David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 103880 | Since last entry: 493 | This month: 1419 Hare reveals her reasons for returning, which are not as altrustic as Clarity had expected. Nor, frankly, as I’d expected. But when I actually wrote the speech I realized that Hare’s priorities are not Clarity’s and the thing that would drive her over the edge is not what matters most to Clarity, or to the reader. This way also will help to drive Jason harder in the following chapter. Meanwhile, I’m getting antsy for responses to short story submissions from a couple of markets that have been sitting on stories a lot longer than usual, plus another market that is known for long response times but this is getting ridiculous. I hope these long response times are indicative of good news, but I know that isn’t always the case. (Whine, whine, whine.)

Word count: 103387 | Since last entry: 752 | This month: 926 Some more re-outlining today, making sure that all the pieces are in place for the grand finale. There’s a lot of stuff that has to happen in the last three chapters, and I think I now have all of the spring-loaded bits stuffed in where they need to be, but I’m not convinced that the amount of time in the outline is plausible for it to happen — but other factors require that it can’t be extended. Well, maybe some things happen faster in the future. Then I actually (huzzah!) began adding text to the chapter again. Seven hundred new words in which Hare returns, by helicopter. She is greeted with suspicion by all but Clarity, so I haven’t gotten around yet to the first point in the revised outline, where she reveals the reason she came back. On the other hand, if I hadn’t covered these suspicions and Clarity’s reasons for believing Hare despite them, I’m sure that one of my critiquers (JWF) would have called me on it. And rightly so. Thanks to his comments I’m going to have to go back during rewrite and add much more suspicion and paranoia — Clarity is just too trusting, and even if she is a little naive at the beginning of the book she’d be surrounded by people whose job is to keep her safe. Speaking of paranoia… this weekend we saw the remake of The Manchurian Candidate, which I thought was actually a better film than the original. I came out of it realizing that, just as Blade Runner (the movie) looks like Neuromancer (the book), the new Manchurian Candidate looks like I want my book to look. It’s got the New York setting, the movement from the corridors of power to the most squalid little apartments and back, the constant swirl of underlings around the powerful people at the center of the plot, the mix of white people and black people, the fact that you’re never really sure who are the heroes and who are the villains… but this movie is a lot richer in detail, with a lot more motion and a lot more light and shadow than I’ve had in my mind while writing the book, which means my book probably won’t look as good in the reader’s mind as the movie does. I want to add more detail (more senses, too, not just sight and hearing), more motion, more chatter, more underlings. (It would help if I knew in a more personal way what New York is like. But I don’t think I can justify a field trip just now.) We also watched the last bit of Angels in America on tape. The dialogue is wonderful… elliptical, indirect, contradictory, fragmentary. Very real. And the characters are so twisted, in many cases unlikeable, and yet sympathetic. No wonder it won all those Tonys and Emmys. We’d seen it in the theatre, but with the cinematography and special effects — not to mention Meryl Streep and Al Pacino — the miniseries might be even better. Meanwhile, the kitchen is starting to look like a kitchen again. See Kate’s journal for more details and pictures.

Word count: 102635 | Since last entry: 174 | This month: 174 Spent the evening re-outlining the last 3 chapters, since my current outline for those chapters has gotten a little out of sync with what I’ve written and what I’ve got planned. It’s hard to really internalize the idea that, after so many months of looking so far down the road to the end, it’s now practically here. Suddenly there are so many loose ends to wrap up. And how the heck am I going to bring some of the necessary information on stage, given that the only people who know it wouldn’t tell the viewpoint characters about it under any circumstances? I’m going to have to settle for letting my viewpoint characters make some clever deductions. In some cases they have almost all the information they need to do it; I do have one wild card I can play to bring a little more info on stage. Now I know why the villain always brags about his fiendish plan while he has the hero tied up. It’s the only way for the author to get that information onto the page/screen when only the villain knows it! I hope to avoid that cliche, though. I will still have to figure out how Jason learns a key skill, how he can put that skill to use in just about no time, and how he determines that he has to be in the right place for his climax. (I think I have earned a little bit of implausibility.) But that’s not for a couple of chapters, and my ideas on those questions are firmer than they were a few weeks ago. A solution will present itself in time, I’m sure.

Word count: 102461 | Since last entry: 2639 | This month: 11411 Item: Took the train to work today, so as to use time normally wasted in commuting on writing. It paid off handsomely, as you can see by the word count above. Item: Passed 100,000 words, somewhere on the bus to work. Yay! Item: Finished chapter H, with a day to spare. Yay! It’s 8785 words, and probably could use a little trim off the sides, but it’s not going to get it right now. It’s a funny thing, how you can write a scene where a character is just sitting around and you give him a little bit of business just so he has something to do. And then, a few scenes or chapters later, you discover that little bit of business turns out to have been exactly the set-up he needed for the big revelation that happens now. Either that, or the big revelation happens the way it happens because you had that little bit of business before. It’s hard to tell which way the serendipity really runs, but it happened about three times today. The third one is a lulu, and ties together the two plot threads in a way I hadn’t even thought about until about one paragraph before it came off my fingers. Now everyone is implicated in everything and there’s plenty of guilt to go around. It’s almost like Memento, where (spoiler ho!) Guy Pearce winds up pulling the wool over his own eyes. Must sleep now. Many meetings tomorrow. Things are really heating up at work — I’m a key player on at least three major projects in the next quarter. The good news is that I will get one or two additional people to help me; in exchange I’m supposed to mentor them. I’m feeling suspiciously responsible.

Word count: 99822 | Since last entry: 974 | This month: 8772 Wrote another full scene, in which Jason continues hacking on the FFL’s mail server to try to find out who it was who set him up by providing the biocomputer documentation. A couple of big revelations coming soon. (They’d better be soon, I have to finish this chapter by Saturday!) I sometimes wonder if these hacking scenes are interesting. Some readers really like them, and I know that this is an area that I can write as few other writers can (well, except for those who have been technical writers, and there are quite a few of those). I’ll leave them in for now, and if feedback indicates they are boring I can trim them back. I see that I will probably pass 100,000 words tomorrow. That’s quite a milestone. There’s probably 500-1500 words left in the current chapter, with 3 chapters and an epilogue after that, so we’re still looking at about 115k-125k words for the completed first draft. That’s within reason, though I’ll have to focus on trimming down rather than adding as I revise. Onward!

Word count: 98848 | Since last entry: 467 | This month: 7798 Spent much of the evening adding a new shelf to the CD bookcase — a project we’ve meant to do for, oh, about twelve years, but Kate finally got around to buying all the pieces today and all I had to do was haul out the hammer and screwdrivers and Power Tools and install it. Grunt. That and getting dinner just about killed the evening; going out to eat every night is really time-consuming. I’ll be glad when the kitchen is done. Only about 300 words of actual new prose tonight; the rest is notes on the difficult question of “how the hell does Jason figure out what is really happening, given that everyone involved is hiding their part of the facts from everyone else?” In this chapter Jason has to find answers to two key questions, one of which has been driving him for basically the whole novel and the other has turned his life upside down in the last couple of chapters. (Of course, those answers only make things harder.) I’ve figured out a way for him to find the answer to question 2: it involves him being the only person in the world who is in a position to see all the pieces at once, or having any reason to look. Finding the answer to question 1 is harder, but I had an important realization: if it’s Sienna who holds the final link in the chain of evidence that leads to the answer, I can have her reveal it at the very end of this chapter, which gives that scene some needed oomph and also motivates a decision of hers that is otherwise rather inexplicable. So all I need is to figure out what that link is, and the other links will fall into place. I think I’ll have to futz with the calendar a little, since this chapter is outlined as taking place over three days and I’ll need at least four for all the above to happen plausibly. Further calendar rejiggering will be required due to the fact that all of this is happening on Thanksgiving weekend, which just can’t work (most businesses would be closed on Thanksgiving). Or should I have Sienna’s key revelation happen at Jason and Sienna’s squalid little impoverished two-person Thanksgiving dinner? Naah, too Hallmark, and besides I think it’s better if it coincides with the rebellion that started on December 8 in the last Clarity chapter. That’ll really bolt the two plot threads together. Man, it’s like juggling jigsaw puzzles in here. There’s pieces all over the place. Good thing I still have that hammer…

Word count: 98381 | Since last entry: 1682 | This month: 7331 A productive day’s writing, while Kate went to the Flock and Fiber show (“have fun with the sheep,” I said). Wrote a whole scene in which Jason hacks into the FFL’s mail server to find out what the organization has been keeping from him. I hate fiction in which magic “Computer Hackers” can take control of anything in no time, with no research and no preparation. In this case I set up the hack chapters and chapters ago, with Jason having plenty of inside information (plus, of course, his exceptional skills, which are implausible, but he is the main character after all). I hope the readers will find it plausible and be entertained. In other news, I feel less sick. Still not 100% healthy, but better. I’ll be glad when this is over, though. Thanks to all those who have sent good wishes.

Word count: 96699 | Since last entry: 631 | This month: 5649 Sent Jason out into the cold of a Trenton, New Jersey night, but it’s a good thing in this case. I think that everything I’ve written so far in this chapter is fundamentally necessary but too long — over 3000 words so far and I’m only 1/3 through my outline for the chapter. I just don’t think what I’ve written so far is worth that many words. With any luck I’ll get a chance to trim it back before I send the chapter to critique. I’m also feeling a little achy and a little scratchy in the throat. Man, I hope I’m not getting sick again. I was only mildly ill after the Worldcon, but that was too much and it was only a couple weeks ago. Taking my vitamins and going to bed now.

Word count: 96068 | Since last entry: 1315 | This month: 5018 Huh. I didn’t think I’d written that many words today. Largely what I did is go back and interleave some action (not very active action, to be sure, but not just thinking) with the stuff I wrote the other day, changing the beginning of the chapter from pure exposition into Jason’s thoughts as he trudges through a snowstorm to the bus station. (Yoo rah.) But it is action — yes, my protagonist is taking action! — and it leads him into a potentially deadly confrontation. I left him, unarmed, facing an armed alien security officer and with no concrete idea of how to get him out of it. But over dinner I thought of a way out that I think is pretty nifty. I’ll write it later. In other news, I have retired the old journal on my home page. The new URL is http://www.spiritone.com/~dlevine/sf/journal/index.shtml (note the S in .shtml) and the new URL for the RSS feed is http://www.spiritone.com/cgi-usr/dlevine/blosxom.cgi/index.rss. Please change your bookmarks. And let me know if you have any problems.

Word count: 94753 | Since last entry: 708 | This month: 3703 Yesterday we went to see local author Marc Acito, whom I met at a party last year, as he kicks off his book tour for his first novel, How I Paid for College. For which he got a six-figure advance, and another six-figure advance for the UK rights, and yet more money for the film rights. I told Kate “if I melt down into a small green puddle of jealousy in the middle of the reading, poke me.” But it was very entertaining, and I learned a few things about how to do a good reading. But tonight, despite looming feelings of “who am I kidding, nobody’s going to want to read this, I should just go out in the back yard and eat worms” I sat down and began composing actual prose in Chapter H. Go me. So far it’s pretty heavily laden with exposition, and exposition about sitting and thinking at that, and sitting and thinking about computer security at that. But it’s 708 new words, by gum, and I can trim it back later. At times like this I try to remind myself that I did win Writers of the Future and the James White Award, not to mention the Hugo and Campbell nominations as well as the Nebula near-miss. And agent Linn Prentis said nice things about the chapters and outline of this very novel, which she certainly didn’t have to. (Did I mention in my Worldcon report that when I ran into her in the Green Room she seemed much more enthusiastic about it than her email had led me to believe she was? I wanted to try to get to the bottom of the discrepancy at the time, but I was late for a panel and I didn’t see her again.) Anyway. I know I can write, I know this is a good novel, I just have to grit my teeth and keep writing until I believe it or finish the damn thing, whichever comes first. Yargh. In other news… we picked up the new car today. A silver 2005 Corolla with 47 miles on the odometer, remote keyless entry, CD changer, antilock brakes, and an instruction book full of novel ways to die. (Now with side-curtain airbags: four new explosive devices for your protection!) And that new-car smell. Mmm.