I'm nervous. I have to go over my screenplay in class next week. I was ready to do it tonight but my throat, but I decided it against it because my throat was still very scratchy.

My teacher and everyone in class will probably hate it. I just know they will. It's a simple story, father and son estranged with the only twist being it takes place in the world of major league baseball. But I love this story. I'v already laid out each scene of my screenplay from beginning to end. I think it's a good story, but you never know until you let tell other people about it. Other people can spot the holes, the obvious places you thought worked, where it should start as opposed to where you started it.

I'll probably end up telling my story and I'll get a hundred suggestions about how to do it differently. It's nerve wracking. Then I have this niggling doubt that nobody will get the story, nobody will understand why I want to tell it. I can even hear somebody say that I've written the summary for a third rate bad country music song. Self doubt floods my mind regularly the monsoon rains in Southeast Asia.

Is it possible to be so in love with your own story that you can't even tell if it's not good? The stories I've liked people haven't really liked. The stories I didn't like, people really liked. How can you win? How can you tell? Then I think maybe I'm not supposed to be a writer and this is just another stupid idea of mine, like acting. But I've been told since youtj that I had a talent, that I could write great stories, great dialogue, that I had a certain level of writing gift that most people would kill for. But what if everyone was wrong?

My acting director told me to write. He said I had a gift for telling stories and that I should pursue it. But he had a crush on me, so how can I trust him? He kept saying he wouldn't be saying it unless it was true and that I should know that he rarely praised anything anybody did. But sometimes I don't believe him. The guy really liked me. What if he was saying I was a good writer to seduce me, not that I could be seduced, but what if that was his intention?

Sometimes I wish my acting director didn't like the way he did, because then I could believe him. I wish his praise was given grudgingly because maybe it would mean more for me. Silly isn't it?

I don't care. I love my baseball man story. It's been kicking around my head since November 2000. I found a first draft of it on my PC. I even tried to write more of it in February 2001 but I couldn't. I didn't know where it was going to go and then I started thinking I had to do all this research about baseball to write the story. Then the story kind of left my mind for awhile, only cropping up at odd times in my head like it needed to let me know it was there.

This wasn't even my first screenplay idea. The baseball story is my third idea. But after screenwriting class last week, I saw the ending. In fact, I saw the mini movie version of it, flashing through my mind in lightning speed. I wrote the gist of the story down in notebook. Then the next day in the shower, the movie flashed through my mind again and I thought, BORING! Who would pay $9.50 to see this? Then by noon I had altered the story and upped all the stakes and made it larger than life, bold and daring and over the top.

I thought I was done with the story today, but on the way to screenwriting class I decided my baseball player man needed a buddy on the baseball team that he can talk to and who will represent what the members of the team think about him. Every guy needs a buddy, a best friend, to talk things over with. I wanted baseball player man to be a loner but now I think he needs a buddy on the team. Maybe not a best friend, but at least some guy on the team who likes him and takes his side.

So I'm on idea # 3, version 3, and hopefully this is the last version.

That crush on screenwriting cutie guy is totally gone. I think he's hooking up with some other girl in class and I'm glad. Watching them together, I know that we're definitely not meant to be together. Screenwriting hottie guy and this woman have easy rapport, always seem to sit next to each other and today I heard them figure out that they live near each other. Their getting together was so easy and the circumstances are all falling easily into place.

If screenwriting hottie guy and I had the same things going for us, then he would be the one. But we don't. I've never even spoken to him. Just as well. He's from the South. What would I do with a guy like that? I'm sure we're definitely not each other's type. But if I were to meet the one, I think our relationship would enfold like screenwriting hottie guy and this new chick. You know, easy going, everything going for us, talking together easily, living in the same neighborhood, etc.

But screenwriting hottie guy did get my creative spark lit again, so I'm glad I had my 15 minutes of crush on him. A guy who gives you back your creativity, your passion, what more could you from a guy? And this one was easy too because there's not awkward breakup, no embarrassing moments to have to contend with when it was over.

I think I am emotionally turning into a writing whore. I will do anything, including falling in love, to get my writing muse going. This is bad, very bad. And at the same time, I can't help bu think, no, this is good, very good.