The Courage to Make a Mess

I went to my photo files to find a picture of a mess - something amusingly artistic, that showed the nature of my own housekeeping, for example, but in a way that suggested more of the in-the-embrace-of-the-muse and less of the slattern.  I couldn't find one.  (I tend to not document the evidence of such things.)

So I'm going to blog without images.

This week (and I am reluctant to say how many weeks previously) I have been wrestling with the mound of wordage that is Part 2 of the work-in-progress, Silver Skin.  And I had a sort of breakthrough.  I realised that the reason it wasn't working was - it was in the wrong order.  I needed to re-jig.  Change the chapters round.  Make a mess.  That's what I needed to do, scary as it seemed.

And I did it.

And it is.  A mess.

It's better - it's so much closer to being right - but it's also untidy with a capital UN.  Does this mean I will not be meeting my self-imposed deadline of a finished first draft by the 28th of August?

Well, that will depend on how you define "finished."  Or "first draft."  Or, indeed, "a mess" ...