Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Theme of the week: Juggling inspirations, influences and projects

The theme of my week anyway.

It's so weird. Usually, I will be completely wound up or associated in one story and I'd go with that for a long time.
With very little traffic coming to mind with the story I'm working to get published, I'm starting to think I might be better off trying with something else first, especially if the signal's a lot stronger. I had been stuck in neutral halfway through Chapter 4 for a number of reasons. One of them, I think was the same thing that got me going. I thought Gary Oldman would be the right person to play him. But that's not the image I get in mind.
For Jonas's guardian, Peter Bronson, he's a tall, thickset, middle-aged man with a salt & pepper beard and whiskers with a very generous disposition. Gary Oldman isn't the exact build with the character I have in mind. Kinda strange rereading part of the screenplay I was writing for the same story. Jonas felt more like the character I wrote than the latest draft I'd been writing. I can't for the life of me figure out why that is.

Oh great, now I'm thinking of going there.

I rewatched a movie today that I'd seen a couple times. That resulted in me writing a short rant about what I thought about this one person. He's always a lot of fun to write about, even if most of it is spent complicating and overthinking things.

Keeping things positive is the only way to go with him. It's a lot easier on me when he's the kind of person who makes me carthartic and relaxed, as if I could just chill with him for literally hours every day.
I'll just leave it at that.

I have some doubt that I will be able to finish this chapter and press forward. At least not for a while... and I guess that means my publishing aspirations will have to be put on hold for a bit.
And that's okay.

Right now, I have two projects that I've gotten pretty excited about.
Over the weekend, I'd written a little bit considering or reconsidering an idea I had a little while back.

Just yesterday, though, I jotted down a couple of notes because I rewatched "Wedding Crashers"... Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams did that together and later on, they did "Midnight in Paris." There's a little give and take there. In both cases, Owen Wilson really isn't as bad as I used to think. I mean, he just screamed frat boy to me, someone I could never take seriously.
It took dreaming about him for my attitude to change. That got me buying "Midnight in Paris," despite never having seen it, on a whim and it became one of my new favorite movies. He is so intelluctal in that one that it's crazy. One would think that'd be beyond his capacity, but no, I doubt anyone else could play that character the way he did. He was so on point that I was surprised. Definitely desired that Golden Globe nod (eventually went to future Oscar winner Jean Dujardin of "The Artist"... coincidentally, the only two Oscar nominated movies I saw... I read "The Help" and plan on watching the movie at some point too).

With Rachel McAdams, I dunno, my dreamscape was strange in that she was the one I was in the relationship with. BUT there was a piece missing, had been for a while.
I don't quite know where this new state of mind started taking shape... I'd come across a few R-rated movies that had sex scenes, none more insane than "Black Swan" which was like the crux, the apex of this entire thing. I started to experiment in my work, writing a few sex scenes to see how I liked the feel of it. In some cases, it just seemed necessary and there was no other way to go about it.
My characters were channeling this unusual phenomenon of offering themselves... okay, strike that. I keep making this same mistake. That was only one story I wrote, or rather a couple of scenes for a really short story that was nothing more than breaching forgiven with someone. Okay, maybe there was two. Feeling sorry for this guy who was in a bad place and that eventually led to antics in the bedroom... well, sex in odd places, actually. One was set on a couch and the other story, I don't know if anyone could get away with this in real life, in the room this guy was staying at a rehabilition clinic. Him being a recovering drug addict and all that.

Very strange. In these cases, she just randomly jumped into the situation, not thinking of the consequences, just being in the moment. I'm hesitant to try to finish off that story with the couch because, you know, what's the #1 thing that occurs after randomly having sex with someone? I don't think I'm comfortable with addressing that issue, though I doubt there's any other way to go about it.

A lot of these stories I'd been writing... I can write about people in relationship, it getting to the point where my character feels up for having sex with her boyfriend or her friend, whatever the case may be.
I wrote about some scenes with another character entirely where it came to a head... but the result was either a product of rape or some mysterious circumstances... like immaculate conception would be an example, but not... well, you know what I mean.

Point I'm trying to make: in my writing, I want to focus on the relationship at hand, it getting super serious, sometimes racy, but never freaky (it's nothing short of intercourse... no oral sex or anything weird like that. I am nowhere near ready to even address that kind of stuff).

Kinda strange how I'm a virgin and writing some of this stuff. No wonder I'm not up for sharing what I'm writing with my family when they ask.
But I have found it kinda liberating to write this stuff because for whatever reason, it is in my head :shrug: Everyone gets to that point eventually either between the mere desire of it or the curiosity. For me, its mostly curiosity.

What really got racy, though... and I don't consider this freaky. It's completely normal among particular partners in the bedroom. But from what I can interpret from my dream, Rachel McAdams and I were in an intimate relationship. I jotted down some notes to kinda nail down how we relate to one another. I decided that we either lived in the same dorm room or the same floor in the dormitory building, she is my shoulder to cry on after a night with a guy that asked me out goes south. (I considered for a moment that maybe it was because he came onto her, drugged her or whatever comes of that... but I decided that it made no sense. For the storyline to work, my character had to be a virgin when she and her started having this relationship).
And also, Owen Wilson would go on to be, in my dream, "my first time with a man." The desire in the dream was so insane. I'd never felt anything like that before in real life, but apparently there is something in my subconscious that secretly pines for this type of closeness with another person. The desire was to do the deed with him and... omg, I can barely even go into description or just naming parts of the anatomy, but in my dream, it got extremely racy where that's what I was on the edge of my seat about (not literally, metaphorically).

Anyway, I wrote down the details I got from the dream, bits and pieces about my relationship with both people. Owen Wilson more or less was someone I'd known a while, possibly one of my best friends and he secretly had been wanting to get with me for years. In his movies, I know him usually as the frat boy type, not the kind who cares about women or their feelings... but in the dream, he was perfect.
No way am I trying to say that I think that either of these people are what they are in real life as they are in my dreamscape. I'm only writing what I saw and felt about what I saw. I mean, they're both actors by trade. Pretending to be other people is what they do and if both of them in this particular world happen to be that thing to me, so be it. I'll experiment away and by the end of it, if I like what I end up with, I'll just limit things to first names and done with it. Only me and a handful of people will know the idea came from a twisted dream about them.

The "give" of "Wedding Crashers" was that Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams eventually end up together and are very romantically involved. Whereas in "Midnight in Paris," they were engaged, but by the end of the story, they end up breaking up... kind of downer in that respect (kinda odd how that all worked out too, lol).
The "take"... in "Wedding Crashers," she has brown hair. I dreamt about Rachel McAdams with blonde hair, so obviously, I'm a little more gravitated towards her as a blonde than otherwise.

I've been open to the idea that maybe I could be bi... anything's still possible at this point. But at present, I'm starting to think that if I go that route, there are only a handful of women I'd fully consider for that. They have to be a special type and breed that I just gravitate more than the rest. My type seems to be round faces with large blue/green eyes. Amanda Seyfried, one or two I've kinda thought of her in that way. Mila Kunis kinda goes without saying because, hell, she was the other half in "Black Swan." She was so good in that (and I mean her acting too) that she deserved at least to be acknowledged by the Academy for a nomination. She got completely snubbed on that (Natalie Portman was not and totally deserved the award for that).

The most I'd figured out about the overall idea relate to how I relate to both parties.
With Rachel, she's very maternal, kinda protective, like she feels like she has to take care of me and all that. I mean, considering my only encounter with a man left me to not trust the other sex for a very long time, that only makes sense, right?
I'm taking a little bit of poetic license from my own experience. A guy asked me out via Facebook, we chatted online a few times and he asked me to his apartment. It felt like the most awkward, most uncomfortable hour of my life. I wanted to be open to a few things, but not kissing on "the first date," if you could call it that. A lot of people might read about this and think I'm being completely overdramatic about it. That's why in the story, I think I might have to kick things up a notch for it to be more believable. Like he came onto me, started to get a little too close, a little too physical.. maybe tried a few things until I finally got the hell out of there. That might be enough to open things up to the next thing.

I'm sure it's happened a number of times. Girls finding more comfort with their own kind because one man did her wrong... that sort of thing. Anyone who wants to call me out on what sounds like "choosing to be gay," go right ahead and harp on me about it if that's what it sounds like to you. I'm just saying there's the possibility of it.

One of the key ingredients I need to hash out is figuring how to get this relationship off the ground. Is it because she's interested in me? Is it because I start to think she's the one I'm meant to be with? Once I figure out how to get us together, the rest is smooth-sailing.
Then with Owen Wilson, it's like... I guess in recent times, there's a missing ingredient from the formula that worked for a while. In simplest terms: "the sex isn't as good as it used to be." Either because she's never around or there are other things going on in my own head. In spending time with him and him coming out and saying he feels this way about her would help a great deal, she comes to realize she can't be sexually satisfied unless it's with a man.
Pretty deep and racy stuff, but it should prove interesting. Not surprisingly, the only scene I wrote so far was the sex scene that would have eventually happened in my dream if my own mind didn't blank out/turn away from it, lol. Deep down, I was highly anticipating it, though.

Onto the other idea, before I get completely sidetracked.

There are a number of things that have grinded my gears as of late. In the workplace, there have been a couple cases of that. One never really came to anything because it was a summer job. I figured that at some point, I was going to write a murder mystery story where I end up suspecting the one person I didn't get along with of murder because she has the temperment for it. And instead, it turns out to be the guy I really liked, got really close to. (In reality, I was close with him, considering him a good friend. Then one day, he and this other guy got fired because they were selling or doing drugs on premise... never saw him again).

That never came to anything, so it's still sitting up in my head.

A few years back, to channel this depression I was going through, I wrote a story about vampires. Not quite "Twilight," but that version of vampires... i.e. "not monsters."
I write about this girl who is depressed, feels like she's not getting anywhere. She stops on the side of the road on the way to work. A vampire named Ulysses, who is kind of a cross between Brad Pitt's Louis in "Interview with a Vampire" and David Bowie in "Labyrinth," who had been watching her actions for a while comes by to talk her out of whatever train of thought she's on. He ends up taking her to where he lives, which is like a mansion inhabited by several vampires. Some are discrete, but a lot aren't.
There, she also meets Jamison, who is kinda like a thorn in Ulysses's side... inspired by Ian Solmenhander's interpretation of Damon Salvatore from "The Vampire Diaries."

This story more or less came about because a) I was very depressed, but not necessarily contemplating any drastic measures, and b) I was watching a whole lot of "The Vampire Diaries."
Between "American Idol" and just too many things to keep track of, I stopped watching... around the time that Damon was becoming my favorite character :-P he's such a bad boy that he's good

Anyway, the story went through a few chapters. First, the mansion scene which ends with her being slipped a pill... the end result is that she wakes up in her own bed, and apparently she hadn't missed work that day... nobody acknowledges her absence or anything of that nature

Another day, after a really hard week, she's on break outside. She gets whisked away by Jamison, who wants to get her out of sight (apparently vampires here are very attracted or drawn to people with dark, depressing thoughts... go figure). He offers to change her himself (something that Ulysses is against, as he wouldn't choose this life for himself... kinda like Edward's POV from "Twlight"), but at the last minute, decides against it or Ulysses stops him. I forget which.

This was around the time I felt like I was being extra scrutinized and I wished that I could just be invisible or just be invincible to being taken aside or spoken to about shaping up.
It wasn't that I was overally terrible. I didn't handle things well a lot of the time. Most of it, I think was the fact I procrasinate and insist on doing a lot myself rather than reaching out for help... something I never quite lived down.

So anyway... the story came and went. Vampries in my world can be spectors in that they can come and go as they please... almost like ghosts, but they have physical shape. So I kinda was aiming for her to become a vampire so she could disappear whenever she pleased without feeling the need to worry about being scrutinized... kind of a hard thing to explain and keeping it in her favor.
But anyway... it kinda fell apart because... I was terminated before I could take the idea any further than I could... plus my inspiration came and went.

Every now and then, and this past weekend was another "then"... I dream about being back there or wanting back in or a couple of people that got under my skin (or rather, I might have gotten more under theirs. They must have thought I was so inept that they had to babysit me)... and one of them in particular, it's kinda hard to forget.
She wasn't mean like the "queen bee of the night shift" at the deli counter was... but it felt like getting yelled at by a boss when she gently told me off and said that I wasn't doing things as well as I could. She's the type of girl where she gets along with everyone and you know, you kinda want to be liked by her or at least accepted... as if that alone makes you feel more important, like you're part of an exclusive club. With us, I doubt it was going to work out that way... our tastes were way too different. (I mean, she lives and breathes "Jersey Shore"...).

In the dream, I remembered two things: that I was trying to "buy" my way back in by doing one set of samples that was usually the most demanding, but I was good at it... as if they would ask me back or let me back or give me a second chance.

Fact of the matter is that I felt like I got short changed. I was there for a little over a year and clearly that didn't give me enough experience to where I'm easily employable. The work world kinda sucks right now, still does...
In a completely sarcastic, sadistic way... I entertained the idea that if I ever decided to punch my own ticket, I'd drive a car right into their building or at least do it right there... hang a sign around my neck that reads "Because you fired me, nobody else wants to hire me." ...sounds like the ultimate revenge, especially if OSHA gets involved and the places gets shut down due to conspiracy.

Then I had the brilliant idea after having this dream... I felt pretty discontented about that place, the hell it was a lot of days and what hell I'd gone through trying to get employed again.
How about I put my sadistic idea into this story... but kick things up a knock?

I wrote down a number of bullet points for scenes that will lead up to this. I wrote a few bits of paragraphs about my "judgement day" as it were... but didn't get to the point where it got super serious. It's hard to be open and objective when I'm writing it longhand (I think faster when I type, more at ease).
But what I gather: she won't become a vampire until this last scene where she gets her revenge.

She crashes her car into the building, staging her suicide... and it's on a Saturday morning where it's a small crew and two of the people getting under my skin are there... the other is the supervisor who probably really thought I was an idiot. She never took me seriously.
It would be something if there was a conspiracy about this place... better yet if the one girl was in charge of the heroine, watching her back, getting her back in line while a couple of people were scheming to get her out of there... for whatever reason.
Naturally, they'll see if she has a pulse... being a vampire she won't... she'll be taken inside. They do this to kinda avoid attention and all that, covering it up, but she'd already sent the photos online... (Jamison is going to be her accomplice in all this, but she does all the work & heavy lifting). She kills the one girl and perhaps with the other, she goes after her after hearing some incriminating information while eavesdropping on a phone call.

There's one other character that's kinda central to this. She's hyperaware of stuff. I originally thought of her to be a vampire slayer type, but she is just hyperaware of vampires, not really wanting the heroine to go that path.

Eventually, the place gets taken down because of notoreity and negativity (driving their employees to suicide is a little drastic, but hey, this story is for me and my self-persevation & satisfication)... most likely why this story won't see the light of day unless I'm the only one seeing it :-P everyone I know would probably know where the inspiration comes from and judge me harshly for the things I say.

I'd like for one to use my writing to take my frustrations, but for the end result to be something I can be proud of, rather than ashamed.

Kinda interesting how this became a story about being depressed, wanting to escape from an unpleasant reality... it's going to become something more like a story of revenge and redemption... should prove interesting

I'm thinking that maybe they want her out because her assocation with the overall manager... not liked by a lot of people for whatever, I don't know why, she was always perfectly nice to me... I'll see what else I come up with.
Unlike my Owen/Rachel storyline, this is still in the beginning stages, so I haven't worked out the details yet.
What I do know... only one name will stay the same and that's going to be hyperaware Heidi... not really a nickname or anything... we weren't super close in real life, but she was the most grounded person there. Kinda looked up to her, she was very sweet and generous. She knows how crappy the place was and urged people to get out while they could (I heard within a month or two of my leaving that she left for somewhere else after being there for 3 hellish years).

If anything, this will be kept under wraps because I'll be advised to do so by my folks. Don't want to be caught badmouthing my previous place of business... but I can't help that sometimes, some things about that whole institution really pissed me off

Just saying :shrug:

I didn't get a lot accomplished today on either front, but hopefully tomorrow something will strike my fancy and I'll get writing.

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