So the California primaries are over and it looks like it's going to be an interesting election cycle. I voted and you can thank my parents for that. My parents took politics and voting seriously. When they emigrated to this country, they never took for granted the right to vote, a right they didn't have in their home country. I spent much of my childhood listening to political debates on TV and in my own house. My father was a hard core democrat, working his way up the union ranks to a leadership position. He was often involved in local, state and national election events.

Although I think I remain true to my democrat roots, my own pragmatism has moved me more towards the center and sometimes even to the right on some social issues. I'm not sure my father would approve of my politics, but I know he would be proud that I am politically aware and that I eagerly vote.

When I vote, I feel like I participate in my small way in the running of this country. Voting gives me right to complain and to argue the political issues of the day. I think people who don't participate in this most simple act of democacy, voting, have absolutely no right to complain about the government. They don't participate, so they can't complain.

After the Florida voting debacle and the events of 9/11, how can you not vote?

Wow! After my descent into I'm not a writer at all hell, I was able to pull myself out of it somehow. Thank god for I spent thousands of dollarsand countless hours on growth and development seminars because I have tools to pull myself out of any funk. They never give you tools, at least I don't remember if they did or not, to never get yourself into a blue mood, but they gave you countless tools to get yourself out of one. Perhaps descents into writing hell is part of being an artist. I don't know.

All I know is I'm glad I'm out of the hell for awhile and, of course due to those G&D seminars, I have a plan to turn my life around. Or let's just say, I decided I have more tools at my disposal than I know what to do with and can at least draw a roadmap back to normal happiness. And lo and behold, I've got two pyramids. You gotta have a pyramid, three things you need to for success. Besides you use the pyramid images because it's the most stable because of the base, and the most uplifting because of the third peak point.

One pyramid is for my writing self esteem, which as you have read is practically non existent. The second pyramid is for writing stories, just three tools I know I can use to finish a story.

Now, if I can just invent a pyramid to tackle my procastination, I'll be set for life. Or least, till my next writing crisis comes.

Okay, so now I'm on version 4 of idea # 3 story. I don't want baseball player man to be that aware. I had his goal was to make peace with his dying father. But it doesn't make sense somehow that he's this aware and conscious. I want him to still be in a slump and be forced to go home by his manager and deal with his personal life. Baseball playing man doesn't think his father's illness is affecting him, everybody else including the team's owners, the manager, the media, his team buddy and his team think differently. How can the death of your father not affect you? Baseball playing man has an attitude though and he's in denial and besides he hasn't been close to his father since he was 18.

Baseball player's new goal is just get out of his slump. And I want him to be an anti-hero in a hero's profession. I don't want baseball player man to be that likable. I want him to be kind of nasty but a damned good masher. I want to him to have a dicey relationship with the media, with his team, with the league in general. He's on his 5th baseball team. He's a pain in the ass, but the boy hits 30 to 40 homeruns a year so teams are willing to deal with him. But he's on the twilight of his career and he knows it.

The new spin on the story doesn't change the plot points of my screenplay but it does change some of my scenes. I think it's a bettery story. But does it make sense, an anti-hero in a hero's profession? I don't know. By making baseball player guy unlikable, I force him to go on a hero's journey. He goes from being anti-hero to hero, from unlikable jerk to likable hero.

I read a story from M in my writing group. God, it's very good. Much tighter than her previous version. As I finished reading it, I wonder again whether I should pursue from writing. M's story is so good. Part of me thinks, well she's an english major so she knows how to write and how to edit and I'm completely and totally handicapped because I'm a sociology major, who couldn't make up her mind on what to major in so I also have a concentration on Russian language and Theatre Lit. I'm handicapped because the state where I went to school didn't have core curriculum rules and I went to a college where you were encouraged to pursue whatever the hell you wanted and you couldn't fail because there was no 'D' or 'F' grade, meaning if you got lower than a 'C' grade it didn't show up your transcript.

College was like my very indulgent parents. I did whatever I wanted and took whatever courses I wanted. And I know it sounds like heaven, but I think it's handicapped me. I was never forced to read classic literature and sometimes if I think I did, I'd be a better writer.

I'm in such a 'poor me' mode this morning, it's bad. I am in my "why do I need to torture myself and write" mood. Do all writers feel this way? Do all writers wake up practically every day and think "is this what I really want to be doing for the rest of my life?" I'm perfectly happy to be a corporate slave. I'm perfectly happy to be a mom, homemaker with kids with no other interests other than the kids and the hubbie boy. I could even be happy being a working mom worry about the quality of day care and feeling guilty because I'm not spending enough time with my kid.

But no, I want to be a writer. I want to be in a profession that everybody and their mother thinks they can do. God, it's worse than acting, where I had classes that were so crowded with pretty boys and women with rack jobs and all other assorted types who just wanted to see their mugs on film or on the stage.

It's ill, totally ill. I am at the point where I think I should just write for myself and no one else and that should be it. Then writing can be my secret hobby and I can mentally masturbate myself for the rest of my life. And then I could be happy being in a job and writing on the side. And then I wouldn't wake up and think of myself as a total failure every other morning.

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.