Hello, dreamers. This is it: the final push. With May drawing to a close, I have one week to meet my self-imposed deadline of finishing The Ursa Frontier before the end of the month.

I’ve come this far, and I feel very good about the work I’ve done. But I still have more to do, and mere days to do it. That said, here’s what I’ll be up to this week:

The Ursa Frontier

And here we are. Months of hard work, a solid month of furious work, and I’m almost there. The finish line is in sight.

Over the past week, I accomplished a lot. I wrote a new chapter, began work on a major rewrite of two existing ones, and finally decided how and where the novel will end. Though I didn’t complete this draft, it’s hard to feel bad about what I managed to do. But I still have work ahead of me.

My first order of business this week will, of course, be to finish this final draft of The Ursa Frontier. At the moment, I have parts of two chapters to complete (a section where I’m trying to use some additional worldbuilding and insight into Holmes’s past to break up a large tract of vital dialogue). My plans for these chapters will necessitate further changes to chapters both preceding and following them. Then, I’ll be moving on to the ending.

I have, at last, decided how this novel will come to an end. I have a destination. However, I’m still working out precisely how to get there. I’m still trying to figure out whether, based on the chapter I completed last week, if I can move directly into the final chapter or will need to insert another, penultimate chapter to draw things comfortably to a close.

When I write a novel, I like to bring things to a swift resolution after the climax. Normally I prefer to keep things fast-paced, breaking up the characters and employing a lot of action to make sure the ending keeps readers on the edge of their seats. However, this project is nothing like anything I’ve written before. And I’m now thinking I might want to draw things out a little. My fear is that, based on what I set up in the latest chapter and where I want to go from here, trying to pack everything into a single chapter won’t draw things to a satisfactory conclusion. I’m still working out the pacing of my new writing style. It’s a work in progress. But a decision needs to be made in the coming days.

If I do elect to add another chapter before the conclusion, at least I probably won’t be starting from scratch. My current plan involves splitting the current final chapter in two, so at least half the work is done already.

My current goal is to have all of that, plus any last-minute window dressing, done by mid-week. From there, as is my custom, I plan to take a couple of days away from the story before editing. If all goes well, I’ll have completed my final editing pass through the entire story by the end of the week.

Querying The Ursa Frontier

Even then, my work isn’t finished; I’ll still have to rework my query materials. That includes a new query letter and synopsis, as well as new sample pages. Now that I’ve already been through this once, I’m confident that I can knock all of that out in a week or less (it helps that I’ve already researched the target agents for my next round of queries). However, I may now be facing a new problem.

There was a reason I’d hoped to finish this project and send out the next round of queries before the end of spring. With June approaching, summer is right around the corner, and many literary agents take a summer hiatus. As a result, at least a few of my target agents may close for queries in the coming weeks. Others may not formally close, but still might take months to respond to my queries.

Thus, now more than ever, time is of the essence. I must finish this draft this week, and knock off my query materials by a week from Friday, if I’m to have any hope of getting my queries in before summer.

My Next Project

Once the current draft of The Ursa Frontier is complete, as far as actual writing goes it will be time to move on.

My search for a new project has me increasingly gravitating back toward Aquarius 1. Most likely, this is the result of spending the better part of six months now working with The Ursa Frontier. It’s been gratifying, but I know part of me is eager to work on something totally different. That said, revisiting Pathfinder remains a possibility. Once my query materials are ready, I’ll probably attempt a few test writings around the middle of June and see what shakes out.

Once I’ve selected a project, I’ll be shifting into summer mode, diving into research and notes. As I’ll be focused on fleshing out a concept and working on worldbuilding, as far as actual writing goes I’ll likely return to short fiction. I currently have several existing projects that could use some attention, all of which show great promise. And it would be nice to have a fresh batch of manuscripts to put out on sub. Currently, I have only two manuscripts on submission: one to Analog, which takes several months to respond, and one to the quarterly Writers of Tomorrow contest (in which Prishelets recently won an honorable mention). I’m unlikely to hear back on either of those until mid-June at the earliest.

New Content

So this past weekend, I eschewed my customary weekend posts for a personal reflection on the value of art. If you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest you take a look here.

As for this week, in my next “Pioneers Sessions” post on Wednesday, I’ll be going into greater detail on the new writing style I’ve adopted over the past year, and how it has affected my output. And starting this week, my weekly features will become “Friday Features”, which will be published at 11:30 AM every Friday. This week I’ll be reviewing All Systems Red by Martha Wells: book one of the Murderbot Diaries, which has now been adapted into an original series on Apple TV+. And I’ll be resuming my “Dear Sir or Madam” posts starting this Sunday. Until then, dare to dream. – MK