David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 896 | Since last entry: 337

First off, I’d like to point out that the deadline for the Potlatch 15 Taste of Clarion West Writers’ Workshop, which I am coordinating, is January 15. That is, manuscripts must be received by then. If you’ve been thinking about participating, now’s the time to take action.

With that out of the way… one of the two radio stations I listen to with any regularity is KINK, whose slogan is “True to the Music” (the other is KOPB, the public radio station). I really like KINK’s playlist, which is a mix of old and new stuff unlike any other station in town. But I don’t always catch the names of the artists and songs, which means that there are a lot of songs I enjoy but couldn’t pick out of a line-up (or, more to the point, out of the rack at a used CD store). So today I had a brainstorm. KINK makes its playlist available online. I wrote a shellscript to read the playlist and output a web page that searches for a song, artist, or album in the iTunes Music Store with a single click. Now I can start with an alphabetized list of KINK songs and easily hear a 30-second snippet that tells me which one is which. I hope to find out soon who my favorite artists are. Kate’s also excited by this tool.

The 337 words above is a bit of a cheat, since I brought in a couple of paragraphs from the previous draft of the story (so much for a from-the-ground-up rewrite). But they’re good paragraphs, and I see no reason to leave perfectly good words just lying around unused. I suspect I’m not going to be able to reuse a lot of verbiage, though, because the world of the story is a lot grittier in this draft and the main character’s much more of a hot-headed punk.

A snippet: “A few hours and a lot of kif later we were both scratching equations on the table top with an emergency rescue tool, shouting back and forth and grinning like idiots. When we ran out of table we started in on the wall.”

Word count: 559 | Since last entry: 234

Not much in the house for dinner tonight, but I looked in the fridge and spotted a pie crust and a carton of eggs. Quiche! A little more digging found Canadian bacon, some nice Cheddar, broccoli, and some mushrooms, so it turned out to be a very nice one. Unfortunately, it took quite a while to solidify and we didn’t sit down to dinner until about 8:30. It was good, though. After that I set out for the store so we wouldn’t have to scrounge up dinner again tomorrow. It was 10:00 by the time the groceries were put away, but lo! I am a dedicated writer. And I didn’t want to blow off my new year’s resolution on January 2. So. 234 more words and it’s definitely turning into a much more engaged and visceral story. But now it’s time for bed.

Word count: 325 | Since last entry: 325

I am disappointed in myself. 2005 was a good year for publications, but a wretched year for production and sales. I wrote only two new stories, one a collaboration, and made only one pro sale. Basically, I took a break after submitting the novel and (for a variety of reasons including being called upon to do some addional novel-related work, but also including my own laziness) never got back on the horse. As a result of this, I currently have only four stories in submission and no sold stories awaiting publication. I fear that I may have sabotaged my career.

So. That’s going to change.

My new year’s resolution is to write a hundred words a day, no matter what. I know that this is a very achievable goal — I can write 500 words an hour when I get rolling. The point of the hundred-word goal is to get my butt in the chair and writing, even on days when I “don’t feel like it.” I’m not making any commitments about what I’m going to write. Could be new stories, could be rewrites on existing stories, could be a new novel. But I’m going to put my butt in my chair and by God write.

I’m off to a good start, with 325 words on a from-the-ground-up rewrite of the Jupiter story (despite not getting back from dinner until 10pm). This story has had near-misses at all the major markets and the consensus of the editors is that it’s too distanced; the main character is all reflection and reaction, not action, and the whole story’s told in flashback. So I’m rewriting it from scratch, with the same plot outline but a new main character: an engineer instead of a photographer. If I can keep up this pace I should be done in two or three weeks, and that would feel good. Wish me luck!

Back from a delightful New Year’s Eve party at Willow Cottage, and just about to head off to a New Year’s Day brunch, followed by a movie and dinner with some other friends. Just enough time for a quick note while the biscuits are baking.

As faithful readers will no doubt recall, the Day Job was eating my life in the first half of December. So I didn’t even start my Xmas* shopping until about December 20, and we didn’t buy a tree until the 23rd. Never did get the lights up (lights are important to me, especially in these latitudes where I drive to work in the dark and drive home in the dark for months at a time).

Kate’s sister Sue came in on the 24th with our two younger nieces, ages 2 and 6. They made the house… lively. I don’t deal well with small children. And when we opened the presents on the 25th, what I found under the tree for me was a book, 3 CD’s, some napkins, and a table runner. All carefully chosen and apropos, but not exciting. We also got a nice package of goodies from Kate’s parents the previous week, but those had mostly been eaten already.

So the excitement didn’t really start for me until Thursday, when a package arrived from John Helmer (one of the nation’s finest haberdashers, which just happens to be located right here in Portland). It contained the present I’d requested from Kate: a collapsible top hat. It had to be special ordered in my size (1/8″ smaller than Bullwinkle’s). It made me go squee! I wore it to New Year’s Eve and got many compliments.

Then on Friday, another package arrived, containing two Squeezebox music players. Briefly, the Squeezebox is a small device that has a Wi-Fi antenna on one end and stereo plugs on the other. It makes all of the music stored on your computer available to your stereo. Along with a new file server installed in the attic, and a Kloss Model Two radio for the dining room we now have high-quality digital music available throughout the house, something we’ve wanted for years. This was my big present to Kate for the year.

Biscuits are done. Time to go!

* I’m using “X” here as a variable, to stand for The Winter Holiday of Your Choice.

Somewhere in my webbish peregrinations the other day I came across an appreciation of John Kessel’s “The Baum Plan for Financial Independence”. The appreciation includes this statement:

“A casual reader might have read this story: Two trashy people ride in a strange subway to an even stranger terminal where they are given tons of cash. That casual reader would, in my opinion, really miss out on some great layers of this deceptively simple story.”

Well, that’s how I read it. Although this story has been highly praised, and was in at least one Year’s Best volume, I thought it was rather lame. The main character takes harly any independent action — he is literally led by the hand through much of the story — but he is sent on an amazing journey and in the end he is, as it says above, given tons of cash. Which he accepts. The end. Whoopee. I guess I’m shallow. It may be that, as the appreciation says, there’s more to the story. But most of the Oz references went over my head, since I’ve never read that series. And the socio-economic allegories some other readers have found weren’t apparent or didn’t work for me. If there really was a lesson to be learned about the Haves gaining their wealth from the sweat of the brows of the Have-Nots, why did the main character simply acquiesce to the system? What some see as his “moment of epiphany” at the end of the story fails for me because he does not take any action as a result of his epiphany, nor is there any implication that he will do so in the future — which means that I don’t even consider it an epiphany. I guess what I’m trying to say is… well, I’m a simple guy, and I like my stories simple. It’s not that I’m incapable of appreciating a finely turned description or a reference to an older story; some of my favorite stories (and some — or even most — of my stories) are riffs on older stories by obscure authors. But for me, if a story doesn’t work at the first, most basic level, I’m not going to stick around to see if it has hidden depths. I didn’t like “What I Didn’t See” either. But that’s a rant for another day.

Today’s mail brought a nice holiday card from Dell Magazines (I guess I am a member of their “stable” now, neigh whinny) and a 281-day bounce from Realms of Fantasy (281 days for a couple of sentences scribbled on my cover letter, grr). That story’s off to Fantasy. Also today I found a nice mention of my Tales of the Unanticipated story “A Book is a Journey” in Richard Horton’s sff.net newsgroup. It’s only a partial sentence, but a nice mention is much better than what I’ve been getting lately and it’s extremely welcome. I spent the first part of this week at a managers’ offsite in Hood River, helping to present a workshop on Agile Programming Techniques. It wasn’t terribly difficult or stressful, but I find that I am… intellectually exhausted, I guess you would say. I haven’t been able to accomplish much of anything today, either at work or at home. I did manage to unpack my bag, at least, which I don’t always do right away after returning from a trip. There’s been a bit of a re-org at work, and effective Monday I am no longer assigned full-time to the project that has been eating so much of my life lately (I got home at 8pm last Wednesday, 10pm Friday). Mind you, there are still quite a number of design decisions to be made and meetings to attend, but now someone else is the dedicated lead on that project and will be doing all of the heavy lifting while I’m supposed to be concentrating on another project. The new project is a return to something I’ve spent a lot of time on in the past and I enjoy working with those people. It is still going to be a lot of work, but the deadline is much farther away and I hope it won’t be quite so intense.

A Taste of Clarion West The Potlatch 15 science fiction convention, which will be held February 24-26, 2006 in Seattle, Washington, will be holding a short story workshop. Workshops are a great way to get feedback on a story. Perhaps more important, they are a great way to learn about what makes stories succeed and fail in general, through the process of critiquing others’ work and comparing your critiques with others’. They’re a great way to meet other writers, and work with a couple of professionals in the field. Finally, if you’re considering applying for Clarion West (http://clarionwest.org/website/) they should give you a small inkling of what the Clarion West workshop process is like. Journeyman Writers’ Workshop This year for the first time we are experimenting with a Journeyman workshop. We envision it as a tool for recharging and refocusing more advanced writers. Perhaps you have a sale or two but feel as if you’ve lost steam; maybe you’re a Clarion West graduate who’s looking to get back to writing after years on other projects, or are just looking to add new tools to your kit. This is the workshop for you, with like-level participants. Since this an experiment we don’t know what demand is like. Please let us know as early as possible if you want to participate; this workshop will only be held if there’s enough interest. Please check the Potlatch 15 website (http://www.potlatch-sf.org/writersworkshop.html) for more information, including updates on workshop instructors, and workshop availability status. If you have any questions, email me at dlevine@spiritone.com.

— David Levine, Workshop Coordinator

How To Submit: 1. Complete an SF, Fantasy, or Horror short story (maximum 7500 words). No fragments; no novel chapters; no poetry. One submission per person. 2. Proofread it carefully. Make sure it represents the best you can do. 3. Print it out in standard manuscript format (see http://www.sfwa.org/writing/vonda/vonda.htm for more information). Fasten the manuscript with a paper clip. 4. Write a cover letter with a short (1-2 pages) writer’s bio. Have you published before? Have you been to other writer’s workshops? Are you part of a writer’s group? Are you new to writing? What are your hopes and expectations for writing in the future? Be sure to include your mailing address, and your email address if you have one. Please specify which workshop — Taste of Clarion West or Journeyman Workshop — you wish to participate in. If you’re interested in the Journeyman workshop, please let me know whether you’d like to participate in the Taste of Clarion West workshop if the Journeyman workshop is not held. 5. Send the manuscript and cover letter, along with a check or money order for $10 to cover copying and postage, to:

Potlatch 15 Writers’ Workshop
c/o David D. Levine
1905 SE 43rd Ave.
Portland, OR 97215

Make checks payable to David D. Levine. –> All submissions must be RECEIVED by January 15, 2006. <–

So I was doing a Google search on my own name, as one does, and Google turned up this page on a mysterious site known only by a number. The page is about “The Tale of the Golden Eagle” and it has two reader comments. One reader gives the story a grade of 5, the other a 4. I can’t even figure out what language the page is in, never mind what it says. The Xerox language guesser thinks it’s Estonian. But there doesn’t seem to be any automated Estonian to English translator on the web. I’ve tried Romanian, Slovenian, and Serbian translators and none of them can extract any meaning from it. Can anyone reading this tell me what it says?

And “Titanium Mike Saves the Day” goes off to Analog. On to the next thing. Has anyone else noticed that short stories in standard manuscript format weigh just about one ounce per thousand words?