Writing is Hard

I've been writing this one story since after my 2008 NaNoWriMo and I've given up hope that anyone will behave in the way that I want to.

Basic plot: After the rebellion in heaven, all the angels who participated were sent to hell, except one, Maya. She wants to figure out why she escaped the punishment.

She's visited by her twin, Raphael, who tells her that she can get into heaven by beheading thirteen demons. He gives her Michael's sword to accomplish this task.

She's greatly hampered in her quest, since she is being chased by angels, demons, and humans. However, she is being helped by a cranky demon named Belphegor and another demon named Caine who wants her help to get into heaven.

Okay, so. Basically, nothing is turning out the way I planned, except for Maya's personality. Such is the beauty of writing, I guess, but I would appreciate not being the last to know plot developments.

It was originally going to be a set of 13 short stories, with each demon killing being the focus of each story. That died out pretty quick as new plot developments started happening. Okay, whatever. I can live with that. Briefly, each demon was going to be a manifestation of Hercules' 12 labours (with the last one being something else I didn't decide) but then I thought it would be too difficult to make a living manifestation of, say, the Augean stables or the golden apples.

So okay, that's still fine. I can live with that.

My original plan had Maya being joined by a male PI (Jack) who was going to help her for some reason. He kept veering off character and I had to keep dragging him back on track. Eventually this was too much work and I accepted that he was going to be a huge asshole and just let him be like that. He morphed from a roguish, 25 year old PI into a balding, fortyish professor who was disgraced because of his belief in the supernatural and wanted to kidnap Maya to prove everyone wrong. In the part I'm writing right now, he is testing her endurance to pain. He electrocuted her, and now he's going to decapitate her. Yeah, I guess inside my original jerk with a heart of gold private investigator was a COMPLETE PSYCHOTIC SOCIOPATH waiting to come out.

My second plan for the male lead was to have a devil-may-care thief be her companion of sorts. That started semi-well, but then he kept wanting to be a cowardly petty criminal who wanted nothing to do with the supernatural, so eventually I gave in and let him live his life and abandoned him in France with an ex-girlfriend.

My third (and current) plan is the aforementioned Caine. He's working out so far, except I kind of abandoned him in hell. He'll be coming back soon though. My real problem with him is his name. I believe it was originally Forrest or something, then I changed it to Caine. Then I didn't like that so I changed it to Oliver. Then I didn't like that so I changed it to Will. I decided I didn't like that and changed it back to Caine, although search and replace doesn't work too well when your name is Will.

My other supporting characters are working out well though, as Raphael and Belphegor are exactly the way I wanted them to be. Particularly Belphegor, who was originally supposed to have a really small part but is becoming somewhat of an ensemble darkhorse, to me at least.

Since I keep changing things, plot lines are started and abandoned. I have at least two big things I have to go back and change because it makes no sense (because of Jack. FUCK YOU, JACK) and at least four things I have to resolve. I keep introducing characters with seemingly no purpose (Adam, the petty thief, and his ex-girlfriend, and also another demon named Abaddon who was supposed to accompany Maya, but that ended up not happening) and right now the whole story is just a series of events and one liners but no real coherent plot. I have no idea where I'm going with it. I have no idea what the ending is. I have no idea what is happening even from page to page.

Sigh.