In which I started a new tradition last year

So last year I bought a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle and busted it open on December 1. We all worked on it, fitting in a few pieces here and there to finish it up by the end of the month. There's something about the holidays that make it seem entirely appropriate to have a puzzle lying around for everybody to work on from time to time. (I can't stress to you how slack we were about working on this thing.) Last year's puzzle was a portrait done by artist Nene Thomas and this year we decided to carry on with the same theme and get another. They're available at Barnes and Noble if you're interested, and the subtlety to the art makes them challenging enough to assemble without being diabolical. I like to putter with it when I have Christmas music playing and a batch of cookies in the oven. (Or some truly marshmallowy Christmas movie on Hallmark or Lifetime...)

So today I did something I've never done before. I physically attacked a manuscript. I took scissors and snipped the manuscript into scenes and binder clipped each scene together. Then I jotted on the front page what the gist of the scene was and copied that same info onto a notecard. My plan is to lay the notecards out in sequential order and then rearrange them to plot out my rewrite. I did something similar with notecards when I was writing Silent in the Grave but haven't touched them since, and I think this is the perfect time to whip them out again. I knew partway through this draft that I needed to change up the order of some scenes and this should give me a tidy little visual to make it happen. Funny, when I was done jotting out the note cards, I realized right off that I needed at least six more scenes so those each got a notecard to fit into the new order. Fingers crossed that this works as well as I think it will!

The subconscious is working overtime right now, which is divine! I was half-awake the other morning when I realized that part of my main character's backstory is not working at all simply because I want to use that backstory in another book. Luckily for me--nay, serendipitously for me!--I realized what this character needed was a full dose of a city I happen to be traveling to next week! So, my plan to meander New Orleans and shop, eat, drink, and sightsee is slightly scuppered since I have to add in some hardcore research and a few plantations, but I could not be happier. This bit of backstory suits the character in a bone-deep way that the previous backstory just didn't, and it's already having an effect on the book in a very good way.

Of course, the subconscious is also giving me hella crazy dreams. I had a few last week that were truly bizarre. In the first, I was sitting on the sofa having my feet rubbed by Bruce Greenwood while we talked about bacon. Now, footrubs, Bruce Greenwood, and bacon are all things I enjoy, but why on earth did my poor, benighted little mind put them together? But that's just the tip of the iceberg of strangeness, chickens. That dream morphed into one where my husband was directing a grand opera with Jennifer Ehle appearing as a singing sheela na gig. If you're not familiar, for God's sake, don't google it! Sheela na gigs are Celtic fertility images that show a female creature pulling open her lady bits. The costumes for this opera were big white robes with an opening below the waist--padded out, of course!--and they would hold this part open to sing. I wish, I wish SO HARD I were kidding and hadn't actually dreamed that, you have no idea.