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2002-06-29 | 9:09 p.m.

What do people want to read? What do you really want to read? I need to know, k? It's kind of important.

Seriously, was in Costco yesterday or the day before and I saw that Danielle Steel has a new book out. How can I not think it? All of it?

Why do people--women--keep buying her horrible books?

WHO reads that stuff?

There are so many better books to be had, yet everything she writes is a pre-publication bestseller.

Would I be better off trying to write something bad?

I could write something that bad. Maybe worse. Think...

Why should Danielle Steel have all the fun?

She is a freak and has more than enough money already.

etc.

With Danielle Steel, it's not the lack of skill that bugs me. It's the blandness of the stories. Admittedly, I haven't read anything of hers in twenty years, but I have read a couple of her books, so I'm allowed to complain. I guess the lack of skill does bother me, too, because frankly there are stories just about as bland to be found in literary fiction, but at least they are finely crafted. Danielle Steel never manages to achieve craft.

Okay, here's the thing. I could try to make something up. Plot, characters, some high romance. ("Here's the story, of a lovely lady...") But it's so much easier for me to write about myself. So how about this: I am my own bad story. True, my life lacks romance, but I can write it down awfully fast. That has to count for something.

Okay, need a plot. How about I start writing about whatever is going on anyway, and then when something interesting happens, I put it in, and then when it resolves, I stop writing.

Voil�: BOOK!

P.S.: Have totally been taking my kids to task about mispronouncing Voil�. One day, they just started shouting "WAH-LAH!" I think it's cute, but I'd really rather hear the V. Je suis une stickler.

They definitely didn't learn this usage from me. I don't have much occasion to shout "Voil�" since I never actually do anything.

But that may be changing. (Er, guess I'm not finished after all.) I started taking the Adderall yesterday. I was wishing that somehow it wouldn't feel exactly like tweaking, but it does. I actually cleaned--oh man, I'm embarrassed to write this!--the inside of my computer today. But I don't feel TOO ridiculous, because it was absolutely brimming over with silty dust and really needed some help. I mean, the stuff was slowly oozing out the ventilation holes. And it's not as if this was the first time I'd ever done it.

Anyway, the thing is, tweaking like this makes me wonder if I really have this neurological problem at all. It's not supposed to work the same way on ADD and non-ADD people, but my responses to amphetamines are, as far as I know, pretty much by the book. Is it possible that my way of tweaking is consistent with an ADD diagnosis, except it's just going to feel wrong (that is, improper) to me no matter what? I definitely do feel more productive, more focused, and more capable. But I can't help thinking that there was a time in my life (namely, 1987) when I would have fantasized about a world in which I could get a legal, lifetime supply of candy-coated little blue diet pills in a time-release tablet.

I don't know. I do not yet have an official position on all of this. I am on the proverbial fence. That is my position, and you can imagine how comfortable it is.

It sounds incriminating to say that I only got four hours sleep last night, but it's not entirely the drug's fault. I was up superlate doing laundry and packing Duff and the girls for their trip to Michigan. Then we had to be out of here by 6:45 a.m. to get them to the airport by the recommended three HOURS before their flight time. So I was pretty wiped out all day. Though not, importantly, as wiped out as I would have been otherwise.

But now I am pretty darn wiped out, drugs or no drugs, so all further ruminations about ma vie en pharmaceuticals can wait until tomorrow.

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