I attended a screenwriting group meeting tonight, and read my outline out loud for everyone. God, why oh why am I writing screenplays? They are so hard! They're so much harder to write than novels. I just don't think I think very visually or cinematically. I don't see action right away, or maybe I'm just being lazy and I think everyone is talky like me and just goes around and vomits their feelings all over the place. I don't know.

The structure is fine, the story is fine, it's my beginning and ending which suck! I think this is the reason I gave up writing in high school. I don't know how to end my stories. I'm an E(sometimes an I) NFJ on that Myers-Briggs test ! It's that J coming out. I like everything to end neatly. I like all my endings tied up. I don't like ambiguous endings. Ambiguous endings are disturbing, most of the time unless they're done really well.

I wish I was clever, I wish I was smarter, I wish I could figure out a way to end my stories in a good way, but I can't. I just have to wrap everything up in a neat package, tied with a pretty pink bow

I can't believe I'm making myself write a 110 screenplay, which is only going to be the second draft of the story, and then have it ready to send out for a contest on October 31. Aren't you supposed to send your final drafts to contests? Why am I sending out the second draft?

I'm nuts, completely nuts,l and my screenwriting teacher is nutty too for thinking I can do this. Damn!!! I"m freaking!!!! My acting teacher warned me that he thought my biggest weakness was my fear of failure. I was a bad actress because I couldn't let go on stage, that I was just too buttoned up, too damned WASPy like, that I couldn't just cry and show emotion on stage, that I was afraid of really letting go, that I thought too much, that I was terrified of failing. And you know, he was right. I FEAR FAILURE!!! Like doesn't everybody? Like DUH!!! What kind of deep thought is that? I fear failure.

I thought by writing I could get away from fear of failure, but here it is again. And when I wrote my 9/11 piece for SFGate and it made me cry to write and then read it, I thought I'd gotten over showing my emotions in my writing. But that damned failure thing is showing up again. What if I can't write a good ending? What if I write an ending that I hate, but everybody else likes. This is how it usually goes for me anyway. What I hate, everybody else likes. It's a pattern. It makes me feel crazy. It makes me feel like I don't know what the hell I'm doing writing?

When I listen to other people trying to come up with their stories, it amazes me, because stories come so easily for me. I'm also pretty darn good with structure too, it seems. It's the stupid other stuff like endings and actions in a film that drive me insane, and that's the part most people find easy. I'm so backwards about everything I do. I hate this, I totally hate this.

Can you tell I'm frustrated? My learning curve is so huge, it seems so unsurmountable to me right now.

I think I just need to sit down and pray about all of this. Maybe do something I did in my 20's when I was overly spiritual about everything, and just all my problems to God. Let him deal with this. He got me into this mess in the first place, so he'd better get me out. But then I'm afraid if I do this, what if it's been too long. What if I don't get an answer? Then what? Is this the part where you've fallen off the cliff and you're hitting everything along the way, so that by the time you hit bottom, you're so bruised from all the knocks, you're already dead? I feel like this right now. My faith is being tested, being tested big time, and I don't know how I'm going to come out on the other side.