Desperately seeking thesis

Did I promise to blog more often? Oh yes, I did! I hereby promise at least TEN posts in August. You know the last time I had ten posts in a month? NEVER. The most I've ever done in a month was seven, and that was waaay back in February, when I started the damn thing. So, I promise you--TEN POSTS IN AUGUST. (Although technically this one is a July post. So don't count this one. But. AUGUST = TEN POSTS. I promise.)

Honestly? I had another "I fail epically" day today. I got up at noon (this actually could be blamed on the fact that I spent almost twelve hours on the road yesterday and didn't get to sleep until two A.M., but I won't even go there), and planned to spend the day cleaning up the million and two messes around my house that I personally made, and then come up with my thesis ideas for senior year.

So how did I do in those two goals? A big fat zero for two. Here's what I actually did today:

1. Ate a stale peanut butter sandwich and some undersalted trail mix for breakfast.
2. Watched Twilight. Go ahead and laugh; you know you want to.
3. Took a loooong shower, most of which was spent wrestling with/washing my bird's-nest hair, and spent what felt like hours getting every single knot out of said bird's-nest hair. To all short-haired people, namely my father: I AM JEALOUS OF YOU, IT TAKES YOU FIFTEEN FREAKING MINUTES TO SHOWER AND BRUSH YOUR HAIR.
4. Went to dinner with my parents.
5. Read books that I'd read before. (FAIL, BEATNIK BELLE. FAIL.)
6. Worked out for the first time in a week, which felt AMAZING.
7. Facebooked.
8. Complained about missing Interlochen.
9. Argued with my parents.
10. Had good, non-argumental discussions with my parents.

Was there ANY thesis-planning or cleaning on that list? Of course not. GRR.

The thing is, I HAVE ideas. It's just that I'm worried that they suck. That's normal, right? No? Okay then, I fail once again.

My problem is that I can't seem to write anything other than teenage girl stories. Now, before you smack your forehead and go, "No, DUH!" let me explain myself. Last year at the film festival, a good chunk of the theses involved teenagers. BUT. Most of them also involved ADULTS. There was at least one adult part in most of the productions. Not mine. I didn't even feature adults as EXTRAS in mine. Why? Because I repeat: I cannot write about anything besides teenagers. And, to throw salt in that wound, most of my stories take place at a boarding school in the middle of nowhere. And most of my protagonists are artists.

Sound familiar?

To be fair, I'm getting better about this. I'm actually consciously TRYING to come up with stories that are centered around, or at least include, adults or young children. But in all honesty, I'm failing at this. I don't even know why. It's not like I can't relate to adults at all. I'm actually quite good at it. I know how to talk to adults; I like hanging out with adults. Hell, I'm almost legally an adult myself. But for whatever reason, there is something in my brain right now that forces me to write teenage dramas.

Problem #2: Every protagonist I come up with, male or female, turns into me. And being the self-centered idiot that I unfortunately can be at times, I rarely realize this until I'm halfway through a treatment. I tried writing a treatment about a sewage-plant worker and realized six paragraphs in that I was essentially writing about me, in ten years, working at a sewage plant. It was a thirty-year-old man. And yet the character was ME. Why?!?!?!

I had this problem last year, with characters who weren't ME at all. I did not intend to represent myself as an eighteen-year-old gay dude in love with his closeted roommate. Nor did I intend to represent myself as an out-and-proud visual artist who liked to read up on mythology and group-call his friends. So why did people automatically assume, "Oh, she's totally Gavin," or, "She thinks she's like Jackson." Um, no. I don't. They are my characters and my babies, but they are not me.

I think the problem here is not that I can't write, arrogant as that may sound. It's that I have a limited spectrum of things I actually want to write about. Can anyone relate to that, or am I once again on my own here?

Think about it: Do you just wake up and go, "Oh, I want to make a film about a windup doll who eats people?" Chances are, not really. It comes from a combination of circumstances, luck, and in general, just the way your mind works. Some people can look at an object and BOOM, instant story. Others have to twist things and think things over and look at things ten different ways before they've got an idea hashed out.

Guess which group I'm in?

The idea for Possession came out three things: 1) I have dozens of gay friends and observed their relationships more than straight teenage relationships, 2) I've lived situations like Gavin's, where you are unfortunately "just the friend," and 3) I saw the film Mysterious Skin, where an abused kid thinks that in the past he'd been abducted by aliens. The film contains plenty of homosexual references and (I'm about to be indelicate, skip to the next paragraph if you are easily shocked) gay sex scenes, so combining aliens and homosexuality just seemed like a strange--but very, VERY interesting and cool--concept to me.

The thing that evolved from Alien Water Torture to Possession is, for all the feedback and suggestions I had to put up with, my story. My ideas. My concepts. And it has its faults, but I love it anyway. So why, for the love of all things good and decent, can I not just write a damn treatment and have done with it? I KNOW I can write. I KNOW that I have ideas. I just can't seem to make myself do anything, and I think I know why: I don't want to screw up.

What else is new?

But here comes the cheesy self-pep talk: I'm not going to give up. (Is anyone surprised?) I didn't give up on Possession, and I'm not going to give up on my senior thesis, especially not before I've even started to write the damn thing. I'm an MPA; this is what I do, it's what I love. It'd be pretty stupid of me to throw in the towel and make a crappy, mediocre film just because I'm scared that people won't like it. Hell, I had people telling me every step of the way that they didn't like Possession, that it would never work, that I should do something different. But in the end, I got the film made--and people DID like it.

The point of all my rambling tonight: I'm terrified of failing on my senior thesis. But I can't let that stop me. To use the cliche Nike slogan: I have to...JUST DO IT.


STOLEN DIALOGUE:

[This stolen dialogue was all taken from businessmen whom I overheard, EVERY MORNING, when I was trying to SLEEP, while in North Carolina with my mother. They would stand outside my hotel room door and yak, added to that I would overhear them when I went to get ice. Believe me, I've got a LOT of material from these guys...]

"At least you're not traveling with someone who considers protein bars and Gatorade God's perfect meal."

"My boss couldn't find his ass if he sat right on it."

"How can any sane person get up at five in the morning to go for a jog in one-hundred-and-ten-degree heat? I ask you. That cannot be normal."

"The TV in this place is like pulling teeth. It's like they chose the networks with the most advertising and put them all on one television. And then they added in the stations with the worst reality stations to add insult to injury."

"I could insult you right now...but I won't, because I'm a mature adult."

"Between the southern accent and the constant references to my 'communication skills,' I'm starting to feel like I work for Dr. Phil."

"They charge you ten bucks for a cup of coffee and some damn cereal. It's enough to make a person long for the Hampton Inn."

"I don't want to be fired on account of stupidity."

"What am I supposed to do, have an affair because she doesn't like the vacuum cleaner I bought her? Divorce the woman so she'll clean the house? That doesn't make any sense."

"I'm beginning to miss having Bush as the President. At least a man didn't feel bad making fun of him."

Person one: I don't understand teenagers. My daughter loves Twilight. She says she's going to marry a werewolf. When I was a kid, the girls just wanted to get with the TV stars.
Person two: At least your kid's, what, twelve? My sister is thirty and I swear to God, she thinks that vampires exist...and that they sparkle.

"My wife made me get a FaceBook page, and now she all she does is complain that I don't update it often enough. I can't win."