I had an epiphany this morning and realized what was wrong with the book. My feeling that I had all the right pieces but they were in the wrong order was correct. Now I know how to arrange them properly.
I have no idea what this is going to do to my wordcount. The word “obliterate” may come into play. I’m unexpectedly chipper about this, because although it will be a giant pain the tuckus, at least I’ll be writing the right story instead of slogging through this mess of uncertainty which persists in feeling wrong. So today I’m going to rewrite chapter one, print out and read the 65,000 words I have written, and see what parts of them I think can be salvaged (*whimper*).
It may turn out quite a lot of it can be salvaged, with various degrees of revision. The real question is whether the salvage operation and follow-up completion of the reworked novel can be accomplished by the impending April 16 deadline. It’s not impossible. I’m not sure it’s *likely*, but it’s not impossible.
(And Ted is just a little bit on the exceedingly smug side, as my epiphany was that the book should have started where he said it should start in the first place. I shoulda listened to him… :))