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.