Writing

\o7H\f7\o7ERE'S\f7 a short list of things I do to avoid writing: do the dishes; do laundry; do the Internet (Playbill.com, the Drudge Report); read the paper; install shelves; help my kids with their homework; follow the Red Sox; go to the gym; listen to podcasts ("This American Life," "Meet the Press"); call my friends to talk about not writing; write lists. Since quitting my day job (a lifelong dream), I think about writing and not writing all the time.

THE diary is a 70-sheet spiral notebook with candy wrappers and a used pair of chopsticks taped inside. A picture of Donna Summer is glued to its cover next to a scratch-and-sniff pizza sticker that -- after 27 years -- still smells like pepperoni. Its cursive-scrawled pages hold Becky Ciletti's most intimate pubescent thoughts and secrets.

Children's author Mary Pope Osborne, this year's spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble's Summer Reading Program, has omitted at least one notable book from her own summer reading list: the final Harry Potter. "It's sometimes smart not to read books on a subject that can influence you. They can cross into territories and mesh your wires a little bit," said Osborne, best known for her "Magic Tree House" series.

Edgar Allan Poe has a lot to answer for. It was Poe, after all, who self-published his first book of poems, thus giving hope to rhymesters everywhere who have found themselves dissed, ignored and inadvertently humiliated by mainstream publishers.

Marilyn Lee, a housewife from Adelanto, survived childhood molestation, an alcoholic mother who accidentally killed her father, and a series of cruel foster parents. This year, she published a memoir: "From Adversities to Miracles: One Woman's Journey from Darkness to Light." Nyerere Jase, a former gang member from South Los Angeles, served 12 years in prison for bank robbery and wrote a novel in his last year, "Gangsta Jake: The End Result of a Snitch."

Jane Espenson, a former writer on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" who's now penning scripts for "Battlestar Galactica," has written a typically thoughtful piece for the New Republic online on why many sci-fi/fantasy TV shows fail despite the fact that such fare does well on the big screen and in book form, as the Harry Potter sales numbers have proven. There is a way to get fantastical fare onto the small screen -- by structuring it as a "Hero's Journey," she says.

Two leading booksellers announced competitions this week, continuing the industry's unending search for new talent and the increasing willingness to let others do the searching. Amazon.com, Penguin Group (USA) and Hewlett-Packard Co. have launched the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, which offers a contract with Penguin and a small advance, $25,000. Meanwhile, Borders Group Inc., Court TV and Gather.

Hector Verdugo had no faith in this woman standing before him, promising she could change his life with words. He was 32, a gang member and ex-convict, and he had seen do-gooders like her before. They always left. Life never got better. Luis Alfredo Jacinto, known as Freddy, had doubts, too. He was only 10 and toying with joining a tagging crew -- the first step toward gang life. The woman wanted him to write sentences beginning with "I am. . .

TRENT WOODS, N.C. -- Ask Nicholas Sparks how many novels he's written, and the prolific writer counts on his fingers, listing the titles under his breath. One finger: "The Notebook." Two fingers: "Message in a Bottle." Three fingers: "A Walk to Remember." And so forth, until he starts over with the first hand to eventually reach the latest, No. 12: "The Choice." It is, he says, in many ways like the other 11: set in eastern North Carolina, with likable characters in realistic situations.

TO enter a parallel universe, just dial (323) 782-4591. A blithe female voice speaks the titles of half a dozen or so current movies, the dates and times they will screen at a certain private auditorium in Beverly Hills and, finally, the names of the filmmakers responsible. The titles are largely familiar. The names, to any but the most uncommon cinephile, are not.