I drafted what I *think* is the last new material for the Jump Space book yesterday, sitting in a cafe at 10,834 feet, at the peak of San Jacinto (photos coming shortly!). It was sort of satisfying, sitting on top of a mountain to finish drafting the book.
Woot! Woohoo! Huzzah!!!
I won’t call the book ACTUALLY finished yet, but there’s a definite ‘this major stage finished’ feeling. I’m happy with the overall structure, finally, which took a long, long time to work out (I started this project with the “Jump Space” story in 2009!), because apparently I was incapable of writing this book in a normal linear fashion. It’s clocking in at 115,554 words, which is a pretty respectable length. It’s going to feel like a real book when it comes out!
At this point, it’s been workshopped start to finish once (by the Pendragons writing group), will be again (by the Acorns writing group), plus a few friends, in the next two weeks.
Then I’m planning to implement any edits from that, and send it to Jed for his editorial comments. I’m HOPING he’ll love it and want only minor changes, but we’ll see. (Writers always hope that, and sometimes it’s better for them if their editors don’t give them what they want….)
I’ve been working for about two hours so far this morning, implementing workshop edits, and then sending the cleaned up manuscript out. It’s going to be out of my hands for a few weeks, but I do have a few more things I can work on in the meantime:
– draft timeline (figure out dating system)
– draft family genealogies
– draft universe map
I think I need to move a little first. Getting stiff writing in bed. Maybe some stretches, yoga, get blood pumping, eat a little more? Then work on those, then a phone call with a colleague at noon, and then I think a nice long afternoon break, reading and lounging by the pool.
With probably some more work after that. I’ve accomplished the main thing I wanted to accomplish writing-retreat-wise for this trip, but I *could* dive right into one of these:
LIMINAL SPACE (95% done, possible first book in 3-5 book series):
– do a final pass on Liminal Space, revising for beauty and theme
CANCER LOG (75-100% done, unclear):
– collate all the logs, read through them, think about whether I want to edit them in some way before publication
Not sure which one I’ll work on — the advantage to Liminal Space is that it’s in the same universe as Jump Space, and so I can hopefully keep everything clearer. The advantage to the cancer log is that I have an editor impatiently waiting for it, and it would be very nice to hand it to them sooner rather than later…
Books books bookity books books!
*****
Minor spoilers follow:
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
“A day will come, twenty years from now, when Patrick’s daughter, Maya, will be in desperate circumstances. On that day, a woman named Narita will help her, and she will help Narita in turn. Narita will be Amara’s second lover, after Katya runs away to join the soldiers. Narita and Amara will thoroughly break each others’ hearts. These things happen, of course.
They happen more often in wartime.”