Hello, dreamers. I finally did it. It took a lot longer than I’d expected, but as of this past weekend, principal writing on the final draft of The Ursa Frontier is complete.

I still have a lot to do. After taking a few days to clear my head, tomorrow I will begin editing. The process is likely to take at least a week, possibly more. But for now, I’m taking a moment to appreciate what I’ve accomplished so far, and reflect.

When I first set out to write what became The Ursa Frontier, I’d expected it to become the work of a lifetime. And I’ve certainly taken a few twists and turns getting to this point. Ultimately, the biggest surprises came in the final chapters.

Wrapping Things Up

As I mentioned in one of my recent posts, the new writing style I’ve adopted has slowed my daily output. But the main reason for the delay in completing this draft was the story itself. Specifically, the unexpected ways in which it changed.

Freed from the self-imposed constraints of fitting too much plot into a debut novel-friendly word count, I was finally able to delve into how the main characters’ experiences on the surface changed them. But as I wrote, I found myself looking more closely into their motivations. Their time on Samarkand changed each of them, some in unexpected ways. It forced them to reconsider their choices. And that was just too good to gloss over.

Ultimately, the planned penultimate chapter stretched into three. Without even intending to, I did what I usually do in the final chapters of a novel: I split the main characters up, allowing them to take the wheel for a while and shine on their own. As usual, it allowed me to better acquaint the reader with them. And I managed to inject one final, harrowing action sequence into things, followed by something I hadn’t shown in the original draft: a death.

As I thought about it, ignoring death represented a grave oversight. These people are settling an alien planet, far from any hope of support from Earth. And after spending so much time writing about the dangers, the risks, the inevitability of losses, not actually showing someone dying felt like malpractice.

The final phase of the book ended up comprising five chapters, which feels perfect; I always like to wrap things up quickly in my novels. But there were a lot of unexpected changes. I ended up cannibalizing certain elements, mostly dialogue, that were originally to appear in the second half of the novel. When I do, inevitably, return to the discarded second half and begin expanding it into a novel in its own right, I’ll have a lot of filling out to do. Based on what I’ve done with The Ursa Frontier, it’s looking more and more like the follow-up novel will be an even greater departure from what I’d originally written.

But I feel I have a much, much better idea now of what I want that novel to be. And now I find myself looking at that mostly-blank canvas not with dread, but excitement. Part of me wants to just move right on and start working on it. But that can wait. First, I need to edit this novel, and resume the query process.

I’m not done with The Ursa Frontier. Not yet. But this represents a huge milestone, and a great leap forward for my writing. Now, more than ever, I feel very good about where things are heading. – MK