David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 44540 | Since last entry: 346 | This month: 8618 OryCon was fun, but the weekend went voom! About a dozen people came to my reading, most of my panels were well attended, Opening Ceremonies went well, and Whose Line was a riot. But I only hit about three parties (including the Baen party, where Sara and Jim and I sat in the back room talking — mostly about my novel — for hours) and attended maybe a half-dozen panels other than mine. I’m not quite sure where all the time went. Certainly not sleeping. Alas, I’ve broken my streak of writing every day this month. I wrote a couple hundred words on Friday before the con, and a couple hundred tonight, but nothing on Saturday or Sunday. On Saturday after the Baen party I did write nearly 500 words of notes on a new direction for Jason, to make him a more active character (but that isn’t reflected in the word count above). It involves scrapping the current Prologue and writing a new chapter in its stead, in which Jason takes some kind of direct, physically dangerous action. Many of the events of chapter A (to be renamed chapter B, and so on) would still take place, but the power dynamic between Jason and Sienna shifts radically, and the changes would echo down through the novel with decreasing force. For example: If Jason steals the biocomputer in the new chapter A, he’s not still going to be alive and free in chapter B unless he knows about the government’s omnipresent audio monitors before that. So Sienna can’t tell him about their existence in chapter B, and the whole “Jason researches the audio monitors” scene — with its cool technology — goes out the window. Ponder ponder ponder. I’m not going to change it now, though. Must finish first draft first. I have just one more (short!) scene to write in chapter D, then I have critiques to do and a short story to start. It may be mostly short stories for the next couple of months, actually, though I hope to keep plugging away at the novel as well. (Ha.)

Word count: 44194 | Since last entry: 521 | This month: 8272 Just introduced “the Infector”, a gizmo that I believe will be the maguffin (is there an official spelling or capitalization for that word?) for the whole rest of the book. The scene feels pretty flabby to me. Partly this is a result of writing in small bits rather than long stretches. Partly I’m still damn tired — though I got to bed early last night, I woke up well before the alarm clock. I’m not going to catch up on sleep any time soon, though, because OryCon starts tomorrow. I do intend to write every day at the con, though I’m not going to be posting my daily word counts here until Sunday evening at the latest. Wish me luck!

Word count: 43673 | Since last entry: 198 | This month: 7751 Although it’s been a really productive month, I’ve been making the time to write by staying up late, and today it caught up with me in a big way. I was just kind of dragging around the office, yawning every five minutes. So tonight I wrote a bare minimum, just a few paragraphs to keep up the streak, and now I’m going to bed early.

Word count: 43475 | Since last entry: 264 | This month: 7553 OryCon business took up a chunk of this evening, but I did find the time to write something. Largely edits and tweaks on yesterday’s scene, and a few hundred more words. Fixed a logic error. God, I’m tired. I think ten days of cumulative lack-of-sleep is catching up with me…

Word count: 43211 | Since last entry: 734 | This month: 7289 In tonight’s exciting episode, Jason demos the computer virus to Sienna. A rip-roaring, spine-tingling scene of low-resolution computer graphics. Okay, even in a thriller there have to be a few hundred words of exposition. Cope.

Word count: 42477 | Since last entry: 530 | This month: 6555 It’s a breakthrough for Jason, not for me. I finished up the current section with the scene I began on 11/6, in which Jason explains packet-based wireless communication to Chopper using a handful of bullets and a magazine as a visual aid, and Chopper uses the analogy to suggest a solution to Jason’s problem (without really understanding the problem itself). The trick was to come up with something Chopper would reasonably say, and that would point Jason in the direction of the solution but leave the key insight to Jason. It helps that I can change the technology to match the analogy — a power I don’t have in my day job! The transition between the end of the sex scene flashback and the beginning of the technology-analogy discussion is clunky. I may revisit it tomorrow. When I see NaNoWriMo participants writing 2000 words a day (which they have to, to achieve 50k words in a month), I look at my 500- and 600-word days and think “I could do better”. But those 500 and 600 words a day really add up, when you write every single day. At this rate I’ll be finished with the current chapter before OryCon, and then I can work on a short story for a while. It may be crap, but I feel way productive. And, frankly, I don’t think it’s crap. Oh, it may be kind of infodumpy and in need of tightening, and Jason’s motivations are muddled and the aliens aren’t alien enough. But this is a first draft, dammit, and these things can be corrected in rewrite. Onward!

Word count: 41947 | Since last entry: 716 | This month: 6025 Wrote a moderately explicit sex scene (in flashback) with Jason and Clarity. Is it gay sex, or straight sex? Even the characters aren’t sure. It’s certainly transgressive. I suspect some heads will explode in my crit group. It’ll be interesting to see how the various people react to it. At this point my major worry is that the whole chapter’s too info-dumpy. But I hope that putting the information on the aliens’ reproduction into a sex scene will hide that particular problem. If only all info-dump problems could be solved so easily!

Word count: 41231 | Since last entry: 512 | This month: 5309 Came home from tonight’s square dance tired, but determined to write at least 500 words. I must confess I was checking the word count pretty often, and stopped as soon as I passed 500 even though the scene was chunking along nicely. I’ve gotten into a flashback, showing how Jason and Clarity met at a sex party. It’s already a fairly nasty scene and I’m wondering just how explicit I want to get. I’ve been reasonably tame so far, by my standards, so I probably won’t get completely explicit, but I want to leave no doubt in the reader’s mind about what gets stuck where by whom. Could I blow a sale for the whole novel on this kind of thing? Maybe not one scene, but the whole bisexuality-polyamory-alien-love thing? Possibly. But this is the book I want to write, and I think one can get away with a hell of a lot these days. I suppose I’ll tone it down if an editor asks me to. (Would I change Jason’s orientation? I’d like to think I would not, but if a contract with a major publisher were riding on it I might. But I feel the right publisher wouldn’t ask for that change.) I think I’ll write the rest of the scene with a fairly high level of detail, then scale back later if necessary.

Word count: 40719 | Since last entry: 676 | This month: 4797 I’ve automated my “words since last entry” and “words for the month” counters (above). Tonight’s writing was a hunk of conversation between Jason and Chopper in which Jason outlines the software problem he’s fighting, using a handful of bullets as a visual aid. Chopper is just about to (unwittingly) give him the insight he needs, but I’ve decided to stop for the evening before hitting a reasonable stopping place, to make it easier to pick up tomorrow. I may also twist the scene around a little, because I want the two of them to talk about Clarity as well as the software problem, and knowing Jason he’ll want to charge off and start coding as soon as he has his insight. But if they talk about Clarity first he’ll be too upset to code. Maybe Chopper brings up the code problem to try to calm Jason down after he gets all upset talking about Clarity? Hmm, that might work.

Word count: 40043 Less than 400 words written after returning from tonight’s square dance, bringing character Chopper (remember him? He was introduced way back in Chapter A, then “wanished”) back on stage in what I anticipate will provide a transition to a useful flashback. I’m a bit dismayed by the fact that every day so far this month has produced fewer words than the day before, but there’s nothing on the calendar for tomorrow so I hope to get more done then. For now, I’m going to bed.