Voodoo Dolls

After Monday's complete waste of oxygen, I started yesterday in much the same way: procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate. I finally got around to my biggest procrastination tool -- another person -- and I called Linda. I know we were on the phone at noon, because at one point she said, "Oh my God, it's after 12!"

She had reworked (that is, rewritten) the first 12 pages of her thesis script on Monday and was all set to do more when I phoned her up and stopped her dead. (That's Diane, doing her part for writer's block everywhere.) I, of course, had gotten nothing done for days and needed to moan a little.

So Linda entertained me with the 411 on what's going on in our class -- if anyone from USC is reading this, know ye that if you've done it, Linda knows about it -- and then we talked about some about her script and then some about my script. She gave me a very interesting twist for one of the characters that I hadn't even thought of, which I appreciated, and a good suggestion that nonetheless is impossible to just do...along the lines of "Make this 33% funnier."

She told me that I should try her trick of writing just one page. One little stinking page. If you write one page a day, you can have a first draft done in 4 months. That 3 first drafts a year, and surely any fool can fit in one page a day, right?

Okay. One page. I can do that.

"Good," she said, "I'll call you at 5 and make sure you've done it. Bye now."

I sat and stared at my thesis script for about an hour. One page. One little teeny tiny page. One really, really bad page.

I did what Raymond Chandler always recommended: I had someone burst through the door with a gun. Well, not really. But close enough.

I wrote one page, then managed to keep writing. I wrote 8 pages, some of which suck. You may say to yourself, 8 pages, that's pretty good! But a good session for me is on average 15 or more. If I wrote constantly, every day, I could write a first draft in 8 days, a full polished script in a month. But I don't, so I can't.

Ever since Rob and Laura were here I've been thinking more about that liquid diet. Part of me wants to do it, part of me concentrates on the failure rates of any diet program. Of course, everyone I know who's done the liquid diet has been outrageously successful. Not just the people who've just done it. One guy I know did it a couple of years ago and lost at least half his body weight and kept it off.

One of the things you have to do after getting off the diet is keep to about 1200 to 1500 calories a day. Of course, R and L went over this while visiting us, but not tragically so. So, I thought, why don't I try this 1200 calorie thing before going on the diet and see how I do? I can't do the diet until after Christmas anyhow, and gee, you think they might be busy right around then?

What I've been doing -- for a whole 3 days -- is writing down everything I've been eating. Rob uses a Palm Pilot for this process; I have been using a notebook and pen. It is a real pain writing down everything you've eaten; moreover, it's a total appetite killer. "I'm going to write this down? Yeeks!"

I haven't been able to figure out exactly what the calorie content of everything is, but I think I've managed to keep the numbers down. We'll see how long this lasts.

Monday night Darin and I watched Letterman on the early feed, and he did a huge stream of blame-it-on-El-Niño jokes. I posted mine before I saw the program, guys.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

3 miles yesterday.

Tomorrow: a day off.