[writing] Kalimpura revisions and looking forward

Kalimpura revisions continue apace. The book is due to my editor casacorona next week, according to both my working schedule for this project and my revised, cancer-limited working schedule for the year.

I'm expecting one more deep(ish) critique from a first reader, but mostly I am done with the line level work. What remains is one more careful read through, both for general flow and style, and for a couple of minor but recurring issues with the story.

Here is where I am tempted to be a lazy writer. I know I'll get revision notes from both my editor and my agent. This isn't done. And while I love this book — I really feel like I have tied up the three-volume cycle quite well and given poor Green some resolution to her life and times, without closing off the narrative to potential future stories — I'm rather tired of re-reading it. This isn't the muddle in the middle, this is the muddle at the end. Or some such.

Nonetheless, I decline to be a lazy writer, and as of a few minutes from now will be doing that close read. Because that way the book will be better. A better book is always my goal. And yes, I should complain about having such problems as not wanting to re-read my contracted book again in draft, but remember my Theory of Problems [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]. This is the writing problem I have today. It's a good problem to have.

This will be in before the end of June. After that, I will write the last 60-70,000 words of Calamity of So Long a Life, which is the first volume of my Sunspin space opera project. I expect to have that draft effort completed by about Labor Day, which is roughly when I will re-enter chemotherapy, post-surgery.

Resuming the Sunspin draft will also require reading, as I'll need to re-read the 130,000 words already written on that first volume, as well as the 125 page outline in order to recapture the voice, plot threads, and so forth. That's one reason my outline is so deep and detailed — to help me manage such an ambitious project over a long period of time.

I hope to do some revisions on Calamity this fall, and if my writing brain holds out long enough under the deepening of chemotherapy and its discontents, I'll also do some serious cancer writing.

But for now, Kalimpura.