Well, I guess there's nothing like good old fashioned dramarama in life to get the creative juices flowing. I wrote up my pitch for my baseball story and I even have a working title "Playing Catch with Dad". It's an updated "Field of Dreams" story with the estranged son wanting redemption with the dying father, only this time the Kevin Costner character is a smack talking major league baseball player, irish catholic boy who grew up in the Sunset district of San Francisco, went to SI and went to Stanford insteadl of Cal Berkeley.

In the shower this morning, I decided that the middle of my movie plot wasn't dramatic enough, not enough high stakes in my game, so I upped the stakes and have him come to Pac Bell at mid season before the trade deadlines. He's been playing badly for his team and the team's manager tells him that he either gets his act together or they going to trade him, send him down to minors or worse release him out of his contract. The team has a three game series with the SF Giants and towards the end of the movie, we see him in the third game with his last time at bat at Pac Bell Park. Either he hits a homerun and helps the team or he gets traded or loses his job. I love it. It's so melodramatic.

In the meantime, you have the dying father in the story and the son who's goal is to make peace with the father. You have the younger brother, who was ignored in favor of the star baseball playing son. He didn't even go to SI, he went to Riordan because he wasn't as smart. The brother is a construction worker, who plays on the softball team for a local sunset bar. Baseball playing son pays for the upkeep of the father and mother but never sees them. It's the younger brother who actually takes care of the mother and father. Then there's the baseball player's son who he's starting to have an estranged relationship with. In the beginning of the movie, the son wants to play catch with baseball playing dad but he's too busy and stressed out.

Is this a Lifetime Television for Men story or what? Hallmark? I love my baseball story. It's so interesting to me. It's the sins of the father passed down to the son story, because baseball player's dad was minor leaguer who never made it to the show. It's family dysfunctionalism handed down from father to son. It's the prodigal son theme, with the two sons, but turned on its head, because the prodigal son has all the money and supports the family. It's the generational friction theme with the father and son clashing about why they play baseball. And finally it's the parent and child theme, where the child must deal with with a parent who's dying.

I love my baseball story, it's so interesting to me. How do I make this work? How do I make it interesting and not boring? How do I, as a female, write a story about a middle aged professional major league baseball player and make it believable? My writing group suggested to me that I was interested in writing this story because I needed to resolve my own feelings about my dad, who died in the early 90's. I think they're right. In this story, I could say all the things I never said to my dad before he died. I'm very resolved about the dad thing, but I know I still have guilt for not being there to say my peace with him.

I don't know. I won't find out till I write this story and I'm very interesting in writing this story now. How do I make this work? I'm also dying to now write the ending for my Crazy Eddie story. I'm on a creative roll and I have to take advantage of the energy created by my traumarama crush on cute screenwriting guy from class.

God, I hope I'm not one of those writers who have to have dramarama to write. But I feel so creative right now! It's great! It's a miracle! I love when I can come up with an ending that I really like and that satisfies me. Endings that I really like are the hardest things for me to create in a story. But I love my baseball story ending. I want the dad to flatline while the son is talking. How great is that? It's just like life. Just when you think you've turned a corner, something happens, somebody flatlines. How realistic is that? I love it. I love when endings reflect real life. And it's not depressing, because the last shot will be baseball player guy and his son playing catch in the backyard after the funeral.

It's like my crush on cute screenwriting guy. Just when I thought I was turning a corner in my life and I finally found a cute guy I was attracted to, I blow it, freak out and lose my opportunity for love. But then what happens next, I get my creative spirit back, something that's been lost or dead since November. So my ending isn't depressing either.