Glorious day. Weather mild, leaves spectacular, wind light and everyone in a good mood.
I'm in the mood to write, but not here.

It is 9:20 a.m. and I am just getting started writing. My morning routine is usually this: wake at 7 a.m., get Mark to the train, 7:30 a.m., walk for exercise until 8:30 a.m., and then putter around the house and play free cell until about now. It's too bad I can't get writing a bit earlier, but it doesn't seem to work out that way. I would also gladly swap the games of free cell for a couple of loads of laundry or other necessary household tasks, but I guess I'm too set in my ways, or too addicted to free cell.
My book in process has 50 parts. No more, no loss, that's just how I structure my writing. Each part to be between four and eight pages, each having either a small scene-sequel sequence, or a large scene, which will be followed by an elaborate sequel in the next part. I will divide into chapters later, when pressured to do so by my agent.
There are parts of writing I do well and enjoy, and parts I do not. I love conceptualizing, interviewing people, doing background research, pondering my theme, structuring scenes. I do not enjoy descriptions and creating mood. In fact, I'm starting to realize I'm quite bad at that. My cousin, Sally Cragin, is helping me with that.

I have decided to do all my journal entries using only speech recognition and not keyboarding at all.
Tonight is Halloween night. No children come to our apartment complex. Too dark, too scary, too much of a main road. And no children live in the building. So Mark and I went to friends nearby, ate their candy, and watched all the little vampires and death's heads and grim reapers that came to their door. They were a lot of well-made up traditional costumes having to do with the occult and death. I wonder if it has anything to do with the coming imminent collapse of the local real estate market?
Uncle John has started writing the story of his travels to Israel, Afghanistan, India and Nepal in 1974. I have to get him to start his own blog. His life has been fascinating in its own way, full of independence and ups and downs. I was young and flippant when Uncle John got back home. Dad had had to send him money, I remember. John had been staying in a campground with a bunch of Europeans, and managed to borrow the price of a ticket home from a Swiss man. Dad sent John money and the Swiss man money, and then had to loan John more to get him out to California. when John got to our house, I asked him what his trip had been like, and he told me a couple of funny and self-deprecating anecdotes, and that was it. The Journal he is writing now is much more serious and detailed.