[LMB] (news) Done! ...for a certain value of done

[Lois McMaster Bujold]

Ha!

    The final draft of _The Sharing Knife, Vol. 3: Passage_ went back to 
my Eos editor this afternoon.  Basically, I've stuffed the fully-edited 
manuscript into my end of the publishing pipeline, and it will emerge as 
a finished book in June, 2008.  It will come back to haunt me twice more 
before then, once as a copy-edit and once as galleys.

    The line-edit had no structural complaints, but lots of word dinks.  
I had a list of my own, plus some touch-ups on content for medical 
accuracy, plus some fine-tuning in light of developments in book #4, and 
all in all, there were about a thousand things to think about, however 
briefly. (If a comma placement, very briefly.  If a word choice or 
sentence structure, longer.  If added words or lines, ditto.  And so 
on.)  That number is a close estimate, not a figure of speech, btw.  The 
power went out at 11 PM last night and didn't come on again till 3 this 
afternoon, which probably benefited my very last 6-line revision, as I 
had more time to think about it.  Started this edit pass on Thursday 
Aug. 2; just under two weeks, then.

    Mailing out the box (boxes, in this case, one copy to my editor and 
the other to my agent) of a finished draft always makes me feel about a 
hundred pounds lighter.  An illusion, alas.  Tonight, I get a glass of 
wine with dinner, which I forwent last night.  No brain cells needed 
now... eyeballs and shoulders are still fried, though.  I don't think I 
*can* drink enough wine to undo my shoulders.

    It's been strange to re-acquaint myself with this book.  I think 
this is the longest gap I've ever had between finishing the first 
submission draft and doing the edit pass -- I turned in the first 
version last fall, and we then let it lie fallow for as long as possible 
while I made tracks on #4.   Well.  So this was the book I wrote.  And 
all the should-have/could-have/might-have-been alternate possibilities 
for its content are now gone forever.  Good riddance to most of them, 
too.  As is usual for this stage, I have no idea what readers will make 
of it all.

    The first draft, according to my computer files, was started Dec. 
27, 2005.  (This would be when I actually started typing -- I'd have 
been thinking about it and working up notes and doing research reading 
for some months before that.)  Final draft comes in at 134,197 words, 
544 manuscript pages, 24 chapters.  (For comparison, _Beguilement_ was 
19 chapters and about 105,000 words.)  From my point of view _Passage_ 
(I'm still getting used to that title) partakes of some of the qualities 
of the middle book of a trilogy, yet my editor scrawled on the last page 
(at the end of her two-weekend marathon edit session) that she thought 
it the most emotionally satisfying of the series so far.  Go figure.  
But then, she hasn't seen any of #4 yet, and I have.

    Editor is now mulling over cover art ideas -- I had lots of elements 
to offer -- river scenes, flatboats and keelboats, character 
descriptions and critters --  but no notions for the composition, which 
should suggest a narrative and not just a landscape, important as the 
geography is to this book.   I'm hoping the artist will be inspired -- 
that, after all, is the artist's job, as prose is mine.  Shall have more 
updates on the cover art as things move along, but right now it's all 
still in flux.  Copy for the sales catalog, which is being put together 
right now, also went through my hands yesterday; I'm glad they let me 
touch it up.  (It was the last e-mail I got out before the power blew -- 
big storm here last night.)  Jacket flap copy will happen a bit later on.

    Now I'm going to go fix pizza and salad, drink more wine, and let 
David Attenborough show and tell me all about birds.  That should be 
soothing.

    Ta, L.