I went to a screenwriting seminar last night taught by James Dalessandro, a working writer and teacher who has had over 500+ pitch meetings and selling 25 screenplays to Hollywood in about 21 years. The guy had some serious screenwriting street cred.

He just sold a screenplay called "1906", about the San Francisco earthquake, to Hollywood. His screenplay was the subject of a bidding war by the studios and sold for around half a million to Warner Brothers. Barry Levinson is directing the film.

The screenplay was based on a fictional novel he also wrote called "1906", which is due out in Spring 2004. Dalessandro said he thought the movie would outsell James Cameron's "Titanic".

He is currently in the process of creating some kind of TV show for Court TV called "Citizen Jane", which he says was paying $75,000 per episode. Dalessandro also went to the UCLA film school.

The seminar cheered me up considerably about my own writing and where I was in the process. Three things he said which struck me:

1. According to him, Aristotle said that "we cannot understand art before we understand its science." I love this because I was good at science and I'm very good at learning. Maybe one day I'll figure the writing thing out.

2. The best story to write is never the story you know, nobody cares and nobody is interested. I love this! I hate writing stories which too closely resemble my life. I don't want my private life opened up for criticism like that.

3. A character doesn't necessarily have to change or transform, but can just have a realization at the end of the story. I like this because real life is like that. Things happen in your life, and you don't always change. You get realizations, insights, maybe even epipanies, but you don't necessarily change your behaviour.

I have my modern art history mid term tonight.

Does it really matter that I know by heart Harold Rosenberg's theory on abstract expressionism - action painting?

Does anyone still care about Harold Rosenberg's abstract expressionism - colour field theory, or any of the art that came out of this movement?

Will I get extra points at a cocktail party because I can tell you the similarities and differences between Ab-Ex Action and Ab-Ex Colour Field?

What about extra points for knowing the differences and similarities between Ab-Ex New York and Art Informel in Europe?

I received a hooded sweatshirt from BloggerPro today. Should I wear it out? Do I want random strangers to know I have a blog? Does the general population even know what a blog is?

No writing today, and I feel guilty. I was on such a roll this week. I may write in my journal before I go to bed.

I did read two essays on writing by Octavia E. Butler, a black female science fiction writer. I think I want to eventually concentrate on fantasy/science fiction writing.

It's the the most thought provoking type of writing there is, and I love how as a writer you will have the ability to create brand new worlds.

I don't think I've seen any classes on learning the craft of fantasy/science fiction writing, and I missed the JR Tolkien seminars that the Learning Annex ran this year. Hopefully they'll have the seminars again. They were booked up, so I'm sure they were very popular.