David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 1440 | This month: 1932 Finished the first draft of the Jupiter story yesterday morning, huzzah! I read it to Kate and I think it works well. It’s also almost 6000 words. I wanted 3000. I think I can trim it by as much as 10% (600 words) but there’s no way it’s getting much below 5000 in its current form. Oh well. At least it’s a good story, and if it’s too long for Cosmic Tales of the Far Future I think it’s got a good shot at Analog. The current title is “The True Story of Merganther’s Drive”, which is a pretty good title but, unfortunately, isn’t quite accurate (the facts of Merganther’s Drive are never in question within the story, only the facts about this one particular photograph). I think I’m going to fall back to “Interview with the Photographer”. Now I have to decide whether to have it critiqued, or just send it straight to the editor. I’m leaning toward the latter. Ponder ponder ponder. Tomorrow I will get back to work on the novel.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 492 | This month: 492 Darn, I was sure I’d written just over 500 words, not just under. I’m giving myself a gold star anyway. The month is not off to a good start, given that I didn’t write at all for the first three days of it and I need to finish this story by Saturday if I want to get it critiqued at the next session. Monday I was still too pooped from the trip to write, Tuesday we went to Nalo Hopkinson’s reading at Powell’s, followed by a pleasant dinner with her at Pho Van, and yesterday I stayed late at work to finish up a usability test report, then had to go to bed early for a 7am meeting this morning (bleah). Tonight I determined to write something, despite the other chores that needed to be done (did get some of those done, though). The Jupiter story is charging toward its climax. I have destroyed two planets already (and not just your pitsy or obscure planets either, no sir!), with one more to go; not bad for a short story. It’s longer than I’d hoped, might even hit 5000 words before it’s done, but as I said before I think I know where I can cut. Busy, busy, busy. Must rest now.