Well, my editor sent me her notes on “Dreamer.”

*gulp*

And then we talked on the phone for over an hour about it.

*choking sound*

Now I have less than 60 days to get it where it needs to go. It’s mostly there, but there needs to be some creative re-arranging, some dismissal of a useless subplot, and I have to swap out someone’s death for someone else’s because it was just too much.

I have no doubt it’ll get there, and it’ll be so much better getting there. Right now, I feel like I’m standing in a room full of loose pages and being asked to pin them all over the walls in a new pattern and draw a brand new picture that leads into a totally different room. While wearing a strait jacket and writing with a crayon between my toes.

But it’ll get there, anyway. My editor knows her stuff, and she gets me and I get her and together, we will get there.

Strangely enough, so much of what she felt was missing or misdirected were things I had put into an earlier draft, and then talked myself out of for one reason or another – mostly because I thought they might not like it as much as I did. Turns out I was wrong in that. I should have gone with my gut.

Lesson learned: To thine own self be true.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to grab a crayon…