Santa's Gonna Find Me With My Hair Pulled Out

I thought I would zip through the copy edited version of The Shade Of The Moon, get it all read and polished by the end of the week. Not a job I was looking forward to, but not one I was dreading either.

Well, that fantasy is out the window.

It turns out the copy editor (whose name I don't know but whose praises I will sing forevermore) realized I had totally totally totally screwed up. I mean totally.

You'd think I, of all people, would know that an asteroid knocked the moon out of orbit on May 18. It says so in Miranda's diary in Life As We Knew It. The Dead And The Gone starts on May 18. In This World We Live In, Miranda and Mom and Syl have a ceremony a year later, on May 18.

Let's look for a common theme here. MAY 18!

But in The Shade Of The Moon, I make the anniversary day May 20.

Why? you ask.

Because I'm stupid and careless and stupid, that's why.

The anniversary day is very important to the plot of The Shade Of The Moon, and so is the action right before the anniversary day.

Here's how things are now.

Sunday May 17: Jon visits his family
Monday May 18: A little scene with Jon and Sarah
Tuesday May 19: A lot of important stuff because the next day is the anniversary day.
Wednesday May 20: Anniversary day

Only anniversary day is really Monday, May 18, and all that important stuff that has to happen the day before can't happen the day before because Sunday May 17 Jon is visiting with his family and not doing the important stuff, which he has to do the day before the anniversary day because roughly 1/4 of what follows in the story is because of that important stuff.

I've pretty much figured out what I have to do. I'm going to change all the dates up to May 18 to make them a week before (so Jon will visit his family on May 10 instead). Of course that leaves the book with nothing happening between May 10 and May 16, when Jon and Sarah have their little scene. But I think I can take a little bit of action that currently happens before Jon visits his family and make it after he visits his family. I'll also write a little scene (don't ask me about what), and a moderately significant scene, because some of Jon's motivation for the important stuff comes from his visit with his family, and it won't feel right if that motivation is a week old. So I have to give him more reason for the motivation, which will make that new scene moderately significant.

And then I'll go back to all those copy edited pages (about 20 of them) that there's no point looking at now because I have to add so much before them, and see what the copy editor has suggested. I just finished going through a batch of post-anniversary day pages, since they aren't affected by the date changes and the unwritten new scenes. I'll get back to them tomorrow.

The deadline is January 2 and I know I'll be finished by then. But while Santa's saying Ho! Ho! Ho!, I'll be saying Howl! Howl! Howl!