You know that moment where you look around at your house/bedroom/apartment/etc. and decide you need to rearrange so that everything is more accessible, more organized, and more of a reflection of you? Well, my roommate and I did just that last weekend. Our living room was okay - we'd painted a wall and hung pictures and barn stars, but it just seemed weird to walk into our apartment and not see...books. I mean, she's a librarian and I'm, you know, a writer. Books are sort of what we do.
It would have been awesome if we could just Mary Poppins (<--honorary verb) our apartment, but just like in writing, there's no easy button. Before we could move anything, we had to PULL OUT ALL THE THINGS. By Sunday night, we'd rearranged the living room to our liking: books and knick-knacks and pictures and posters signed by Neil Gaiman and John Green...
...and the rest of the house had descended into chaos. We blamed the cats, and ignored it until Friday, by which point the kitchen...
Anyway, you get the idea. Right now, HELLHOUND is at the same point as my apartment. I've gutted it, chopped it up, and spread out the pieces. I've added characters and cut others, done away with subplots and worked in better ones. But as I fix one part of the story, another part falls off into jumbled, irreparable madness. I've hit that moment where I think everything is as messy as it's going to be, and I just need to figure out where everything goes, and what I need to fix it.
So I'm note-carding again, looking at the characters and subplots, filling up the giveaway box and making room for only what's good and necessary, only what accurately represents the story I want to tell.
Unfortunately, there are no cats to blame for this madness. Fortunately, no one else has to see it until it's ready.
As for the apartment, it's Sunday evening, and things have gotten better. I've rearranged my room, Skrybbi has built her desk, and we've done approximately 5 loads of laundry. The kitchen is no longer a war-zone, and even though my cat knocked a bottle of Kahlua onto the floor at 3AM last night, we're feeling good about how everything is shaping up.