Word count: 41231 | Since last entry: 512 | This month: 5309 Came home from tonight’s square dance tired, but determined to write at least 500 words. I must confess I was checking the word count pretty often, and stopped as soon as I passed 500 even though the scene was chunking along nicely. I’ve gotten into a flashback, showing how Jason and Clarity met at a sex party. It’s already a fairly nasty scene and I’m wondering just how explicit I want to get. I’ve been reasonably tame so far, by my standards, so I probably won’t get completely explicit, but I want to leave no doubt in the reader’s mind about what gets stuck where by whom. Could I blow a sale for the whole novel on this kind of thing? Maybe not one scene, but the whole bisexuality-polyamory-alien-love thing? Possibly. But this is the book I want to write, and I think one can get away with a hell of a lot these days. I suppose I’ll tone it down if an editor asks me to. (Would I change Jason’s orientation? I’d like to think I would not, but if a contract with a major publisher were riding on it I might. But I feel the right publisher wouldn’t ask for that change.) I think I’ll write the rest of the scene with a fairly high level of detail, then scale back later if necessary.
About David
David D. Levine is the author of Andre Norton Nebula Award winning novel Arabella of Mars, sequels Arabella and the Battle of Venus and Arabella the Traitor of Mars, and over fifty SF and fantasy stories. His story “Tk’Tk’Tk” won the Hugo, and he has been shortlisted for awards including the Hugo, Nebula, Campbell, and Sturgeon. Stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Tor.com, numerous Year’s Best anthologies, and his award-winning collection Space Magic.
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