HA HA, stupid outline HA HA

So I spent the better part of yesterday redoing the outline for The Ties That Bind (formerly Undone). Ripped it to shreds, completely rewrote it maybe three times. I abandoned my original approach of having four sections, each told in first person from the point of view of one character, deciding instead to have Jason tell the whole story. After all, I'd already written the first few chapters from his perspective, and given his role in the conflict (no, I won't tell you), he seemed like the logical choice.

But then, well, Alex wanted to put in his two cents. And he had a point. After all, his role is the perfect counterpart to Jason's. A nice contrast. That, and he's privy to some situations that Jason isn't (i.e., he's present for a few scenes that would otherwise have to be relayed to Jason after the fact, which is lame).

Alex, damn you and your logic. Okay, so now it's two POVs. The book is neatly split into 5-chapter chunks, alternating between Alex and Jason, still in first person.

Oh, but Gillian and Kari started bitching because if Alex got to tell his side of the story, then by God, they did too. And while I might have been able to argue with Kari, I'm not arguing with Gillian. Not when she's hormonal like that. She might hurt me.

*sigh* So, it's back to four parts.

And the more I looked at it, the more I realized that the original outline wasn't so bad after all.

So, after hours and hours of ripping it to shreds, I put it back together...alllllmost exactly the way it was before. I should have known. Kuwisdelu told me so, the smug, all-knowing bastard.

Anyway, I removed a few scenes and added a few others (resulting in deleting about 2,000 words I'd already written), but for the most part, the narrative stayed the same. Had I had half a brain, I probably could have accomplished this in about, oh, an hour or two. But nooooOOOOoooo....I had to agonize over it all day. I had to wangst, for God's sake.

Oh well. Inefficient though it may have been, the end result was a good one, so...meh.

One problem remained, though. There's a particular conflict that needs to be resolved near the end, and it needs to be from Jason's POV. But Jason's "section" is at the beginning. So, after consulting with Scarlett to make sure I wasn't royally fucking things up, I added a couple of chapters near the end in Jason's POV. My OCD isn't thrilled about the destruction of the perfect "4 sections of 10 chapters" symmetry I had before, but then I went and obsessively organized my folders of mancandy, which seems to have appeased my OCD for the time being.

Confused yet? Welcome to my world. It's a scary, confusing place.

Fortunately, in my world, Jonathan Rhys Meyers exists:
So, yesterday was a day of outline boondoggle, and today I wrote about 6,000 words in some of the newly added, symmetry-destroying chapters. Averages out to 2 moderately productive days. This pleases me...sort of.

Tomorrow? Back to the grind, in between taking off for this social affair referred to as a "Christmas party", for which I am required to leave my cave of seclusion and interact with the fleshpeoples. Hopefully my mindpeoples will understand and forgive me for abandoning them or a few hours.

Speaking of Christmas...in the "giving" spirit of the season, here's Henry Cavill in leather:
You're welcome.