David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 5787 | Since last entry: 887

Good progress on the writing in the last few days. I just wrote a horrific little scene that’s all the more scary because it’s not fiction at all.

I didn’t sleep too well last night, but it had nothing to do with the story I’m working on. As you may recall, we bought some software to help plan our trip to Disneyland. Well, a friend read this blog and decided he’d buy a copy too. But just as I was going to bed last night I got an email from him saying that his anti-spyware program had detected a keylogger in the Disney planner’s installer.

This was not a good thing. Keyloggers are among the worst kinds of spyware; they log your every keystroke and send them to bad guys who troll the data for passwords, account numbers, and other information that can be used to steal your money and your identity. I started wondering what secure websites I’d visited in the last few days.

But I ran a couple of different spyware checks on my system, and I read up on the keylogger his anti-spyware program had detected and looked for any sign of that one specifically, and I found nothing. Maybe it had been a false positive. I shut down and went to bed some time after midnight.

I rolled over at 6am and was instantly, thoroughly awake. I got up, booted the computer, and ran another couple of checks. Still nothing. But some spyware can be pretty stealthy. I submitted a copy of the installer program to my security software vendor. The automatic reply came back in a few minutes, saying that nothing obvious was found and that they’d get a human being to look into it.

By lunchtime I got the response: no sign whatsoever of any spyware. I asked my friend to send a query to his anti-spyware vendor. Eventually he heard back; they agreed that it was probably a false positive. Whew, and grr.

So: nothing lost but a few frazzled nerves. But it did kind of put a pinch on the whole day.

Word count: 4900 | Since last entry: 677

I got absorbed in my work and missed my stop on the train. Fortunately, when I noticed the problem (two stops later) I got off and was able to catch a train going the other way just a few minutes later. The same thing happened last week, though on the inbound instead of the outbound commute.

Another way that writing is dangerous is that it can break your heart. Man, if you ever want to find out just how much one of your stories sucks, just get it nominated for a major award. I should learn to stop reading my reviews but I can’t help myself. I am a hack and my “aliens” are just stereotypical Orientals in rubber suits.

Having written nearly all of day 2 of the story, I see a couple of problems: 1) the supernatural event on day 2 happens during the day, which has atmospheric problems as well as violating the rules I’ve set for myself, and 2) having written day 2, I’m not sure that day 3 is different enough (i.e. moves the plot forward enough) to justify its existence.

After thinking about it a while, I think I may be able to solve both problems by rejiggering the outline as follows: eliminate the morning of day 3, rewrite the afternoon of day 2 to be the evening of day 3, and eliminate all of day 4 except the night (which is the climax of the story). A more drastic rewrite would lose the morning of day 2 (which I just wrote today, sob) in favor of the morning of day 3, but I think I may have the content of that scene already covered elsewhere.

This new outline, covering only 2 very long days, means dropping the date headers on each day. No biggie. Could be a good thing, in fact, because it solves the phase-of-the-moon problem. Just need to establish the approximate date in text (nail it hard on the first page!).

Even after eliminating 2 full days of the original outline there’s still a lot to write. However, this outline goes into more detail than the old one; I might be able to squeeze it into 8000 words all told, and then edit it down to below 7500. We’ll see.

I’m babbling; I have no idea if this will make sense to anyone else. Another way that writing is dangerous is that it keeps me up much too late. Good night.

Word count: 4223 | Since last entry: 251

In just a few weeks we will be going to Anaheim for the annual gay square dance convention. Naturally this includes a visit to Disneyland, and because we are obsessive control freaks we have been doing considerable research in order to beat the crowds. This has extended to the purchase of a software program called RideMax, which uses the latest available information on schedules and line movement rates to calculate an optimal touring plan for the attractions you want to see. It’s like the touring plan in The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland, which we swear by, but customized. Unfortunately, it’s Windows-only, which means we will be unable to make modifications to the plan after we leave home.

Yes, we are geeks. But we will spend less time standing in line than you, nyaah nyaah.

Tonight’s writing was remarkably hard. I had to write several paragraphs of description of the devastation of Pass Christian, Mississippi, without either having been there or plagiarizing the very-well-written description of that exact thing I found on the web. I hope that the telling details I have made up out of whole cloth sound as plausible to other people as they do to me. The hard part will continue until I reach the end of this day of the story, when my co-author’s diary picks up again.

I’ve been thinking a lot about whether the subplot I’ve invented to make life harder for my main character is extraneous or not. The problem is that if I don’t have this subplot he has nowhere to grow. He needs to start off at a place that is worth growing away from, and I can’t use even a variant of the typical “selfish/angry/repressed man learns to be generous/calm/uninhibited” plot because the character himself has to be quite generous, calm, and uninhibited or he wouldn’t be doing the job he is. I will hang onto this subplot for now, but at some point I may try removing it completely and see if the story stands up without it.

(I hope that stuff like the previous paragraph is interesting and useful to you, the readers of my blog. I haven’t thought as much, or as coherently, about writing as Jay Lake and Elizabeth Bear; all I can do is to write about what I’m doing and hope that some people will find it worthwhile. Which is just what I do with the writing itself, too, so what the hell.)

Word count: 3972 | Since last entry: 924

Today I did a lot of dishes. They’d really gotten out of hand. I finally pooped out without finishing them all, but I made a big dent. Also did grocery shopping. This week’s dinners will not be nearly as ambitious as last week’s.

In the evening, we saw a play at Artists’ Rep: Theatre District, written by Richard Kramer (creator of thirtysomething and My So-Called Life). Uproariously funny and moving by turns. I found the characters incredibly well drawn and the situation, though sometimes a bit confusing, was true-to-life. For dinner we had the spinach tacos I mentioned earlier, which were pretty good but I thought there wasn’t enough to them (but I am still trying to lose the weight I put on at Wiscon, so that might not be a bad thing).

I worked on my story at several different times during the day, adding a ghost at the end of day 1, a long conversation at the beginnning of day 2 in which the protagonist considers packing it in and also begins to realize that something supernatural might be happening, and an Authors’ Note explaining that “this story is fiction, but it climbs a trellis of fact.”

I’m going to have to work harder as I continue to write about day 2, because I discovered that my source material only gives about half a paragraph to what happened on that day. Fortunately, I found another journal of the tour posted on the web, but I need to keep reminding myself that I don’t have permission to use those words so I’ll have to read, digest, and regurgitate the events in my own words. I’m also working from a book called The Great Deluge which, by complete coincidence, Kate is reading right now. God, what a mess. I’m glad we don’t have hurricanes around here (just earthquakes and volcanoes…).

Word count: 3048 | Since last entry: 952

Finished up the first day of the story (out of four days). If the other days are as long as the first, the story will be 12,000 words, which is way too long for the story’s weight. But the other days will be shorter, because day 1 is heavy with scene-setting and introduction of characters. I hope.

I was able to add nearly a thousand words in about an hour by virtue of pulling in large amounts of text from my source document. The challenge now will be to cut it back. But it’s very good stuff. I need to decide how much of the wonderful atmosphere of this diary, which is what I fell in love with in the first place, will have to be sacrificed on the altar of Plot.

Oh, and I also have to go back and add another ghost.

The Plot must live!

Word count: 2096 | Since last entry: 150

In today’s writing I integrated the new opening into what I wrote earlier, including writing a brief conversation that introduced the situation a little better.

The other week we saw a movie called The Sci-Fi Boys, a documentary about Forrest J. Ackerman and his magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland and the boys (they were all boys) who made homemade sci-fi and horror movies after reading it and went on to become John Landis and Rick Baker and Peter Jackson and suchlike. The movie included a lot of clips from both the homemade movies and the 1950s and 60s classics that inspired them. This, in turn, inspired us to seek out a few of those classics, so tonight we rented The Day of the Triffids. It managed to be quite commendably tense and interesting despite the shabbiness of the special effects and some ludicrous logic holes (especially the ending). Tomorrow: This Island Earth.

I also feel I ought to blog about our dinners this week. For some reason (at least partly because we’ve started to receive our weekly basket of organic veggies from Pumpkin Ridge Gardens) we got inspired to try a whole bunch of new and fairly ambitious recipes. They’ve all turned out fabulous. So far this week we’ve had:

• Stir-fried mixed greens (bok choi, spinach, and beet thinnings) with tofu, greatly enlivened by the addition of a strip of bacon [improvised]
• Broiled halibut in a teriyaki marinade [Moosewood cookbook], accompanied by brown rice and sauteed broccoli with oyster sauce
• A salad of grilled chicken slices on a bed of blanched greens (snap peas, snow peas, and arugula) topped with a fresh strawberry vinaigrette [Eating Well magazine]
• Lamb satay stir-fry (lamb, cabbage, carrots, kohlrabi, and green onions in a light peanut-lime sauce) [Eating Well again] served on brown rice
• Cashew chicken [an old family recipe], with white rice — this was better than usual, made with fresh organic vegetables and chicken

We don’t usually eat this well, but I’m proud of us and I wanted to brag about it. Tomorrow: spinach tacos [Eating Well again].

Word count: 1946 | Since last entry: 328

Found another way to handle the opening. Now there’s at least a hint of something weird within the first two pages. Will have to clean up the edges a bit tomorrow.

Also, I worked in the main character’s name in paragraph 2. One of the perils of first person is that I managed to write over 1500 words without naming the narrator. Oops. Fixed now.

Word count: 1618 | Since last entry: 834

Took the train to work today, always a good way to get some writing done. And unlike last week, this time I didn’t leave my work badge on the train and have to pay $20 for a new one.

I’m pleased with the character and setting development so far, and I’ve just introduced the main character’s internal conflict, but the actual plot is still somewhere over the horizon. My current hope is that the situation and characters are engaging and unique enough to carry the reader along until the fantastic element appears — certainly I was engaged in the original diary (the true story around which I’m weaving my fiction) even when I knew no fantastic element was forthcoming. If it doesn’t work I can always start with the first fantastic incident and put what I have now in as an expository flashback.

However, if the story continues on its current trajectory it’ll be in the 8-10,000 word range, which is too long for many markets. I may have to go back and trim quite a bit after I’ve finished the first draft. (Yes, I’m obsessing over word count again. As if this is a surprise?)

Word count: 784 | Since last entry: 409

I got absolutely pummeled at the day job today. Being in a separate user interface design group means I get to work on a lot of different projects, but it can sometimes create a slightly adversarial relationship with the developers. Today I really missed being part of the development team — we did have our arguments, to be sure, but I had a better idea of what the issues were, and neither I nor the developers got blind-sided the way I did today. It wasn’t too bad, really — no hard feelings, but a very intense discussion.

I filled out one of those census forms the other day — how many people live at this address, where do you work, how much do you make, how did you get to work last week. Boy, do I feel lucky. I own my home, I drive my own car, I work every week. This survey really made me think about just how much of a privilege those simple things are.

Meanwhile, in fictionland, I’m developing the setting and introducing the rather large cast. One recent volunteer to join the cast (you know who you are) hasn’t appeared yet, but I’ll find a way to fit him in soon. I’ll get the plot rolling within another few hundred words, I hope.

Word count: 375 | Since last entry: 375

It has taken me entirely too long to get started on this story. I’ve been researching, outlining, and thinking thinking thinking… entirely too much. I’ve been paralyzed, I think, by the responsibility of writing a fictional story set in a real situation with characters based on people I know. I want to be true to their experience, but at the same time it has to be a proper story, with a plot, and that means conflict. So I’ve been trying to find a way to inject conflict into the situation without offending anyone.

I’ve written three complete cast lists, some more recognizable as the real people and others less so, each around a different central conflict. The final cast list is the closest to the originals, because the conflict I’ve settled on is mostly an internal one, and internal to one of the people I don’t know as well. So I’m less likely to step on toes because I don’t know his real problems — anything I come up with will be entirely mine, not his. I’m hoping that the resemblances between my characters and the real people will be seen as homage rather than appropriation.

The other big problem was finding a viewpoint character and a grammatical person/tense. I’ve settled on the second-in-command rather than the leader (though the real-life person he’s based on is not really the second in command) because for some reason I feel that leaders are best seen from the side, and I’m writing it in first person past tense. I’m a little concerned that I’ve been doing a lot of first-person stuff lately, because I know it’s kind of restrictive. But given the internal conflict and the source material, I think this story has to be driven in first.

This story scares me. I’m concerned I may not have the chops to pull it off. I suppose this is what Kelly Link said we should be trying to do. (I had an interesting discussion with Jay Lake about this topic at his birthday party yesterday, and we came to the consensus that the author’s truly unique voice is something that can’t be invoked consciously, though there are things you can do to encourage it.)

Whatever. At least I have begun.