I'm that way with developmental editors. I don't use them.
So for this week, I fear I'm not much use. I have used first readers, I have hired my own editors, but when it comes to developing my stories, it's just me.
I even had an editor I used once who, several times through the course of reading the first draft of my novel SMILE NO MORE, asked me to give her a clue. The challenge was simply that the story was told in three separate sub chapters for each chapter. First person recollections from Cecil Phelps. First person recollections from Rufo the Clown, and third person scenes told to fill in the events as they happened in the modern day. It isn't until a little over halfway through the novel that everything starts to dovetail, but it does, eventually.
Seriously. She'd ask for just a hint, just a vague notion of where the story as going. I kept telling her to keep reading and then, finally she said "Oh! That makes sense now."
That's just sort of the way I work. I know where I'm going. I know how I'm going to get there. Sharing that information tends to mess the whole thing up for me. No one sees it until it's done.
Is my way the right way? Probably not. But it's what I'm comfortable with.
