An update

Six days in a row of chipping away at the thing have been beneficial.  I've finished a line edit all the way through, and the manuscript is now bristling with post-its in places where I need to draw out or amplify or weave together different threads.

Today I made this chart (click for a fuller view!), with color-coding for the three main games the characters develop and play: Trapped in the Asylum, Places of Power and The Bacchae on Morningside Heights.  (The yellow pen I used for the fourth element, a blog called Anna's Aphorisms, has not reproduced very vividly.)  The colors show very clearly the extent to which I pick up a game and then let it drop; I need it all to be much more thoroughly interspersed, including some new material that still needs to be written.  One afternoon very soon, too, I will go and wander around Morningside Park again and pin down locations for the reconceived final showdown.

I have what seems to me a fairly natural and in that sense 'hard' deadline of April 25 to send the book back to my editor; that's the last day I'm teaching, too, so it's not exactly intuitive, but I'm going to B.'s the day after for a week (if I don't go right when I finish teaching, I then can't get away until after graduation, so it's better to seize the moment), and I also have a book review due on the 30th and an academic essay due May 15 that I think I will need to clear before it makes sense to come back to the novel.  So, two weeks of intensive revision: I've bought a lot of pens and post-its and other supplies and am ready to dig in. . . .