After a stressed out no writing break, I'm going back to the too busy to do anything else but writing schedule tonight. I need to write 1,666 words a day for 30 days to reach the 50,000 word mark for the National Novel Writing Month.

Since my computer is dead, if I want to blog I'll have to do go to the library and get online. I'm lucky because the local public library is just three blocks from my place, but Saturday will be a full day.

Besides needing to write my daily 1,666 words, there's an exhibit of egyptian artifacts from the British Museum at the California Legion of Honor that I'm dying to check out. The Egyptian section was my favorite part of the British Museum. Then it's off to the movies to see "Merci Pour le Chocolat", a froggie-french movie which is supposed to be very, very good, and "Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time", a documentary about a Scottish artist and his ephemeral works of art.

But there's always Sunday if I can drag myself away from watching the 49er/Raiders football game on TV.

Things are getting better in my world. My company finally handed out our merit raises, which we were supposed to get in April. No retro pay though because of the bad economy. Oh well, at least I got a decent raise. It's nice to have the extra money every month.

I watched the news reports of the Halloween in the Castro on TV last night. Some of it got violent and that's sad. When I first moved to San Francisco, I lived a couple blocks from the Castro and on my first Halloween in San Francisco my boyfriend and I dressed up and walked around the Castro. Back then it was a neighborhood event and every one dressed up, no gawkers at all, and it was low key and fun. The streets weren't blocked off, and it was more like a parade of dressed up people but not alot of drinking and no violence whatsoever.

Now it's totally crowded and hardly anyone dresses up, and most people go to gawk at the few people who are dressed up, and they drink and party and things get out of hand, and people get violent. Where's the fun in that?

Nanowrimo starts today and I'm excited. I'll be able to participate because I can write in pocket Word on my LG Phenom. Thank god for my baby laptop.

I think this year I will outline the story first before I start writing. From screenwriting, I learned how important it is to have a well thought out plot and an outline, just so you don't get lost while writing. I'm not sure if I'll stick to a straight three act structure however, because in a novel I think there is a little more freedom to be looser with your plot. You don't have to be so linear, and you can have flashbacks, have way more background and backstory, etc.

I'll review Aristotle's Poetics to refresh my memory about plot structure. In a movie, they say you should "start late and leave early", meaning I think, begin on the cusp of conflict and end your movie leaving your audience with a sense that there's future, just in case you want to do sequels. Or something like that.

This will be my first stab at fantasy type literature. I think it makes sense that I would eventually gravitate towards this kind of writing. I love science fiction (love Red Dwarf), and I love stories and movies about magic, witches, and other world type phenomena. I'm an avid listener to the Art Bell program, and I totally love conspiracy, one world government theories. My favorite show on TV was Witchblade, and the other two shows that I really liked, Alias and La Femme Nikita, had fantastic elements in them. I even got hooked on The Charmed Ones for awhile, although I stopped watching when Shannon Doherty left the show.

It will be interesting to see how easy or difficult it will be to write a fantasy story. I'm going to have to create a whole new different world, with its own rules, its own creatures, etc. I want to start to play with my brand of elf lore and mythology, and have my main protagonist be a half elf and half human. If elves have 12-strand dna and human have 2-strand dna, then would a half elf and half human would have 4-strand dna?. It's issues like this I'm going to have to start thinking seriously about to make my story credible.

But I think it will be so interesting and fun to try and do this. It will be a challenge to my imagination and my logical mind, and I'm so looking forward to mental stimulation and exercise.