I have Chopin's Preludes playing right now. I love Chopin. I am in a classical music mood tonight, and will listen to Debussy's Etudes next, then maybe some Beethoven or Mozart. Or, for something completely different, Bryn Terfel's "The Welsh Album". I heard him sing in a Stravinsky opera in 2000, and really liked his voice. Then later before I go to bed, I'll listen to one of my favorite pieces, Chopin's Nocturnes. It's perfect music to listen to late at night.

I was craving junk food this evening, so I went to Burger King. I had a whopper jr without mayo, fries and onion rings. I feel completely stuffed now. I should have just had either fries or onion rings but not both.

I'm bad. In my Palm, I have a list of what I can eat all the fast food restaurants. It's not like I even eat at fast food restaurants all the time either; I probably have a craving for fast food about four times a year. I just needed to know that I could eat at a fast food restaurant if I wanted to. It makes me feel psychologically, that I'm not on any kind of restrictive starvation diet. Never mind that I'm eating 1,000 calories less than I should be eating if I wanted to stay at my current weight, which means that for all practical purposes I am on calorie restrive diet. It's the psychology that counts.

The music stopped, so I put on Debussy's Etudes. All this piano music. I'll put on Muzio Clementi next. Seeing his headstone at Westminister Abbey in London gave me quite a thrill. The ex-hubbymeister didn't much care for classical music, but loved Debussy for some reason.

I think tonight I will write up the character interviews for the three little boys in my screenplay. Once these interviews are finished, my next step will be to rewrite my outline. Once the outline is rewritten, I'll be able to start rewriting the second draft of my screenplay. I plan to start rewriting the screenplay on Sunday September 1.

I want to finish writing my screenplay by September 30. This means writing 3-4 pages a day for a 110 page screenplay, or about 28 pages or so a week. This may be a tight schedule for me. I wrote the first draft of the screenplay in five weeks, so this new schedule is considerably shorter. I'm thinking, that since this rewrite is the second draft, the writing should go faster than the original first draft. I'm following my screenwriting teacher's advice, and writing from scratch on the second draft instead of just revising the first draft. Her method makes sense for my screenplay, since I've changed major parts of the story. I've never done this second draft total rewrite method before, so it will be interesting to see what first draft scenes survive.

I'm tired today. All I really want to do is go to bed, listen to my classical music CDs and read. I think the burger, fries and onion rings have stolen all my energy. I wonder if my body has to work harder to process junk food, since I hardly ever eat it. When I used to be really good about my eating, and eating naturally and cleanly, eating frozen and canned foods used to send my system into shock. I'd feel so sick afterwards. I wonder if I'm having the same kind of reactions now, as I did back then. I don't eat that cleanly anymore, but I also don't eat that much junk food, so I may be having a reaction. It's scary to think that junk food makes my body feel this way. What's in the food anyway? I used to think that processed and junk foods were full of sulfites, and it was the sulfites that made me sick. I wonder if my sulfite theory is correct after all.

Most writers are slaves to words, grammar and sentences. I’m not. I’m a slave to storytelling, plot line and characters. And let’s face it, most people do not speak or think in writerly prose. I despise stories that are written well, but have underdeveloped characters, don’t tell a good story, and have a bad plot line. I have to figure out a way to merge the two ways of writing, since both are essential for great stories.

Writing Gifts I may have:
Downloading a character or characters telling a story
Organizing the downloaded information into a plot line
Being able to see through to the end of the story and what needs to happen to get there

Writing Gifts I totally know I don’t have:
Words – vocabulary
Sentences and Structure
Grammar

I’m reading Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale. From looking at my own writing process, I need to take these steps to write a good short story, novel, or screenplay.

Story Idea
Outline of plot from beginning to end
Character biographies and interviews
First Draft
Second Draft – clean up story line and characters
Third Draft – clean up grammar
Fourth Draft – clean up sentences
There could be several drafts in between first four and final draft
Final Draft – final check

Easier for me – story idea, outline
Easier for me – character biographies and interviews
A little easier for me – First and second draft
The hardest part – Third to Final draft.

My process is probably opposite to how every other writer works. I should have known. I do everything backwards. Why did I expect my writing process to be any different?

I can't believe they picked San Francisco and New York City as the two finalists for the Olympic games. My bet is that it goes to NYC because of 9/11. I'm just so shocked we got picked. As a resident, I'm happy and at the same time freaked out. I hope only good comes if we are picked as the Olympic host city. I hope that they figure out the traffic mess here, because it's bad now and in 12 years it's going to be worst. I hate leaving the city on the weekend. No one who lives in San Francisco leaves the city on the weekend because the traffic is so bad. The traffic is worse on the weekend than it is during the week.

On Pete Wilson's show, they're already speculating about the protests that will happen if SF ever gets picked as the finalists. In a city where everything is political, the olympics would be the lightning rod for every freak group to protest about whatever the hell they happen to be protesting about this week. People protest so much here that as a resident, you don't even pay attention to them anymore. In fact, you come to hate the protestors fervently for the traffic jams they cause and then after awhile, you start to hate the groups they represent for the group's bad behaviour and insensitivity.