Let the wild revision begin!
I will now take advantage of the fact that it's 58F and sunny to go and scout a few of the three or four neighborhood locations that I intend to make more use of in the next draft. My plan for the next three weeks is pretty clear. I will go to Philadelphia this weekend for a couple of days, arriving home Monday evening. I then have three full weeks of writing time before school starts: week of Dec. 26, week of Jan. 2, week of Jan. 9 (I'll be in Cayman for a spell, Jan. 7-15). I should be able to eke out a couple more weeks of decent writing time once school starts, but a practice of morning writing during the semester can only be sustained for so long, and I know it will collapse a couple weeks in. So the next 2 weeks are designed to generate as much new material as possible, then the week in Cayman I'll take the whole thing apart and put it back together again with new pieces, doing blow-by-blow start-to-finish revisions over the rest of January. Get a good new version to my editor by Monday, Jan. 30, and let it sit for 1.5 months so that I can do my final tough pass through over spring break in March.
I do think the book needs a new title: The Magic Circle is fine, but a little too bland. (The Bacchae on Morningside Heights was abstruse and unpronounceable, but is still of course how I think of the book in my head.) I will see if some obvious name emerges as I work on the next round.
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