I just checked my Dell laptop batteries and found out that I do not have the exploding batteries. I entered by battery part numbers and they came up "no need for replacement". I was looking forward to getting new batteries but oh well.

So I had all these cherries that I bought and knew it would takes for me to eat, so I looked through all my recipe books and found a recipe called "cherry clafoutis". It's some kind of french dish I found out when I googled it later. There are apparently several ways to make it which is good, because the recipe I have is not very sweet. I'd love to eat it at a restaurant because I have no idea what it's supposed to take like My clafoutis rose but it was like so custardy in the middle. I thought it was going to be more like a light cake and not like clustard, but there are several variations on the recipe and it could be either way.

I should have stuck to what I know how to cook and made a cherry cobbler. Fruit obblers are easy to make every if you're making it for the first time, especially if you are using just picked fresh fruit.

As I'm typing this I am watching an Eagles Farewell concert in Australia. Those guys do have amazing harmonies. They're doing interviews of the band members and I'm like what is up with Joe Walsh's voice. The guys sounds so retarded. Did he like have a stroke or something? Or has the guy always talked like that. I mean, he sounds the same when he sings and everything, but he just sounds like he took way too many drugs or something.

Joe Walsh used to so cute when he was younger. The rest of the Eagles don't look like they aged that much other than getting older, but Joe Walsh looks like a completely different guy. I had a boyfriend who was such a huge, and I mean huge, Joe Walsh fan.

Of course "Hotel California" is their best song and I think my favorite. It's so weird to see these Aussies singing along to the song. I think of the Eagles as such a Cali band. Don Henley and Glen Frey have aged so well. I love that I live in "the hotel California". Henley's drums still sound amazing. I wonder if he tunes his own drums or does have someone do that for him.

Well Joe Walsh can definitely still play guitar, but his voice so reminds me of freaky "Brian Wilson". Now there's a guy who definitely fried his mind. Poor Brian Wilson. He was such a musical genius and then I don't know, the guy just went through something. I saw an interview with Brian Wilson once, and some blonde bimbo chick with an obvious fake rack was with him. I don't know who was more scary, him or her. The bimbo blonde chick was like channeling Yoko Ono or something because she never took her eyes off Brian Wilson. Girl must have thought that's how a rock star girlfriend needs to look and took page from Yoko Ono's playbook. Yoko looks like so spooky in the films of the Beatle recording an album, when she looked like she and John Lennon were literally glued at hip.

Didn't Yoko's behavior just so send feminism back like two centuries? Women as adoring pets who never leave their men's side.

Woke up this morning, very early this morning since I had to be in the office by 7:30 am, that I thoroughly enjoyed the process of listening to my novel read out loud. I hated hearing it in the sound of my voice, but it was a fantastic way to hear which parts of the chapter worked and didn't work. It was fun to do as well and it's been a long time since I've had any fun with my writing process.

Recently I read about a famous author who writes their first draft very quickly, reads it once, and then throws it away and then writes the story again from scratch. I'm not sure if I'm ready to do this, but it seems like an appealing way to rewrite your novel. The first draft, if you write it very quickly, is just a vehicle for getting one's ideas on paper. Quick first draft writing is never very good anyway and the plot always seems to need some major reworking. It makes sense to just start over sometimes instead of doing a lot serious surgery on your novel.

I rewrote my first screenplay like this and ended up altering the characters and the thrust of the story, although the plot was basically the same. I know I have to redo the plot for my Texas novel since it doesn't have enough drama to keep a reader interested. My main character doesn't have alot at stake and that makes for a very boring read. It's so funny because you hear people say all the time "too much drama in my life". However in writing, drama is essential to keep the story line moving and to make the story interesting enough for the reader to care what happens to the character and to keep reading.

Decided to try this technique tonight I'd read about, where you read a chapter of your novel into a tape recorder and then listen to it to hear how your wriitng sounds. First of all, I hate listening to the sound of my own voice but you know I didn't sound too bad. I don't sound like the Valley Girl I've been accused of being and maybe that semester of Stage Speech actually helped because my voice actually sounds decent and normal.

My first chapter is good but needs some fine tuning. The first part has to go because it's boring. I know it's a cliche to open up stories saying "here's an event that changed my life", but I love this technique. Maybe it's my acting background coming through but I want the narrator to reflect in written form this part of her life. She is looking back, kind of like she is almost speaking into a tape recorder and preserving her own memories. She knows this momentous thing happened to her which was life-altering, but she's still processing it. The novel then becomes a story of her trying to understand this part of her life, what part or role she played in what happened to her, what was in her control and what as not. The telling of the story is like a kind of therapy for her. If she tells someone else the story, she will be able to figure it all out. If one can ever really figure anyting out that is.

Listenng to the first chapter read out loud, I also saw how to add an obstacle into the story that I never thought of before. My character has to do her job well because her boss has promised her that if she nails the story then he'll promote to her dream job as in investigate journalist.

Now there's a great dilemma for you. Do you do well in your job and get promoted or do you chuck it all for love, for a crush, for a childhood fantasy that was importnant to you only you'd forgotten it until he came along. That's got to be a romantic story. Good looking rich guy reawakens your childhood fantasy and dreams, only thing is you are interviewing him and your boss wants a hit piece. I was after all trying to write a love story, you know.

I don't know, I like the conflict. It's mild and interesting. God, I hope I'm not writing chick lit. I never read books like that, but I'm a chick and it would kind of be natural for me write chick lit. Maybe I need to go back to writing science fiction and fantasy. I kind of don't want to be known for writing chick lit. I am so jumping the gun here thinking I'll even get the darn thing published. Haven't the book people called for the end of chick lit? How exquisitely like my bad instant karma karma to be writing in a genre I really don't know anything about.