My Good Friend vs. My Managing Editor

I had a great time with Carleen on Thursday night!

We went to Atlanta Bread Company, and she helped me work out story ideas, character sketches, and timelines for Gangland. I’m so glad she’s agreed to be my editor!

It’s great to have a smart friend who reads as avidly as I do. Her input was invaluable. She was kind but honest about where I needed to make some changes. Now, I really feel like I have clear direction on Gangland.

Now only if I could get one on Bruised! I’ve been sitting here at my PC for an hour now, and I’ve only reformatted a few paragraphs.

I have a 150 page novel so far, and since I was too stupid to do a clear outline before, I’ve got this GIANT plot gap between my two main story ideas. I did decide to re-write one character’s personality, so those were the paragraphs I reformatted, but now I’m stuck!

I’ve got to go back to the beginning and ACTUALLY do an outline. At least, with Gangland, I’ve got clear direction – at least enough to get started.

Anyway, back to Thursday night, I had printed out Bruised – 153 pages to be exact – and brought it along so Carleen could see how far I’ve gotten with it. Well, she talked me into handing it over to be looked at. I really, really didn’t want to do it, since it is still very rough and unedited, but she was persistent enough, that I ended up handing it over.

I’m a little afraid of what she’s going to say. Handing over your freshman story to be critiqued is sort of like having other people yell at your kids. You can critique your own stuff to death, but you get pretty protective when other people do it.

Well, I’m just going to have to get over it – especially now that I have an “editor” who I do want to be honest with me – even if it hurts! No pain, no better writing!

I got home about 8:30 p.m. and Brett was still asleep. He had Thursday night off from work. He slept from 6:30 a.m. – 8:30 p.m.! Can you believe it!!! Then, when I went to bed, about 10:00 p.m., he went downstairs to “work on stuff.”

Then, the next morning, he told me that when he went downstairs, after sleeping 14 HOURS, he fell back asleep on the couch! And slept another 7 HOURS. I told him that he should be extremely well-rested for his Friday-Saturday hunting trip! In fact, he shouldn’t need to sleep at all!

So, Friday morning, (I took off work, too!) we were both putzing around the house getting ready for our trips – him to go hunting and me to go to Maranatha!

We had an exciting weekend ahead of us!