Constant: A Timeline (Patreon)

With my brain swimming with a headcold I've brought back from abroad, writing's been a bit tricky this week.  Or rather, it started strongly--a solid, 2000-word day--when it was just jetlag, but man, this cold's killing me.  I was halfway through a tricky scene--Cindy in a sparkly dress on the dancefloor--and the screen was wobbling before my eyes, so I decided to work on something that'd been on the backburner for far too long: tidying up the timeline for Constant in All Other Things.

With the decade-long gap between Chapter 3 and 4, and the nearly year-long gap whilst writing the Interlude, and the general shift in my approach to writing... well, a bunch of inconsistencies have cropped up.  Many of these need thorough editing--names, details, things like that.  But it's also required more careful attention to the timeline.  With chapter 6 introducing precise dates (the "funeral" is set in November; David returns from the Clinic in the last weekend of August) I've gone back to make sure it all makes sense.  

As has been pointed out in previous comments, sometimes too much action is squeezed into too little time: how much can David possibly get done with Julia if they've only got a few weeks before he ships off back to the Clinic?  So hopefully this helps clear things up a bit when I get around to the final edit.  

When I started Constant, I did it at speed (well, what counts as speed for me) - and for fun, with a clear start and finish, and a sketch of the middle, but paying little attention to precise details of time and place.  With every flashback, details crowded in; the story developed; and especially now, coming back after that long gap away, it's clear I need to take  a little more care with these details if the whole thing's going to hold together.

So... here's an initial outline of the TImeline (with future details deleted, of course).  Notice any incongruities?

Timeline

Events

February: Season 1

March: First half of March: in the Tank (Interlude); End of March: Waking up Cindy (Chapter 1)

April: Two weeks festering, two weeks adapting (Chapter 2)

May: Starting, then working at Volumina International; Dan (Chapter 3)

June: Discovered by Julia-->Confrontation (Chapter 4), then six weeks with Julia begins (Chapter 5)

July: Six weeks with Julia (Chapter 5)

August: Two weeks at the Clinic (Interlude).  Return to Cindy's flat. Falling out with Julia

September: Back to work at V.I.  / Clubbing / [redacted] / Return of Julia

October: [redacted] / [redacted] / Halloween Party / [redacted]

November: The Funeral of David Saunders (Chapter 6) / Three-month Clinic   evaluation (Chapter 7)