In the middle of the third draft of my young adult novel, I’ve decided that the final six chapters need to be entirely rearranged. My hope is that this will increase the tension in the book and allow more character development.

Unfortunately, reordering scenes is like taking all the socks of an octopus, then putting them back on one at a time, while keeping the other seven wriggling tentacles pinned under your arm. They keep trying to escape and swim out to sea.

And, as you can probably gather from the very fact that I’ve used the analogy of a sock-wearing octopus, I’m more than a little confused.