David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 59985 | Since last entry: 501 | This month: 2938 I must confess I cheated a little tonight. I had to undelete one sentence to get the count of new words over 500, for a gold star for the day. I’ll delete that sentence again tomorrow. Tonight, with Garrett’s help, Clarity and Chris have a discussion about Jason and what happened between when he broke up with her and when Chris broke up with him. Chris doesn’t know much, really, but he gives Clarity one name: “Miguel.” At this point no one in this plot thread knows what that name means. Mwah hah hah. Tomorrow, things turn violent. What fun.

Word count: 59484 | Since last entry: 604 | This month: 2437 A good evening’s writing, the first scene in the novel where Clarity is together with Jason’s ex-boyfriend Chris. It’s shaping up into a surprisingly awkward situation; although both of them sign, Chris only knows ASL and Clarity only knows trade sign. This made it hard to write about as well as awkward for them. Fortunately, I had an idea to fix the problem, by bringing back Clarity’s personal translator Garrett, who hasn’t been seen since chapter 1 — a character I was considering bringing back later in this chapter for other reasons anyway. James D. Macdonald has said that writing a novel is like a game of chess: in the early game you move pieces into positions of power, and in the middle game they start using that power. He recommended that even if you don’t know what’s going to happen in the middle of your novel, you should try to move the characters around at the beginning… they may find themselves in positions of power unconsciously (either because you know at some level that it is such a position, or because you realize later how to use them from the positions they are in). I think I may have just seen an example of that. When I left Garrett stranded at an airfield in rural Washington at the end of chapter 1, I didn’t think we’d be seeing him again at all…

Word count: 58880 | Since last entry: 424 | This month: 1833 I have decided to try to write at least something every day this month. I had hoped to make a thousand words tonight, but a little is better than nothing. Tonight’s writing was a real slog. I spent nearly an hour on one paragraph, trying to describe Clarity’s relationship with Chris while they were both going out with Jason — hard enough by itself, but I was also trying to avoid using the word “relationship” more than once. I finally gave up and used it twice, and “share” twice as well. Those 400 words were almost all interior monologue, as Clarity flies her father’s aircraft to Seattle and broods about what she’ll find there. I’m worried about lack of action, but I have an action scene planned for when she arrives… For now, to bed.

Word count: 58456 | Since last entry: 1409 | This month: 1409 …is paved with my good intentions to write for the past week. But I
got back in the saddle tonight, with firm intentions (there’s that word again) to write at least a little every day this month. Part of the reason I didn’t write at all in the last week was a surprise business trip to Texas. I did have a computer with me, and I spent a couple hours doing a detailed and revised outline for the current chapter and the next one in the same plot thread, but wrote no new prose. This is some of that “staring out windows” that makes the actual writing go more easily (not that you could tell, since I was sweating rocks this evening, but I’m sure I sweated fewer rocks than I would have without the detailed outline). But between critiques for Potlatch and conversation with my seat-mate I got no writing done on either flight. And then came Potlatch, which was swell but not exactly condusive to writing. I also ate like a pig on both trips, and I’m feeling guilty about that too. All die. Oh the embarrassment. Must do better in next life!

Word count: 57047 | Since last entry: 1202 | This month: 6780 Okay, so I haven’t written in almost a week. Some nights there was a movie or a lecture or something, and though I always intended to do at least a little writing when I got home it just got too late. Other nights I worked late or worked on the OryCon web page or some other form of cat vacuuming. Yesterday some friends took me out for a birthday dinner. But today (my actual birthday) I decided I would spend the day writing. And I did. So how the heck did it take the entire day to write one lousy scene? Well, for one thing it turned out to be a substantial scene, more than twice as long as I thought it would be. The chapter as a whole came out to be the second-longest in the book so far. I’m not quite sure how this happened, given that the chapter has only one point in the original outline. Perhaps that’s exactly how it happened — it’s easy to write lots of words when there’s nothing to say. I suspect some of it will come out in revision. But that still doesn’t explain why it took me all day to write 1200 words. Let’s see… I started late and took a lot of breaks, but I finished the chapter by 2:00. Then, since I wasn’t rushing out the door for crit group, I took the time to read over the chapter and polish it a bit. Then I updated the “What Has Gone Before” to include the previous chapter. I had to go back and add a little to an earlier chapter too, as long as I was in there, because I’d missed a major plot point before. Then when I went to print the chapter I found I needed a new print cartridge. I had the cartridge already, but I still had to re-align the print heads. So when I took the printed chapter to the local cheap copy shop… it had already closed for the day. Damn. I came home and made up envelopes for my critique group, put on the stamps, got appalled at the amount of postage I had just used, and decided to drive to work and make the copies there rather than pay Kinko’s prices for the copying. That took half an hour each way. Finally I took the envelopes to the main post office (it now being too late for pick-up before Monday afternoon at most other locations), and on the way home I bought a new print cartridge. And that’s how it takes a whole day to write 1200 words. All the more reason to finish the next chapter before the next crit group meeting, to avoid all that postage and envelopes and post office and stuff. I hope to get started writing tomorrow, because I now have only two weeks until the next meeting. But the way things have been going so far this week, I’m not betting on it. Happy birthday to me, anyway. Hah!

Word count: 55845 | Since last entry: 704 | This month: 5578 Wrote most of the drive from New Jersey into New York City today, with Jason’s Seattlite perspective on the city and a few hints of how it has changed under the influence of the Taurans (but not more than hints yet, because he’s in a moving car). Didn’t quite finish the chapter yet — there’s still one more twist to go — but since I blew my Saturday deadline another day or two won’t make that much difference. Rather depressed about Saturday’s critique. Despite the nice things people have said, I know that a main character who is insufficiently engaging can kill a book. Yes, it’s a learning experience, and I’ll do better next time. But I don’t want to have spent over a year of my spare time on an unsold novel. I just have to hope I can fix it in revision. Unfortunately, I know that I tried to address the Wiscon critiques of Jason and his world (“the world is not nasty enough to justify his actions”) before sending those chapters to my local critique group, and they had the exact same comments. These problems may be structural, to the novel and to me. What to do? In the meantime, I will just continue writing. Finish the damn first draft and see what we’ve got then.

Word count: 55141 | Since last entry: 1910 | This month: 4874 I tried, writing all morning, and came very close, but didn’t quite finish the chapter. I found myself still in my chair, typing furiously away, at 1:50 for a 2:00 group meeting, and with one scene still to go: the entrance to New York (which is under alien control). This is a big scene and deserved more than ten minutes’ work (it’s 10-15 minutes just to get to the place we meet, anyway) so I decided to give in and buy them a beer. But I arrived late, after everyone had already bought their own drinks, so I didn’t even do that. I should be able to finish the chapter tomorrow, and put it in the mail to the gang on Tuesday. Not Monday, that’s a holiday. I got chapter D critiqued today. Jason’s still a wimp and the aliens still aren’t alien enough. I honestly don’t know what I can do about the latter problem; how alien can I make them and still have them be sympathetic? For the former problem, I have some ideas but I don’t know if I’ll be able to overcome the forces (plot factors and aspects of my own personality) that made Jason who he is now. Changing his name and giving him a different backstory might help. A weaker strain of the same problem affects Clarity. Sigh. But despite these critiques, people still insist they are enjoying the book. Some of the folks in the group are speculating about what is happening behind the scenes, who is responsible, and where the plot is going to go from here. Some of the guesses are scarily accurate; some are completely off base (and I need to determine if this is due to bad writing or just a bad guess); some are not what I had thought, but they fit the evidence presented so far and are more interesting than what I had in mind. The scariest of all is one where the reader has guessed exactly what is happening, then rejected it because it seemed too obvious. That worries me. Now I have to decide whether I want to change my mind about what happens next. Some of the most interesting suggestions would, unfortunately, result in a substantial rewrite (e.g. the suggestion to add a third viewpoint character to show the interaction between humans and aliens, which Jason’s human-only environment and Clarity’s alien-only environment fail to) or would change the story into something completely different (e.g. the suggestion that the plague spread to the alien homeworld, which would require a faster-than-light drive, which would completely change the human/alien dynamic and require a different ending to boot), neither of which I am willing to do. But some of them are entirely plausible and better than what I had planned, so I’m likely to do them. I always feel strange about incorporating another writer’s suggestions, but a) that’s why we have critique groups, and b) what I do with the idea is almost always going to be different than what the suggester had in mind.

Word count: 53231 | Since last entry: 265 | This month: 2964 Opening night of the Portland International Film Festival, but I decided to write just a little after the movie (Stephen Fry’s Bright Young Things) to keep my hand in. A few hundred words a day is better than a thousand-word binge once a week. But now it’s definitely bedtime.

Word count: 52966 | Since last entry: 673 | This month: 2699 I hoped to get at least a thousand words tonight while Kate was at the opera. It didn’t happen. I also hoped to make it onto the final Nebula ballot. That also didn’t happen. (Rats. But it’s an honor to be… well, nearly nominated.) I’m probably not going to finish this chapter by Saturday. Feh. But at least I did sit down and write something. Something is better than nothing. And 673 words is enough for a gold star. I also went back and tightened some of what I wrote on Tuesday. Introduced new character Commander Smith (no relation to Doctor Smith, Cordwainer Smith, or E. E. “Doc” Smith), while bringing Jason into the belly of the FFL. He’s realizing that these people he has already gotten thoroughly into bed with are Not Like Him, and it’s only going to get worse as the chapter progresses. I’m not yet sure how he and they are going to react to each other, but he’s definitely gotten off on the wrong foot with the Commander. Considering that everyone around Jason is willing to kill or die at the Commander’s word, this might be a bad situation.

Word count: 52293 | Since last entry: 623 | This month: 2026 I’ve been pretty busy the last couple of days, but I decided to turn off the radio for my commute (45 minutes to an hour each way) and spend the time thinking about the novel. It’s a lot like meditation, in that the intention to think about a given thing (or not think about anything) can very easily — almost unnoticeably — slip away into thinking about something else. Anything else. Monkey mind at work. But as soon as I notice myself thinking about work, or chores, or the dentist, I pull my mind back on track. I’m concentrating on what is one of the novel’s major problems: Jason, the main human character, is a wimp. He is more reactive than active. So I’m trying to come up with situations in this chapter in which he can make decisions and take actions for reasons of his own. I also hope to use these decisions and actions to set up some later things he has to do. So even though not much happens in this chapter in terms of advancing the plot, I hope it will still be a dramatic and valuable one. After all that thinking I found the actual writing went pretty quickly, though I only had an hour tonight so I only wrote about 600 words. Now I am frustrated that I can’t write faster, rather than frustrated by not having anything to write about. Even so, the chapter is nearly half done. I might even finish it by Saturday, but it’s going to be a close thing. In other news… the Hell story sold! I was getting a little worried about it, since I’d heard back from Gateways so quickly. So that’s two sales so far this year… a very good start. Also, after a good discussion on the Speculations message board about when to trunk stories vs. sending them to “lesser” markets, I mean to put some of my older stories that haven’t gone out in a while back in the mail soon.