So much has happened to me since my last post. I've been trying to write for half an hour a day at cafes and it's been working. I wrote 3,000 words and finished a short story I've been working on since February 1999. It started out as a free write in February 1999. I left it alone and didn' think about it till April 2001, when I decided to submit it for a writing class assignment on bad free writes. At the same time, my writing group was talking about writing from a weird character's point of view. For whatever reason, I let my writing group read the freewrite, thinking we'd all get a laugh about what I bad piece I'd written. I was so shocked when my writing group members said they loved it and thought it was the best piece of writing I'd ever done. I was so intrigued by their comments that I decided to try and flesh out the free write into a story.

That free write, called Crazy Eddie, is now finished. YEAH!!! I haven't finished a story since April 2001, when I was in that writing class that I ended up totally hating. That's 11 months without finishing a story, which is way too long to go without finishing a story.

The hardest part is still to come for me, the editing and the rewriting. Right now, Crazy Eddie is about 20 plus pages. I think the story can be told in 15 pages, maybe 16 or 17 pages, so I've got alot of cutting to do.

I also finished writing the opening scene and first scene for my screenplay. I still have to rewrite the beat pages, do the outline and then do a character study for all of my major characters. That's going to take some time and much hard work.

What I've found out from all this cafe writing, is I'm not blocked with my writing. I just can't, for whatever reason, write at home. I can only write in librarie or cafes or in malls. I thought my writing block and laziness was due to another serious reason, but I just needed a change of writing location. I'm sure I'll get sick of writing outside of my home and then be able to write at home again, but until then, I have to do what works.

I don't even write with headphones and music. I can concentrate with all the noise through all the noise that goes on. I used to do all my homwork in the college grill, so I'm no surprised I can concentrate in a crowded cafe. Writing is such a solitary pursuit. You sit at home all alone, at your computer or writing table and you're by yourself. Even with the TV on or the stereo blasting, you're still by yourself.

When I take personality tests, they always say I'm a social person who needs to be around people. When I read this conclusion, I usuall get a chuckle because I consider myself a shy and reticent person, who needs alot of alone time. Maybe those personality tests were right after all. Who knows. All I know is that since I can write outside the home, that's where I'll have to write for now. At least until the need subsides.

In between all this writing, I saw Training Day and Iris. I loved Training Day. I hope Denzel Washington gets the Oscar for Best Actor. He should have gotten one for The Hurricane so the academy is obliged to give it to him this year. They're not going to give to Russell Crowe. He's been acting like such a jerk lately and Hollywood is very provincial about stuff like that he probably alienated many voters. He's also an Aussie and the only actors who've gotten two Oscars have all been Americans, Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks. And both of these guys were "nice" guys who never made any trouble for themselves or Hollywood. They'll never give it to Tom Wilkinson either. He's a Brit and although his performance was great, it was so understated, too understated maybe. Best actors winner performances have always been larger than life. Sean Penn is too much a Hollywood renegade, so they won't give it to him either. Now Denzel, he plays by the Hollywood rules and is a nice guy.

Denzel's performance was so against the good two shoes type he usually plays. He was a mean, bad ass black, ghetto talking cop. And he was so damned believable too. You'd think the guy was playing bad guys all his life. Ethan Hawke was no match for him, but I could see why Ethan got nominated for best supporting actor. He was also playing against his normal type and academy voters, most of whom are actors or failed/wannabe actors love that kind of casting.

The movie itself was very violent and there was a major gratuitious sex scene shot with some naked hispanic chick Denzel was bonking in the movie. The woman was butt nekkid in the movie for absolutely no reason, other than the fact that she had a great body. Since the movie was obviously geared towards boys, I guess you have to have a naked chick scene in there somwhere no matter how far fetched it is.

I loved Iris. They really got the Alzheimer's deterioration right. I was reminded of my friend Amy who died recently and how the nurse told me that she was like an Alzheimer's patient. Judy Dench was great and so was was Jim Broadbent. Kate Winslett was good too, although I got tired of looking at her nekkid body. I loved the actor who played John Bayley as a young man. He looked so much like this guy I had crush on in college named Drew. I met Drew when I was a freshman and I had a crush on him for two years. We became friends but he made it clear to me that he wasn't interested. I was so bummed but we still managed to emain friends.

Drew took a year off from college but visited school off and on, since he was living in the area. Then came the last semester I was in school. Out of the blue, Drew told me he was now in love with me and wanted to go out. And I was like huh? I was so over him by the time he declared his undying love. Talk about bad timing. He freaked me out so much, I hid out from him at a girlfriend's house one weekend to avoid him. My girlfriend told me he was asking everyone where I was. I thought he'd given up and went back to my apartment Sunday night, but as luck would have it I ran into him.

We talked and it was so hard. I really still liked him but as a friend now and not as a love interest and I had to explain it all to him. Somehow he ended up spending the night at my place and we tried to have sex, but it was so so useless for me. I was so not into him. Then I got so mad at him for stressing me out that I treated him really badly the next morning. I regret that now, but at the time, the situation completely frustrated me to no end. Thank god, we managed to remain friends even though it was so awkward for the longest time.

I lost touch with Drew when I got married but always looked back at our relationship fondly. I really did still like him. We got along so well and we could talk for hours. We were even into the same kind of music and liked so many of the same things. Drew was also a bit of anglophile like me. He was also the most charming and the most polite man I've ever met in my life. He was always in a good mood and so cheery. I loved this quality about him because I couldn't be in a bad mood around him. Part of me wished that I didn't rebuff him when he offered his love, but then there's the other part that says, he deserved it. He rebuffed me when I was in crush with him and I was in crush with him for two whole years. When you're 18, that's a damned long time.

I got back in touch with him a few years ago, when I saw his number in the college alumni directory. I just called him out of the blue and I was surprised that he still remembered me. He was living in Iowa at the time. He even told me he had spent a couple of years trying to find me. I felt bad that he did that but so flattered at the same time. I had no idea how into me he was and his slavish devotion to finding me was proof. Too bad I changed my name, although if he did find me, he would have found me married.

We traded letters for the next year and he was just like I remembered and I found myself falling in love with him, and wishing he would move out to California. I couldn't see myself moving to Iowa. In one of his last letters, he said that we blew something really special that we had in college. I cried when I read that because he was right in a way, although I still had hopes for us. But I guess he gave up on us because he stopped sending letters. I kept writing letters to his address but I never heard anything back. To this day, I don't know if he's dead or if he just decided to move on because he couldn't rekindle the feelings he had for me in college or if he met someone and got married. I don't know.

I'm resigned to it all. We were obviouly never meant to be, me and Drew. We tried three times and each time, the timing was so totally off. I wished we could have stayed friends though, but maybe when you're older that's harder to do, especially when you live so far away from each other. But in my heart, Drew holds such a special place in my heart. He's not the guy who got away, but the guy where the timing was off the worst for both of us.

To this day, I think he would have been a most compatible marriage partner. I think part of me is still looking for a very charming and incredibly polite man, who is always cheery and in a jolly mood, like Drew. And one day, I hope to find him.