Wishy-washy.

I had a friend in high school who thought I was the most wishy-washy person he knew.  I never thought I was, really.  I preferred to believe I was flexible.

But, you know, I can see his point.

Then again, maybe not...

Well, maybe...

After throwing up my hands on Faerylander yesterday -- for the last time!  I decided that I'd throw together my Gumbo version -- that is, everything I've ever written.

And I started to see glimmers of what I could do, if I was willing to radically restructure and write some new scenes.

There is a plot element that I dropped early on, almost inadvertently, that I now see is crucial to making the rest of the plot work.

And I figured out a way to fix the weakest part of the book -- that part, incidentally, where I gave up yesterday.

Basically, it's a motivational shift.  I had the Hero trying to convince the mortals to help him fight the Cthuhlu, but it works much better if they come to him and ask him for help.  Suddenly, it makes sense.

So what I'm going to do, instead of going off half-cocked as I tend to do when I get new ideas, is draw up a very detailed, scene by scene plot outline, making it as linear and forward leaning as possible.  If I can come up with something over the next two days that I think works, I'll give it one more try.

Then I'll go ahead and write a lean and mean version of that book.

One thing I'm going to do is simply leave out the "famous writers flashbacks" for now, because they just sort of obscure the linear nature of the plot.  I can put them in when I'm all finished.

So, here we go again.

 P.S.  I told my new plot elements to Linda and she got excited and said, "That really makes it work so much better!"