think I want to eventually concentrate on fantasy/science fiction writing.

It's the the most thought provoking type of writing there is, and I love how as a writer you will have the ability to create brand new worlds.

I don't think I've seen any classes on learning the craft of fantasy/science fiction writing, and I missed the JR Tolkien seminars that the Learning Annex ran this year. Hopefully they'll have the seminars again. They were booked up, so I'm sure they were very popular.

I'm lazy today. I'm still in my jammies, and I haven't left the house or taken a shower. I had planned to do so many things today.

I'm trying to decide if I want to write or give myself a day off because I finished a short story. I didn't think I'd be done writing the story this quickly. It's such an accomplishment for me to finish any writing piece! I definitely must celebrate and goof off.

I also came up with two new short story ideas, since I've been trying to do the daily writing habit.

This one was inspired from a freewrite I did yesterday afternoon.

A struggling woman writer is dying of some kind of cancer. She had on radiation treatment, but the doctors are unsure if it was successful. Her health is bad and the prognosis is not good.

An old friend, a famous writer, comes to visit her and gives her a pen and inkwell. The friend tells her that the pen and inkwell saved her life, when she too was diagnosed with cancer. The famous writer friend tells the woman to make sure to write every day because writing is healing.

The woman thanks her friend, and starts to write with the magic pen and inkwell that night in her journal. The woman followed her firend's advice and remarkably, she starts to feel stronger and in the next few weeks her health improves dramatically. The doctors are amazed and declare the radiation treatment a success. There is still some chance that the cancer could come back, but the doctors say that the chances are very, very slim.

Relieved by the good news, the woman calls the famous writer friend to chat and finds out her friend is dying. The woman goes to visit her friend in the hospital, and finds out that it was the magic pen and inkwell that kept her friend alive. That she too had cancer, and the writing instruments kept the cancer at bay as long as she wrote every day.

Guilt ridden, the woman vows to give the pen and inkwell back but the famous writer friend refuses. "I have had my success and my fame, it's your turn now. And after you have your success and fame, there will come a time to pass on the pen and inkwell to another dying writer friend, as I have done to you as was done to me." The famous writer friend dies a few minutes later.

Racked by guilt, the woman goes home that night and doesn't write. After a week of not writing, the woman feels her body becoming weaker. She goes to the doctor, and after testing the doctor tells her that the cancer started growing again.

A few more weeks pass and the woman is now very weak, and contemplating another round of chemotherapy. Unable to face more treatment, she decides to start writing again and instantly feels better.

A week passes, and the woman's health improves dramatically and the doctors tells her that miraculously she had a spontaneous remission.

In a year the woman starts publishing and becomes a famous author, which was her childhood dream. The woman decides that while the pen and inkwell are a gifit, they are also a curse. She doesn't know if she's a famous writer because of her writing, or because of the writing instruments.

But she decides to keep on writing, in hopes that one day be able to pass the writing instruments to someone else.

I finished a short story last night. It's one I started in 2000 called "The Blue Haired Buddha on Union Street", but never finished. I rewrote an outline on 9/3/2003, and started writing it onTuesday.

Writing for me is much easier if I have an outline. It takes awhile for me to come up with an outline, but once it's done the writing is relatively easy.

Sticking to the outline was hard in the beginning. My first writing attempt on Tuesday went off outline, and my writing became bogged down. I think I wrote myself into a corner.

On Wednesday, I reread my outline and did a freewrite about what the story was supposed to be about. Then I did another character interview, and I was able to get back on track.

I was reading some material on Joyce Carol Oates, and how productive she was, is. The woman is manic about writing. One of my writing teachers knew her when she was young, and he said that Oates could write a short story in a day, and on a typewriter at that.

Some critics have said that she may be too productive, and that perhaps if she slowed down her quality would be better. Quality can be debated, but I don't think anyone can deny that she is one of the finest writers of her generation.

I don't think I'll ever have Oates' work habits, but she is a role model I can learn from and emulate.

I went to the art exhibit, and spoke to the guy from art class for a bit. He and his wife, who is also in the class, recognized me.

I teased him and said that I might write a paper about him and his exhibit, if I could figure out a way to tie into class. He said if I did, to make sure I gave him a copy.

Art class guy and I started talking about his exhibit, and he said something about what his exhibit meant, and I ended up countering, "No I think this is what you meant ..." I wonder if all artists cringe when a total stranger contradicts you and says "no your art doesn't mean that, it means this." I hope I didn't freak him out.

While walking to the bus stop, I started composing a very political art review in my head. His exhibit was very anti-Iraq war. I tentatively titled my essay, "Were Satre and Warhol right? The Celebrity of War: Reflections on the art of so and so".

It would be fun to write a SF Bay Guardian type, left wing political review of art class guy's exhibit. Never mind that I supported the US led war in Iraq, I could write an anti war piece. That ultra left wing hippie education of mine has to come in handy for something.

I told art class guy that my dad took me to my first political protest when I was 12, and I wore black armbands when Reagan was elected. I got hippie left wing street cred!

If I write it, I'll post it. I think it will be fun for me to exercise my writing brain and try to write an essay about what some guy's art exhibit means. I could quote Sartre, Warhol, and I might even throw a David Mamet quote in because I'd love to fit a "Wag the Dog" reference in, and argue how Andy Warhol's pop art birthed that concept and movie.

My modern art teacher loves to say that art and society in general is still influenced by Andy Warhol's pop art philosophy and vision, so I've got to work those Andy Warhol references in when I can.

I'm having adventures in faxing. I just tried faxing 18 pages to my screenwriting teacher, who happens to be surfing in Hawaii at the moment.

My stupid company fax machine cannot seem to fax more than 2 pages at a time. I should have just stuck with Winfax Pro software, instead of asking for a printer/fax/copy combo machine.

It prints and copies fine, but fax. Hell no! Unless faxing is some kind of gift from God that I just never got because I was too busy standing in the "great writer" gift line, which by the way I'm starting to think was one of those scam in heaven lines because writing is just way too hard for me.

I'm sure the hotel people in Hawaii are having fun with the dozens of faxes I sent.

I'm trying to decide what I want to do tonight. I was out yesterday with a friend at the Asian Art Museum. They had a member's preview for their new Korean art exhibit, and we saw a woman performing Korean dance.

I kind of just want to stay home and vegetate, write, and watch one of my rented movies, either Asoka or The Four Feathers, but it would be nice to get out.

A guy in my modern art history class is having art opening tonight somewhere in the Mission. I think he does sculpture because it's an installaion. Our professor said if we liked his art, we could write a paper about him. I don't know him, but I am interested in seeing his art.

Some other girl in from my art history class was even featured in Pink Section of The SF Chronicle a few weeks ago. They had a picture of her and her paintings, and she's even showing some of her work at the new Danielle Steele Gallery.

She had an open house at her artist's studio last weekend, and I had planned on attending but it just didn't work out.

I also have a hankering to see "Kill Bill", Quentin Tarantino's new flick. The New Yorker ran a profile on him this week, and I do love his films. Plus it's a homage to Hong Kong martial arts action movies, which I totally love.

It would nice to stay home tonight and relax, because I'll be out all day Saturday, with a party to attend at night, and I'll be out all day Sunday as well.

And somewhere between now and Sunday, I've got to fit in 4.5 hours of writing. No wonder I don't get any writing done, I'm always out!

I think I've got a new plan for my writing. Hopefully this one will stick, be consistent and become a long time habit.

My goal is to write an hour to an hour and a half a day, with at total weekly goal of 8 hours. I like the 8 hours, because then writing will become like a part time job for me which is how I want to think about it.

I will try to write every day, but I'm not going to freak out if I don't. It will probably work better for me if I don't skip a day, but if I do I will be able to make up the time before the week is up.

For this week, I wrote for 1.5 hours on Monday and Tuesday, and then 2 hours today. That's five hours, so I have three more hours to go.

I also decided to try this new way of writing and editing. First an outline and some character work and interviews. Then I'll write the first draft by hand, then I'll type up my notes into the computer and that will be a second draft. I'll read the second draft and make any structural changes, and new outline if needed. After that I'll retype the second draft from the beginning, which will become the third draft. I will read and line edit the third draft, and the final draft will be typing up my corrections.

This is a variation on "the radical rewrite" technique I learned in screenwriting class. With radical rewrite, you write the first draft and then write a completely new second draft over, without looking at the first draft.

I think this variation is better because you can still look at your first draft, but you're not tied to it and you're not writing without it.

I still haven't decided if I'll do the second draft by hand or on the computer. It would probably be easier to do it on the computer, but I would start with a new document and not just try to rework the old one.

I've been trying to rework "Spooning with my Mother" using the original document, and I don't like it. I think it's better to start fresh with a new document, and not worry too much about what I originally wrote. If I want to use a particular line from the first draft, I can retype it from the printed copy.

By retyping sentences over, I will have the opportunity to see if the sentence makes sense, os necessary and is worth keeping. Starting with a fresh docment enables me to be more ruthless about throwing out what works and what doesn't work. At least, I'm hoping that this is the result of my new writing process.

I wonder if Arnold Schwarznegger will have a "Galaxy Quest" moment when he gets to the governor's office in Sacramento.

Galaxy Quest was such a great movie. Remember when the actors had to actually become the people they portrayed in the television show?

Will Arnie soon realize that he's not just an actor playing a governor, he is the governor of the 5th largest economy in the world and he's got to balance the budget without raising taxes and figure out out how to dig California out of its $38 billion deficit hole.