Bag the Cat

We interrupt the regular broadcast of news about the War of 1812 to bloviate upon our writing career, such as it is, what there is of it, as the family used to say about a vaguely unsatisfactory meal. On Wednesday last I had lunch with my agent. The Work In Progress I had hoped to hand him was not quite finished, so that I was forced to deliver a lame elevator pitch for it.

Turns out that the plot I had so craftily constructed last spring with the aid of that excellent how-to book, Save the Cat, was so complex and convoluted that it did not readily lend itself to an elevator pitch. This is a red flag for flaws in a manuscript, by the way. If you have to go on all day about what your book is about, to the point where your agent's eyes glaze over (assuming you're lucky enough to have an agent), then the book is probably a dog. Good books beget snappy log lines.

About halfway through the lunch he began offering helpful suggestions to improve the work, or at least make it easier for him to sell. By the time I had finished my post-prandial coffee I realized that a Major Rewrite was in order. Harold and I had company this weekend, so that today was the first chance I had to get to it. Many things in the WIP want straightening out, but the most starkly evident is this:

The cat must go.

So with apologies to all my fellow cat-lovers out there I'm removing all references to the kitty. I'm not even worried about what it does to my word count. Word count is the least of my problems right now.