David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 39675 A total increase of 410 words tonight, including some tightening of last night’s output to the tune of 100 or so anti-words. So I only get a silver star for the day. But tomorrow I should top 40,000 words, which is a significant milestone. I’ve been reading Zeitgeist by Bruce Sterling, which may explain why the last couple of days’ output has shown Jason in a bleary, grungy, gritty, sleep-deprived haze of computer code. The fact that I have been dividing my time at work between two projects, 70% on one and 70% on another (and yes, that does add up to more than 100%), and I got maybe ten hours’ sleep total this weekend, might have something to do with it too. But what the hey, it addresses (or tries to) some of the critiques I got this weekend. Work with what you’ve got, that’s my motto. In other news, the new battery arrived and my phone is now back up and running. Huzzah!

Word count: 39262 Only 610 new words tonight — but that’s enough for a gold star. I’m sticking up silver stars for 100-500 words, gold for 500-1000, red for 1000+, and an extra green star when I finish a chapter or story. I spent most of the evening doing laundry and putting the manuscripts of Chapter 4 in the mail to the members of my crit group who weren’t there on Saturday. I also got a couple of story responses in today’s mail. One was a reject from MarsDust of a short-short (my 500-word story from the first night of Clarion, still kicking around). I sent it back out to Story House Coffee; they print short-shorts on their coffee labels and are located just a few blocks from here. The other was from Asimov’s. It was in my SASE, and when I opened it up I saw it wasn’t even on letterhead — just a cheap Xerox of letterhead — so I knew it was a rejection, but I hoped for a nice personal note. “Good to see something by you,” it said, “and thanks for letting me see this story. I like this, and I’ll take it.” I had to read it twice. YAHOO!

Word count: 38652 About 750 words written before and after tonight’s Simon & Garfunkel concert (which was way cool). Technically, it’s Monday already (Mon Nov 3 00:36:00 PST 2003), but I figure I probably wrote at least 500 of those words before midnight, so I get a gold star for the day. I decided that one of the two scenes I’d left out at the end of chapter 4 really, really couldn’t wait until the next chapter in this thread. It’s a big whammy. Putting it at the beginning of the next chapter would unbalance the whole chapter (I think that chapters, like short stories, have to start slow and end big, especially since in this book each chapter ending has to hold the reader’s attention through the intervening chapter of the other plot thread), and putting it at the end of the next chapter… well, that would be too late for this particular revelation. So I went ahead and wrote that scene, and I’m going to mail it to my critique group as an appendix to the chapter I just handed out.

Word count: 37891 Went to a Halloween Haunted Hoe-Down last night, then did my critiques after the party; to bed around 1am. Up at 6am and immediately got to work writing. 2000 words (!) later, it was about noon and I decided to cut off the chapter at that point. There were two more scenes in the outline, which I wanted to get in at the climax of the chapter because they tie the two plot threads together, but the chapter had reached a semi-satisfactory stopping place and I just didn’t think I had time to write any more. The good news about writing a novel is that there’s always another chapter. Took a shower, during which I realized that the scene I completed and the new scene I had just written could be slightly altered to tie them together better and increase tension (in the new version, it’s Raptor who rescues Clarity from the roof rather than Honor). So I altered them, and it worked. Reformatted it for critique, printed it out, took it to the copy shop, and arrived at the meeting exactly on time. At which point I discovered I’d neglected to press the Collate button, and I had to spend the first 15 minutes of the meeting manually collating the 10 copies of 28 pages. But I got the chapter finished in time, by God! Got Chapter C critiqued at this meeting. In general people are happy with the way the novel is going, though some folks thought the pace was a little slow and a couple of people said they thought the characters were well-realized and believable but they didn’t like them as people. Sara in particular said she wanted to slap Jason silly. Also — as I already know — the aliens aren’t alien enough, Jason isn’t motivated enough, and Jason (and to a lesser extent Clarity) is too much reactive rather than active (“a catalyst, not a hero”). Despite these critiques, I plan to keep writing the characters as they are, so that I will have an internally-consistent first draft when I go back and start fixing it. (Is this a mistake?) Also, if Jason isn’t a hero that’s not necessarily a bad thing. He does becom the villain of the piece (for a while, to the extent it has villains), before he hits bottom and begins to redeem himself. But, as Sara pointed out, there are no Evil Fucks (thanks, Jim) in this book. Is this a problem? Meanwhile, my crashed phone came back from Nokia, repaired — but without its battery. Grr!!! They’re sending a new one, but it won’t even leave Florida until Monday. Waah! One more thing before I fall over (I got five hours sleep last night — I feel like Clarion, whee). November, as you may know, is National Novel Writing Month. But I can’t do NaNoWriMo for real, because you’re not supposed to use it to work on a novel in progress. Nor do I imagine I can write 50k words in a month. I tried a “PseuDoNaNoWriMo” in March, with a goal of 40k words, and only managed 10k. So in November I’m doing a “not really a NaNoWriMo” (NoReNaNoWriMo). My goal is to write every day — minimum 100 words, and not necessarily on my novel. I’m going to put up a calendar and stick gold stars on it. I’ll be tracking my progress here. Wish me luck!

Word count: 35922 Over 1800 words tonight! All one scene, in which Clarity is menaced by a mob and has to run for her life. Or does she? She’s not sure, but whether she really had to run or not, she ran, and I’ve left her locked outside on the roof of her apartment building, wondering whether she’s more afraid that someone will find her… or that no one will. A good, tense scene — but way too long. The chapter’s now nearly 6000 words long, already one of the longest chapters I’ve written, and there are still three scenes to go. On the other hand, there’s no reason a chapter can’t be 10,000 or 12,000 words long… but I still think this scene has more words in it than it deserves. I’m going to have to cut it back. But not this week. Right now it’s way past time for bed. Good night.

Word count: 34098 800 more words tonight, finishing up the scene in the hospital. It’s heavy on exposition, but I keep reminding myself this is a first draft. There’s four scenes — at least 1000, maybe 2000, words — left in this chapter. I may have to steal some time from work to finish by Saturday.

Word count: 33288 Wrote 500 words of a quiet scene in the hospital with Clarity and Reason. Not as many words as I’d hoped to write tonight, especially since I need to get this chapter finished by Saturday (ideally Thursday). More tomorrow, I hope. I had to send my crashed phone back to the manufacturer to be re-flashed, since nobody local had the necessary equipment. Sigh. Remember when phones were big heavy things you rented from the phone company, and they lasted forever? Things with dials?

Word count: 32765 Stupidly spent the evening adding permalinks and an RSS feed to this page instead of writing. Silly, silly David. (If you don’t know what RSS is, don’t worry about it. If you do know, please try it out and let me know how it works for you. I’m particularly interested to know if the entry dates are correct in your aggregator. They don’t work on NewsIsFree.) Also, my phone crashed. Grr.

Word count: 29918 I’ve been out of town a lot lately. When I have found a half-hour or an hour to write it’s been so tempting to just massage the existing text and not generate any new words. Something about the last scene of this chapter was just not coming together. And here it is just a few days before the next crit group meeting, when I have to have a new chapter or I’ll have to buy everyone a beer. After some thought I realized this scene needed to be a big turning point for the character. He’s been insufficiently motivated so far, and needed to have a personal experience that would drive home just how badly he needs to be doing what he is doing. Basically, he’s been a dilettante and he really needs to be a committed terrorist. I went back to my researches on why people become terrorists and decided that the aliens had to do something awful to him or someone he knows personally. Unfortunately, all the candidates were people I needed around later for other things. So it couldn’t be fatal or even severely debilitating. But I found a solution (I hope). Rather than a character, I killed a setting. It wasn’t a very important setting, really, but it was something established earlier in the book and I think it’s plausible that the character would care about it more now (now that it’s gone) than he did then. He also got himself involved in a riot afterwards, something I hadn’t planned, which gave me an opportunity to show how nasty things are getting in the streets. After that was done I hit him with the whammy I’ve been saving up all chapter. Now he’s really pissed and has nothing to lose. A very good evening’s writing. In other news, I participated in an “exquisite corpse” writing exercise and dashed off a few paragraphs so “crunchy” they could be the basis of a whole new novel. I am running screaming from the possibility of a whole new novel… I’m already heartily sick of this one. But I press on.

Word count: 28296 Only 300 new words tonight. Of the scene and a half left to go in the current chapter, finished the half scene. The remaining scene feels like a big one, and I’m going to be out of the house for the next two nights and all weekend. Alas. Maybe I can steal some time from work.