Temporal Difficulties
I’ve been cranking along on a novel, trying to wrap us some revisions and new wordcount on a deadline, and I’m starting to realize that past versions of myself are really screwing me over. I have enough problems with coherent plotting without various past versions of me leaving notes detailing contradictory versions of what they seem to think are brilliant ideas on directions that I could take the novel.
One past version of me will posit an idea for a scene involving, say, Vicar Dumbarton challenging someone to a race in his new Model A at the Armistice Day Cotillion, then another past version of me will leave a note about some great scene where Vicar Dumbarton is eaten by an orca on the way to the Halloween party. And who gets stuck with reconciling all this? Present-day me, that’s who.
Well, screw it. I’m going to pawn it off on future me. That poor sucker won’t know what hit him.
Well, your future self has my sympathy. Good luck reaching your deadline!