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.

Confession

I've cut. I did it right after I got dumped last February. I was sick of hurting and knowing that you can't do anything to help a broken heart heal any faster. I wanted to put bandaids on something and be able to pretend I was doing any good at all. I cut twice that month.

I cut a few times over the summer too. I was spending a lot of my time outside of CoOp with my friends in Virginia, and my ex was part of that group. He was being a real jerk to me for no reason that I could think of. He dumped me, so I have no idea why he was being so awful. I was hating myself for still loving him when he was being such a jerk, and I sought release and bandaids again.

It's been about two months since the last time. That really means nothing, because it was four months between February and when I started again in summer. When I stopped feeling depressed about a month ago, I thought I might be far enough past those horrible feelings that I would be able to regulate my daily emotions and stress without turning back to self injury. Something has come up again which makes me worry that it's a near-future possibility I will cut again.

You don't have to worry that criticism of my screenplay will be taken personally or put me at risk. I've tried to make Elizabeth's circumstances different enough from mine that apparently, while I was feeling safe and happy, I lost my reason for caring about her. But my work is sucking so far. My last truly good screenplay work was also inspired by my life, and I played it much closer to home but still came out of it feeling the character was very separate from me. It was like I was a big bubble and I pinched until that work was another little bubble next to me. I'm thinking there's a real possibility that I will chose to scrap a lot of the elements and basically start over on Elizabeth's story over Turkey Break or Winter Break.

And please don't worry about my sanity or anything. If I hadn't told you, you probably would never have suspected anything. I just needed an extreme self-regulation and coping method, and I'm trying to be done with it. They were basically deep scratches and part of what helped me was the process of cleaning and bandaging them. You're welcome to try to psychoanalyze me, but I wasn't abused as a child, and it's obviously not attention-seeking behavior because I'm usually trying to hide it.

Elizabeth's Confidante, pt 2

Okay, I cut Elizabeth down to one sister. Hannah is more socially outgoing than Elizabeth and probably prettier, but in a cute way that should be hard to hate or be consciously jealous of. I didn't exactly give her a smart sounding voice, but I think there's still room in her characterization for her to have a tiny edge over her sister's academic achievement. I wrote her younger, young enough that growing up Elizabeth probably had to look after her for several years and wait for Hannah to catch up. That kind of history can put a strain on siblings, and I'm hoping Elizabeth comes off as the type to downplay and hide that strain, but it's probably still there a little.

If she doesn't, tell me, let's make notes, and then I have concrete things to fix next term. I really need to be keeping a legit record of the notes and advice I receive on each section of script so I know exactly what's most important to change next term, although changing those things will invariably change billions of tiny things throughout the script, it would nice to know what major things were most bothersome in this very first version of things.

Elizabeth needs a confidante.

I'm trying to tailor Elizabeth's character into the kind of person who believably doesn't make new friends easily, so she's down to just a few by the "first job" point in her life. I think that the harmful emotional coping/controlling habit of self-harm is psychologically more likely in someone who doesn't have a good social support network, whether because of quality or quantity.

However, Elizabeth needs a confidante so that the script can have dialog mixed in with the action of Elizabeth acting mildly manic-depressive because she cuts and can somehow pretend to be normal when she "empties out" her depressive feelings. So, should I bring in a best friend who has doggedly maintained the friendship through things that most other friends melted away because of, like moving and getting full-time careers? Or should Elizabeth's confidante be a sister?
          And if sister: older, younger? Is the sister prettier, higher achieving, both? I wrote Elizabeth's bio so she had two sisters, one prettier, one "smarter," but she doesn't need two, as long as there's one around to make her secretly feel inferior while she expresses pride in her sister; one whom her parents seem to love more, even though parents really love all their kids the same amount.

Right so: are we going for a super-friend, or a sister? Should I show reasons why Elizabeth is messed up inside, or should I give her a best friend/foil with a really social friend who makes damn sure to maintain their college or high school friendship?

Remember when I said I was feeling depressed?

I have just discovered that maybe to write this script, I need to be depressed. And that sucks because I'm not anymore. Something snapped back to rights on Monday and I have felt much better the whole week. Unfortunately, I find I no longer care about writing Elizabeth's story or giving her a happy ending. I'm not feeling mean like I want to kill her off, I just don't care about her. That's really bad because now I'm married to her for another term and a half, and I have to write nearly 120 pages about her. Making decisions about what to spend six months writing when one is depressed is a bad idea, especially when one is merely going through a depressive period and could snap out of it like I just did.

Remember how I said I spun out the idea of Elizabeth and exaggerated and embellished it from a kernel of my depressive self? Yeah... so, I used to feel connected to her because I saw potential for me to end up going down such dark roads... And now I'm not depressed and I don't feel that connection anymore. Oh! So that's what Prof Bronte meant. Right-o, if I can make her someone I care about again, then I'll have fixed that problem.