What I really need to start worrying about is my stupid novel. I have five more days to complete my novel and I'm only on Chapter 7. I had 12 chapters planned. DAMN!!!

I can't believe I was silly enough to think I was going to be finished with the novel early, and that I needed to stretch the time out. Now I'm behind, way behind.

I think I can at least get to Chapter 9 by November 30, and then I guess I'll just have to keep writing until I've finished the last three chapters.

I was so sure I would be able to complete a whole novel in 50K words and 30 days this year, but again I need more time and more words. At least I'll be almost finished and not 30% finished like the last two years.

A 50K novel would the equivalent of "Catcher in the Rye", which I think today would be considered a novella.

One writer I've been reading says that her ideas for stories are so big, her novels end up being very large.

I don't know if my ideas are so big or I've been writing a lot of crap that doesn't belong in the novel, and which I'm going to have to take out later.

I even wrote a brief outline for the novel this time, but I'm thinking I should have spent more time outlining exactly what would happen in each chapter and scene. I know there were times in my writing when I didn't know where my chapter was really going, and I didn't really like that feeling.

I like that I was able to be so flexible with my outline, but I was getting the feeling I was repeating information and writing contradictory things about my characters. I've done it in a ten-page short story, so I'm sure I'm doing it in the novel big time.

But this is all good. This experience is confirming something for me what I've been thinking is my biggest obstacle to completing a story. I need a good outline. I was only able to finish my screenplay because I spent a ton of time working on the outline. I wrote 20 drafts of the outline before I even started writing. The outline made the writing fly, and I was able to concentrate on writing a good scene instead of having to think what the heck the character is doing.

I heard a quote by some famous female writer, where she says if she doesn't outline her stories her characters go out of control. My stupid characters are like that. Sometimes they'll talk about everything else, give me every frickin' detail of some other aspect of their life that has nothing to do with the story I'm writing. It's like they're so happy to come alive in my writing, that they'll do anything to make sure I spend more time with them so they can stay alive and keep blabbing.

It's spooky to think that my fictional human characters have the same real human instinct for survival, and they will do anything to survive. And the only way a fictional human character survives is in a story, a long story.

And some of those fictional freaks haunt me too. If I get an idea for their story and I don't make an effort to write it down, they bug me until I can't take it anymore and I have to sit down and write their story.

I know it all sounds trippy, but this is the way the writing process works for me. Fictional freaks bugging me till I write their story down, and then when I do they are talkative and so out of control.

One thing about not working in an office and working at home is I miss the day before a holiday.

If I was in an office right now, I'd be goofing off and talking to people, and there would be lots of snacks and food to eat. Then in the early afternoon, management would annouce that we could go home early.

But I'm already at home, and I'm working because I don't have a party and holiday atmosphere to distract me.

I don't know why I'm letting myself get so upset about the San Francisco mayoral. I'm politically stupid as hell, and since I've lived here, I've never voted for the person that eventually became mayor of the city, and has it affected my life. NO!

The KPIX poll shows Gonzalez ahead is that his lead is among likely voters or people who are eligible to vote. But at the end, KPIX had to admit that Newsome has the lead among probable voters, or people who actually vote.

The saddest thing is people don't vote. We would have totally different elected individuals if we had 100% participation.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to vote for mayor, since my track record is so bad. But early training is hard to escape from. My left wing hippie teachers and my dad taught me all through my life that it was my civic duty to volunteer, protest and vote. I had only one vote, and if I didn't use it I'd lose it.

I wish more people thought this way about voting. As it is they don't, and maybe lucky for me I'll have voted for the winner of the San Francisco's mayor's race.

But I'm not counting on it. And to think I still fantasize about being a political consultant, which is a hoot and half because I'm so politically ignorant!

I'm starting to smell a media hype regarding the SF mayoral election, and I don't like it. Yes, yes, I know they've got to pay their bills but I'm an analyst and I'm adding up the facts here that they're just not adding up very logically.

I was paid by one company traded on the NY Stock Exchange and one company traded on NASDAQ for my analytical skills, and my meager abilities to put thousands of random facts together in a way that made sense. All I can say is that something is out of whack here with the election reporting and coverage.

I'm getting the same feeling I got when the media was hyping the 2000 presidential election in California and insisting that the state was in play for Bush, and when they were hyping the long term financial future and prospects of the dotcom stocks. And we all know what happened with those media predictions.

I hate when things don't make sense. I hate when the numbers don't add up. I used to be able to add up and balance $2 billion dollars in sales down to the pennies and be able to tell you a minutae of detail as to why we made the sales, and I'm telling you the SF Mayoral election media coverage feels like they're cooking the books.

I know San Francisco is whacky, but we're not that whacky enough to break the laws of math and science.