The first draft is about forty percent done. I started writing in January and I’m further along than I expected to be, which means I underestimated either my pace or the story’s length. Probably both.
What I’ve learned this year: the research never ends. Every paragraph opens a new question. I set out to write a novel and I have spent large portions of the year reading — about Mauryan administration, about medieval maritime trade routes, about the history of Sanskrit as a transregional language, about what we know and don’t know about how people actually lived in these cities.
The not-knowing is useful. Where the historical record is thin, the imagination has room.
More in the new year. The manuscript waits.