Okay sure that’s one meaning and covers a lot of behaviour. Irrational anger, yup, lost the plot. Dithered helplessly instead of following a clear course of action – also lost the plot.

There is the literal meaning. Your plot of land, your home. Losing that, losing everything.

There’s a third meaning for writers, a little more up close and personal, when the characters hang around listlessly and shrug at words thrown hopefully at them instead of charging off joyfully in new directions with the writer scrambling to keep up.

I gave up trying to direct my characters around book four and just followed their lead, admittedly sometimes with my eyes popping.  Now, poke or suggest or wheedle as I may, the final plot simply won’t string together. The quartet know they’re on their last book, about to be made redundant, and you could cut the atmosphere with a blunt axe. Damn it. The series has picked up a small but loyal following waiting with interest to see how the quartet disentangle themselves and work out who done it for the tenth and last time, me as much as anyone, and I’ve given them the plot and will they come to life and play with it? They will not. Not so much lost, in this particular case, as being stonily ignored. I’d give up and try to think up another but I like this one and I surely have some say?

I know, that was whiny.

Funny how one informal phrase can resonate on so many different levels. Well, funny isn’t the mot juste, really. Not laugh out loud funny. Not even funny peculiar. But now I’ve picked the phrase to pieces it no longer even makes sense. I’ve lost the plot.