That orange alert is starting to freak me out. I guess you have to expect stuff like this, a day before 9/11. It's all so depressing and creepy though. I'm starting to believe that we need to attack Iraq. There are too many reports of Iraqi planes flying into the no-fly zone. Why are they doing this? What are they hiding? Cheney just said that there is more evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, but the information is too sensitive.

I received an email from a futurist last week, who publishes a newsletter I subscribe to, and he said that he and other remote viewers did some work for the Pentagon. They found people working on chemical weapons, and it sounded what I saw in XXX. This futurist has the best accuracy rate of any futurist. It scares me to think that he might be right. Why would he lie? And now Cheney, who after weeks of not speaking, says that there is sensitive information that the government has about Iraq which cannot be shared. Why can't it shared? If Iraq is making chemical weapons, shouldn't we know this? But then if we did know this, would such news bring widespread panic and chaos into the country? The futurist said that the Pentagon will try to take out the chemical weapons factory with vertical insertion teams. Is that missiles are being fired into Iraq?

I've already been feeling a general sense of unease because of the 9/11 anniversary, and this saying we have sensitive information but can't share it, and an orange alert do nothing but increase this sense of foreboding that I cannot shake.

I can't believe in less than a day, it will have been one year since 9/11. So many things have happened. In my writing life, I wrote about 120 pages of that novel I always wanted to write, "Following in the Dark". I finished a 21 page short story called Crazy Eddie. I finished the first draft of a screenplay called "Playing Catch with Dad". That's about 265 typewritten pages of output for the year, and the most I've written in my whole life. I hope the coming will be even more productive for me and my writing.

I finished reading "A Room with a View" and loved it. The movie was great, but the book goes into more detail about what Italy meant Lucy Honeychurch. I loved how Lucy found her soul in Florence and what she wanted in marriage and a life. I love how the title of the book "A Room with a View", could be a room with a view into your soul, into what you really want out of life.

I picked for my next book, "The Age of Innocence", by Edith Wharton. The movie with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder is one of my favorites. I loved the story, and I loved how the sets were decorated. It was so east coast old world wealth, with all those darn palm trees, old books, and leather chairs.

I had a writing group meeting tonight. I really love the people in my group. We all met through a creative writing class at UC Berkeley Extension in Spring 2000. We formed a writing group after that, and although we've evolved into more of a social group, I love my group anyway. I don't have any close friends who are writing, or who even think about writing, so being in a writing group is such a god send for me. We're all all different stages of writing. Some of us pursue it seriously and submit. Others are afraid of show their work, but have the urge to write anyway, and there are people like me in the middle.

Our group is small, 5 people now, but everyone in it is so fun and so cool. I can't help but think what would have happened to my writing aspiraitions, if I'd found a writing group when I first started out. Writing is a lonely occupation; it' s not the kind of thing you do in groups. As a writer, I appreciate being in a group with other people who want to write, even if that desire never manifests itself beyond a thought. I wish I had been in a writing group, when the desire to write was tiny, tiny seed. I had to nurture that seed, against the advice of all of my friends, all of my coworkers, and mostly against my better self. But nurture it I did, and now I think my writing is starting to bloom. How much eaiser would my writing ;ife had been, if I was surrounded by people who had the fantasies, wishes and hope.

Going to the writing road alone is difficult enough. Having companions along the way, who are in different stages of the journey, makes me feel not so alone, not so freaky in this desire to create art through words. I take great comfort in knowing there are people just like me, struggling to write, struggling to find time to write, frustrated that the life you love gets in the way of that thing you call your art. Once a month, if we're lucky, every three weeks, I get to feel for a few hours that I'm not alone in my desire to write, I'm not alone in thinking that life gets in the way of writing because I have four other people confirming my truth. Okay, sure we sometimes talk and drink more than write and critique each other's work, but I don't care. For a few hours once a month, I get to feel that I'm not the only one out there struggling to write.