David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 737 | This month: 8878 Didn’t get any writing done at Rustycon this weekend, but had a good time nonetheless. Con report will be posted soon in the usual places. Tonight I wrote the scene in which all hope is lost, but the main character finds an idea for a solution in a tiny handful of snow. Now she has to find a way to implement it. Great sacrifices will be required, but in the end a traditional square dance move saves the day. I know exactly how it needs to go, I just need to write it. The story is currently exactly 6006 words. I think I can finish it up in less than 1000 words, which I might be able to tighten back up to 6000 words with judicious editing and the slaying of a few darlings. Must finish it first. But for now… sleep.

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 1129 | This month: 8141 Wrote the preparations for the siege, the overwhelming attack, the falling-back to the last redoubt, and the bad guy’s final offer. One of the biggest problems I had was how to describe the action of a fork-cart. This is an ancient Chinese siege weapon that works like a catapult, but instead of throwing a rock it just smashes its arm directly into the wall (with a big fork on the end, which is why it’s called a fork-cart). It was difficult to describe it from the perspective of my protagonist, who has no more experience with catapults than she does with fork-carts, but I think I managed it. Left off with the good guys trapped with their backs against the wall and no hope of victory or escape. Probably another 1000-2000 words to go. Unfortunately, the story is already 5200 words and the maximum for this market is 6000. This could be tough. Maybe I will ask the editor if I can have an exception to the length limit…

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 923 | This month: 7012 Still plenty of snow on the ground, but I did get to work on Friday and got out and ran a lot of errands yesterday and today. Also saw Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. Not quite a thousand words increase in word count today, but I’m going to give myself a red star anyway, because I wrote just over 1000 new words while deleting a couple of paragraphs. Anyway, the story is set in China :-). Wrote two scenes, in which Yao the evil general smashes his cooking pots and Chang the good general despairs. The scene with Chang turned out to be much more of a character moment for both him and the protagonist than I’d expected. This story is turning out really well. The only problem is that it’s 4000 words going on 8000 for a 6000-word-max market. Well, we’ll just have to see how it goes. There’s really only two more scenes to write, but they’re biggies: the siege of the town, and the protagonist’s big revelation and climactic task. (Maybe that last is two scenes.) Plus a short epilogue. Thanks to those who have written in with suggestions on Chinese mythology. I still don’t know what the demons are called in Chinese, but since I am using the English names for everything except places and people I guess I can get away with calling them “demons”. But the Ten Kings of Hell are making a cameo appearance.

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 1329 | This month: 6089 David’s Very Secret Diary, day four. If Legolas keeps nancing about on top of the snow, may have to hit him with my staff. It’s been four days now and I’m going rather stir-crazy. The good news is that I’ve been getting lots of writing done. The story is now 3200 words and just slopping over with action and dramatic tension. A frustrating thing: at the Portland Art Museum’s exhibit of Chinese art last year, I saw a large sculpture with three demons (having human bodies and evil fanged faces) holding up a globe. I want to know what they are called in Chinese. But many Google searches on “Chinese demon”, “Chinese devil”, “Chinese mythology”, etc. yield no joy. In the story I am calling them “black demons” but I would like to be more specific than that. The weather report promises thawing tomorrow, but it’s been saying the same thing since last weekend. I plan to attempt to dig the car out, at least. Still not King.

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 1888 | This month: 4760 Stuck at home due to snow for another day, and tomorrow isn’t looking much better. As long as I wasn’t doing anything else, I did more background reading on the Gateways story, then wrote up some brief character and situation sketches, which turned into a 1600-word prose outline. The 1888-word total above reflects the current contents of the file Gateway.doc, which is about 1300 words of story and 500 words of outline. I think the research is really paying off in atmosphere, detail, and character. At least, I can see and smell every scene in my mind’s eye… we’ll see what the readers think. The story may be moving too slowly to finish in less than 6000 words. On the other hand, it does take a while to set up the situation. If it’s too long, I can always chop it down after finishing the first draft. I have chosen to use names that are reminiscent of the actual Chinese names in my research without being exactly the same (examples: my god Kuan Shih Yin = the actual goddess Quan Yin; my general Chang Hua of the state of Li = Liu Pang of Qi; my Yao Ming of Tung = Hsiang Yu of Chu [a really nasty fellow]). This should give a story that sounds and feels authentic without getting me in too much trouble with real Sinologists.

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 0 | This month: 2872 Stayed home today due to the massive snow storm, freezing rain, plague of locusts, etc. Didn’t do any writing, but did do a lot of research for the Gateways story. Also watched both Jaws 2 and Deep Blue Sea, in both of which a shark takes down a helicopter. Who knew?

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 100 | This month: 2872 Went to Eric Witchey’s “Tales in the Mail” party in Salem today, in a car with Jay Lake, Robin Catesby, and Jay’s energetic daughter Bronwyn. The group put over 40 stories in the mail, and 4 of them were mine. Two of those were old stories that have come back recently, and I wanted to talk with folks at the party about where to send them. The others were the Uncle Teco story from OryCon — which I have been meaning to send to Analog for months, and the party got me to get off my duff and do it — and the Hell story, which I spent some time (but not much) at the party revising, and just put in the e-mail a few minutes ago. Yesterday’s critiques of the Hell story were generally positive, though a couple of people said “Hell-as-bureaucracy has been done before, and this isn’t a spectacularly new take on the idea”… though at this point there’s not much to be done about that. There were also some requests to develop the new demons more, amp up the concept of “bad ideas” (which is what they’re manufacturing), and beef up the ending, all of which I addressed with an additional sentence here and there. Like it says above, about 100 additional words. Basically, I felt the story was in good enough shape to send out even if it’s not exciting and new. (I hope the anthology hasn’t already bought a bunch of “Hell-as-bureaucracy” stories, because with three theme anthologies about Hell open in the last couple of months there are going to be a heck of a lot of Hell stories hitting the magazines soon.) Yesterday I also got chapter D critiqued. One person said “this is great, I’m really hooked now, why couldn’t you get me this hooked before?” — a compliment, but also a critique that it’s hard to know what to do to address. The revised Prologue might help. Oh well, the important thing for now is to keep writing.

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 2070 | This month: 2772 It’s now just after midnight Friday night (technically, it’s early Saturday morning) and, having spent the whole evening writing, I have finished chapter 5. A chapter in a week, woo hoo! Okay, it’s not the longest chapter I’ve written. But at 5300 words it isn’t the shortest either, and it does contain everything in the original outline, plus the additional items I mentioned on the 29th. And I think the quality is in the same ballpark as earlier chapters. I actually wrote about 2200 words tonight, since I started off by cutting a 150-word chunk (Clarity meets with the tailor) that wasn’t really needed. Clarity’s misery level is rising exponentially now, with a triple whammy at the end of the chapter: she’s made an enemy, the last desperate attempt at containing the plague has failed, and one of her few human allies has just been killed by persons unknown. I’m glad I’m not a fictional character. (I’m not, am I?) Tomorrow I print out the chapter and get it duplicated, and then take it to critique. (No beer for them this week, hah!) Next up: a story for the Gateways anthology, which I brainstormed on the StepMill at the gym today. Let’s see if I can do that and another chapter for the next crit group meeting. Sunday will be spent putting tales in the mail, including revising and mailing the Hell story. Might even get something in for the zeppelin antho, at this rate!

Word count: 48197 | Since last entry: 702 | This month: 702 My New Year’s Resolution this year is extremely short and simple: Finish The Novel. (Not my shortest resolution ever; that would be “Watch Casablanca“.) By “finish” I mean finishing the first draft, revising it once, preparing the submission package, and submitting it somewhere. I also would like to keep in touch with friends more. We usually go to two different parties on New Year’s Day, including Marc and Patty’s, at which Kate and I met 19 years(!) ago, but we stayed home today: a Snowstorm Of Unusual Size has paralyzed the city. So we read the paper, did dishes, and watched TV (including a couple of episodes from the Firefly DVD set I got Kate for Christmas). I also did my critique for Saturday. I would have felt awful if I’d stayed home all day and not gotten any writing done. Instead, I feel only slightly awful for writing less than a thousand words. However, I feel like the chapter (currently 3200 words) is going to be fairly short, so even though I’m pooping out now there’s still a chance I’ll finish up by Saturday. It may depend on the weather tomorrow. Most of today’s writing was about Clarity’s new suit. Despite what you may think, it’s a significant character moment for her. But I hope I’m not going overboard on it.