Novel - Crime Scene

Due to popular demand, I am going to take time out from slogging away at the novel and give all 3 of you an update!

With my new found knowledge on Saturday night/Sunday morning, that I still had 9 more chapters to write, and time was running out, I did manage to move swiftly through the editing process on about 20 chapters by working myself to the bone from early morning Sunday right through to midnight.

I was one tired woman at the end of it all, but at least I could face into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, with my plan in place to do 9 chapters, then write synopsis and sort out complete novel file on Thursday, leaving Friday for final review and printing.

So I wouldn't say that things were wonderful, but they weren't a disastrous either, that was until somewhere in my sleep, a major plot problem occurred to me, a problem that I could in time resolve, but it would require quite a lot of work, and with a tight schedule, that wasn't really going to be an option if I planned to have first draft done and dusted by the 17th.

Okay, what did I do? Well I did what all good lunatics who want to write a novel in 12 weeks do, I panicked.  I asked anyone that would listen to help advise me, safe in the knowledge that I would ignore whatever they said, because when you are in a panic, it seems to want to hold you there.  I made a couple of attempts at setting down a plan, but none of them worked.  I then did what all good lunatics with a sense of tidiness do, I gathered every piece of paper together with notes about the novel, including cinema tickets, the back of ATM receipts, the odd beer mat, not to mention all the non paper mountain on my mobile phone, laptop etc and I started marking off the points that I had already covered in a vain attempt to boost my confidence.  I took great pleasure in putting them all into the paper bin, after I had done a new listing of points still to be covered, and old items that need addressing. Lovely!

Well it was for about 5 minutes, until while looking at my tidy fictional desk, I realised that the problem with the plot was not removed, and would not be removed by clean sweeping my environment.

So, I panicked again.  Only this time there were tears, real ones, the kind of ones that go between sadness and anger, with a little bit of craziness fired in for good measure.  The world had ended, I was not going to achieve my goal, because the way I saw it, I had two choices.

Choice A - I could stop and decide that the best way forward was to go back and fix the yoke and miss my deadline.

Choice B - I could continue on until the end, not worrying about the flawed plot.

Both would appear rational, and to any ordinary lunatic, they would have been fine.  But you see, we ain't dealing with any ordinary lunatic, we are dealing with a 120 sock lunatic and they don't do rational well.

If I chose choice A, I would feel like a failure, because there is no one harder on 120 socks than 120 socks.

If I chose choice B, I would have lost that foolish belief that I am writing something with the potential to be wonderful, as known flaws would just destroy my socking enthusiasm.

So what did I do. Because giving up was not an option and writing 9 further flawed chapters, wasn't an option either, I stayed up until some ungodly hour of the morning, and made an attempt to rescue the flaw from utter stupidity to mildly acceptable, with the knowledge that one day I would return to it.

Well, it did the trick, I got back writing today and did 3 of the last 9 chapters, but I am now wrecked having only had about 4 hours sleep last night.  So an early night for me!!!

Tomorrow I will write my synopsis, having downloading a list of guidelines from the web, and carry on to the end.

In the meantime, I would value your thoughts, on the proposed title. 

It is a psychological crime novel, and I was thinking of -

'Stone Pillows'

(the meaning behind the name is revealed about two thirds through the book)

So what do you think? 

Right now any pillow will do me!!!