Woke up, put on clothes, didn't go to work.

My color palette is missing.

Today I got up early to do some revising. I think book 3 is 70 percent done. A first draft is hard because I start with nothing and have to create a whole world and backstory, even with a rough outline and specific goal in mind. There's a lot of stuff that ends up getting written and later discarded. When it's time to go back and revise and rewrite (like now), I have learned a lot about the characters and what happened to them, and then it's just a matter of finding the best way to tell the story - as if it's actually something that happened that I know all about.

Was that boring? After today's revision session, I decided at the last minute to go to the soup kitchen because I haven't been in a few weeks. I got to hand small bags of donated goods to people who were leaving. Today they got a bottle of apple juice, a canned ham, and a packet of evaporated milk. Often, they will reject an item and share their reason: "No apple juice. That's instant diarrheah." Today a man rejected the ham: "No teeth;" then he gave me a toothless grin. Someone didn't want the powdered milk: "Cows wouldn't drink that." And finally, another man rejected it after reading the packet: "I can't take things that were made in Alabama. You know what happened last time I was in Alabama? A cop said to me and my buddy, 'How long are you gonna be in Alabama'? I said, 'We're leaving tomorrow.' He said, 'Well, how about leaving now?' And I said, 'Okay.' "

Anyone who saw the documentary "Capturing the Friedmans" should know that Jesse Friedman has a legal defense fund (see www.freejesse.net) and if you donate $25, you get "Jesse's Last Night," a film shot by Jesse's brother in his room the night that they helped Jesse pack until 4 and 5 a.m. before he was to report to jail for six years or longer (it turned out to be 13 years). Compelling and heart-wrenching.