So I'm at home right now because I'm exhausted and it's been busy week at work. I have screenwriting seminar on Sunday, and I have not written anything. I am so bad. I am paying about $100 per class for which I get about 1-1.5 hours of really good feedback, and I'm not writing.

I don't have my plot down and I don't like writing a screenplay until I am happy with my plot. The trouble is that it sometimes takes me four months to nail a plot down. Once I have my plot nailed down, I can write a screenplay in two weeks. This is my process. It might not be ideal, but it's worked so far.

I think what I might end up doing is handing in 10 pages just to get feedback. I definitely need to take my laptop with me on vacation and ruminate about my screenplay. I really thought I had a good plot, but the feedback I keep getting is I don't know my character yet and I need to decide who she is.

Honestly, since I now seem to spend 75% of my paying job doing business and tech writing, I have absolutely no energy for any creative writing. I thought I always wanted a writing job that paid, and that's what I have. But I meant a writing job where I write my own stories, not where I write newsletters and presentations.

I think I just have to make myself stick to a writing schedule, and even though my creative writing muse seems to have taken a vacation, the books say if you just show up and write, eventually you'll start writing. I hope so.

I don't think I'm going to see "Brokeback Mountain". Two friends of mine have seen the movie and said it wasn't very good. We were speculating as to why the movie is winning all these awards, and we agreed that it's just Hollywood voting politically. I really trust these two friends' opinions of movies, and when they say a movie is boring, then the movie is truly boring.

One of my friends said that her gay friend told her that "King Kong" was a better love story. That's sad huh? "Far from Heaven" deals with same kind of subject as"Brokeback Mountain" and that movie didn't get nearly the amount of press or praise from the critics. "Far from Heaven" is wonderfully written and the cinematography was so beautiful.

This same friend, who also writes screeplays, highly recommended "The Weatherman" with Nicholas Cage. She said it was a really fun flick. What happened to that movie? There were a few trailers, and then all of a sudden it left the theaters. My friends thinks that no one knew how to market the movie. Im going to have to rent it on Netflix.

Other movie recommendations from my two friends:
The new "Pride and Prejudice". There isn't a lovely Colin Firth shirtless underwater scene but apparently, the new Mr. d'Arcy has a delicious bare-chested walking through the forest scene.

"Capote" - Phillip Seymour Hoffman is fabulous and worth watching.

"Shopgirl" - Steve Martin is a terrific writer.

Both of my friends hated the new Harry Potter. They said it was too confusing if you hadn't read the book, unlike the other Potter movies. I didn't think so, but then again I did read the book.

They both heard "Syriana" was confusing to watch, but I didn't think so. I thought the writer did a very good job of weaving the different stories together, just like he did in "Traffic".

They both heard that "Memoirs of a Geisha" was a disappointment after reading the book. I thought the movie did a very good job of getting the essence of the story on screen, since the book was very long. The recreation of the gesiha world in old Japan was stunning. The kimonos were gorgeous and those shots of the beautiul cherry blossoms were amazing.

Alright, I must admit that when I saw the two chinese actresses I couldn't help but be reminded of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", but only because both women were also in that movie. But at least the Chairman was japanese. One thing that was interesting was that I always thought of the Chariman as older and not as good looking from reading the book. So I was pleasantly surprised to find the Chairman was quite the looker.

What I also noticed in the movie however, which somehow never came across as fully in the book, is that the Chairman is like so old compared to the geisha girl telling the story. Talk about literally robbing the cradle.

Okay, this is going to sound corny as heck. I was reading Nicholas Sparks' book "A Walk to Remember" and I finally realized what I needed to do to have my stories work better. My characters have to be better narrators. I write in first person like Sparks, and as I was reading his book I saw how his characters do a very good job of describing location and situations.

My characters don't do that. They talk about what they're thinking and feeling, but they never step back and function a true narrator of a story. I dont' know. It's such a simple thing, but I never got it until I read Sparks' book.

Not that Nicholas Sparks is the best writer out there. I like his books and all, especially "The Notebook", but let's face it, he's not the great American novelist. But I'm not either. What he is, is a good story teller. The guy must sell a lot of books because many of his books have been made into movies, and Hollywood tends to only want to make movies from very popular books.

"A Walk to Remember" is even a very good book, and I fell asleep during the movie. The book is completely maudlin and the subject has been done to death, but there was something about his style of writing which really inspired me.

So the big news we heard today at work is the director for our group is leaving to take a job at another health plan. Personally, I think she left because she knew she wasn't going to get promoted. There was a VP position in the division, but the job was up in Sacramento. Someone else was promoted to the job.

I don't think our director would have made a good VP. She's a great project manager, but I can't see her as a VP. She did get a great job starting up a division at the other health plan, so she didn't do too badly. Here's some fun gossip. She was in the same MBA program as the guy who won on the first "Apprentice".