Scheming and Planning and Editing Oh My!

Today was a random day filled with lots of little details.

I had lunch with a proofreader friend of mine recently, so I schemed today and wrote up a mock contract to see if I can con her into helping me with this project. Okay, so I don't have to do much conning, or any at all really. And the offer was extended free of charge. However. I am a creative, and I understand how hard it is for creatives to make money. So, free of charge is not an acceptable term for me. And I need help. I need another pair of eyes and ears.

The necessity for another pair of eyes and ears stems from two things. First, as I was reading through the entirety of my novel again today, I realized that there really was no consistent time frame for anything. I do not write my chapters in order, so it was humorous, really, to see when things happen. Because it looks like I went willy nilly with the time references, sprinkling them here and there throughout the book. Leia investigated this on Thursday, ate at the Spanish restaurant last week, the killer killed Gina this afternoon and Simon and Leo Boyd early Monday morning. I actually ended up with two chapters in a row that started with It's Thursday... Yes. Yes. I agree with you. I need to fix my time frame, so I've written everything out as it happens and tried to make sense of it. In one chapter I say all the murders happen on weekends, which is so not true because, as I've previously stated in my blog, in some chapters, bad things happen on Mondays. I'm still working out all of these little details, and while I understand the importance of these details, I'm feeling pretty good about having more than half of my novel written and pretty finely tuned.

The second reason I need another pair of eyes is because, I'll get on a productive path and run as fast as I can down that road until that idea is run out, and then I spent 24 or 36 or 48 hours in this weird, lost, depressed land where I get some planning done but really no writing until after the 48 hour mark when I snap back into the real world and realize that I just need to do some more planning and figure out a new direction. (Sigh.) I've finally figured out, this last 36 hour period of time in Lost Land, that this is what I do and why I'm in Lost Land to begin with. I'm hoping to be able to remedy this in the future. And I think I have. It's been, you know, five days since this last lost period. I now completely understand why some writers go crazy!

Meeting with my third set of eyes/editor/adviser tomorrow! Very excited to have some feedback on the ten new chapters I've produced in the new year. I have to finish fixing my time line tomorrow and make all of those changes, and I have four new chapters planned out. Woo hoo! Hallelujah for direction!