Gosh, I'm not being a very good correspondent, am I? I feel guilty not having a perky new entry each and every morning for you. Or even every evening.
Perky. Not a word for this author. On "Talk of the City" yesterday morning (the two-hour talk show that comes on before "Talk of the Nation" -- it's just like Forum with Michael Krasny, except they punted the World's Worst Erudite Talk Show Host part) there was a discussion of sleep disorders. Practically zonked me out as I was speeding down 101. I yawned uncontrollably the rest of the day. I'm yawning now as I write this.
One of the things the sleep doctor said was that you can train yourself to sleep badly. I think this is what I've done, somehow, over the years.
He also said that it's not good to feel exhausted all afternoon, that there's something wrong.
Just as soon as I have nothing better to do with my time, I'll go to the sleep center and get it checked out. Really. By the way, I know for certain it isn't anemia -- I've been checked for it a lot of times, and it's never been found.
The big excitement around the GSP (Graduate Screenwriting Program) is Friday's guest speaker. I can't tell you who it is, because I don't know who's reading this and I don't want to create a panic. But it's someone who's such a megastar I'm totally freaked out about getting to see him up close and personal. Thank God GSPers have first dibs on getting in to this speaker series.
When Gregory, another first year GSPer and office personnel for the GSP, told me who it was, I said, "I am going downstairs (to the meeting room) right now and getting my seat. If I don't move for the next four days, I don't have to shower."
Last night's class was the first session of Business and Legal Considerations for the Writer, taught by Brooke Wharton, an entertainment lawyer here in Los Angeles and author of The Writer Got Screwed (but didn't have to). She's a pushy broad who seems to enjoy student involvement in the class -- she's not expecting us to receive her words from on high.
As Darin said, "Oh good, a class you can really enjoy."
One of the interesting things she did once the Housekeeping was out of the way was pass out the forms for WGA script registration and Copyright Office registration. She was very careful with what she said about the WGA (which she thinks is a good organization) and its process of registering scripts, but one of the anecdotes she repeated was telling:
A writer who has worked on the WGA arbitration panel said that what you get for your twenty bucks when you register your script with the WGA is "a nice warm feeling."
50,000 scripts a year get registered at the WGA. One million nice warm feelings.
Eeeeek.