I'm A Wimp

I'm a wimp.

Yesterday I had my meetings with my thesis committee. The first one, with DB, went great. Better, in fact, than I'd heard anyone's meeting had gone: I came in, I told him the story, and he loved it. He was unclear on a few points but hey -- so am I. He offered to read it once I finished a draft. Cool.

Then I had the second meeting with MS. Oh boy.

Now, there were positive aspects to what he said. He liked the arena, he liked the general setup, but there were various troubling things about my setup. For instance, my main character is initially motivated by revenge. MS didn't like that.

I told Len what MS said today. Len's reaction: "What? Revenge is one of the biggest motives going."

MS also didn't like my character's occupation. He thought she needed something more sympathetic.

Len said, "WHAT?"

He couldn't believe this. He went into a long speech about changing female characters, and how the female characters that our various thesis committees keep asking for appear to be from the 50s, not the 90s. I'm not the only person who's been told to make her character "nicer" and "more idealistic" rather than cynical and realistic. One of us has even been told to insert a romance -- because the woman needs a man, I guess.

All the women in our thesis class are writing 90s women. We're not much interested in "nicer" and "more idealistic." We're giving other thesis committee members fits.

A couple of people in Thesis class today had taken classes from MS before and said that this attitude of his was typical, particularly towards female characters.

I believe them. Honestly, I do.

But the damage had been done -- I found myself wondering if I was on the right track, if I had to move from the making-it-up-as-she-goes-along style my main character has now to a calculated, everything-planned-in-advance type style. Moving from Indiana Jones to The Sting. Both good films, but completely different.

I wrote 25 pages this week; I didn't hand them out today. Len told me to make the decision about whether to make copies and hand them out -- I didn't. (I gave them to Linda after class and asked her if she'd read them.)

I asked the class a few questions about what I'm doing -- How do I make it harder for my main character? How can I make sure that I don't give into my natural impulse to have the characters stand around and say witty things? (I'm very, very good at the witty dialogue, but something has to happen in the story.)

The class batted around a few ideas with me. I said that I would reoutline my Act II (as well as create a detailed outline for Act I) and bring that in next week. Make sure that I have enough happening and enough conflict.

Of course, if I get a detailed enough outline going, I'll start writing -- maybe I'll finish most of the script this week.

Hahahahahahahahahaha.

I'll be fine in a second.

In TV class today, Pam told us to start bringing in pages, at least 5 pages, next week.

We ran out of time today; mine was the only outline we didn't go over. Fuck. Well, I'll stop by the teacher's office hours next week and try to talk to her then. Whee.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Today was Thursday. Thursday is my worst day, the end of my week, and I'm exhausted -- there is never any exercise on a day like this. It's all I can do to avoid mainlining caffeine on a day like this.