If I had a therapist, would I maybe not have this particular problem?

I have come to hate Elizabeth. I would much rather write short stories about her sister, Hannah, and piece together a vignette-y indie-feeling feature. I don't want to spend one more second writing about Elizabeth. Unfortunately, that means that each of these last handful of pages is taking progressively longer and longer to write, because I dislike her so much right now. If I liked her, I could probably finish in under three hours.

When I started into the second half, near the beginning of break, it was easy. I was only starting to get fed up with Elizabeth. Although "exponential" typical refers to increasing values, I would like to say that my writing speed has decreased at an exponential rate. And I want to just get this goddamn thing done, but I can't because hating her makes me write it slower and slower. And the fact that it's taking so much time makes me hate it more. It's a vicious cycle. If I can just make it to an ending, I'm going to not think about her at all for at least 24 hours. Maybe if I can manage a break, then when I come back to start revising, I won't hate her as much and it won't be as hard to do the work.

Possible explanation for hating Elizabeth: she is a lenses turned on the things I consider my personality faults, and because I don't like them in myself, I hate them in her. I feel like maybe this is a reason there's a stereotype that all successful creative people wind up with psychologists, that working through their issues like that keeps them from having this kind of problem with a character or something and then their work doesn't become a horrendous chore. I don't like that writing about Elizabeth feels like punishment, and I know that writing about almost anything else would feel fun again. But... Elizabeth's story has to get finished before I will allow myself to write anything just for fun.

My alter egos

I had this random thought while writing this morning: Elizabeth and Hannah are my alter egos, and foils for each other. So what does that say about me, that I'm minorly bi-polar? Elizabeth is mostly my shy and easily depressed side, while Hannah is my more outgoing, loud, crazy, easily pleased and amused side. I can actually picture myself doing almost anything either of them does in my screenplay. Particularly, Hannah has been communicating with Marco by sneaking into the office with her sister and rolling around the cubicle aisles humming spy themes like she's in Mission: Impossible or something. This is the kind of thing I find myself thinking "I would totally do that, well, except that my Elizabeth side would stop me, but I'd still want to do that!"

Okay, so yeah, Elizabeth is my main character, but currently, my reason for writing is Hannah. I want to get more in touch with my inner Hannah.

The genre is mud, figuratively.

I've been doing much thinking about Elizabeth and the story as I've written it up to now. I've probably been thinking because I'm a little fed up with her and don't really want to work on the screenplay to finish it. Anyway, I think I might be partly annoyed because I can see potential for this to be a romantic comedy that just happens to have a girl who starts out cutting, or it could be much darker and focus on the issues behind the cutting and let the potential romance fall by the wayside.

I feel like I've been toeing the line a little, and that's going to make it similar to "Morning Glory," in that, the romance on the side will seem like it needed to be cut, or maybe take more of the focus.

So I guess what I need to know is does it seem like a good idea to tailor the screenplay more into the romantic comedy part of its potential? Elizabeth is still going to be a shy, reserved girl who cuts; and her sister Hannah can take a better role in egging on the wacky rom com hijinks if I aim for a more solid rom com genre footing.