David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

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.

Word count: 94045 | Since last entry: 367 | This month: 2995 No prose written in the last few days, but I did write 367 words of detailed outline in Chapter H tonight. Over the weekend I did many productive things, including buying a new watch (temporary replacement for the one whose strap broke, with new strap on order), a new Swiss Army knife (replacement for the one I lost at Security on the way to the Worldcon, grr), and light fixtures and cabinet knobs for the new kitchen (though we need to take one of the light fixtures back and get a different one), and test-drove a new car. We’ll be taking delivery of that on Thursday (I love working with an auto broker). Getting all that done was satisfying, but also in the last couple of days I received two rejections — 202 days from Ideomancer and 186 days from Brutarian — and saw portents and signs that a Blue-Form-of-Death is on its way from Realms of Fantasy after 224 days. For some reason, perhaps because they took so long and then arrived so close on the heels of my Hugo and Campbell losses, these rejections hit me really hard and I spent the entirety of Monday afternoon and evening in a blue funk. Definitely not in a writing frame of mind. So I cheered myself up by setting up a LiveJournal for the lovely and charming kateyule. She’s going to be blogging about the kitchen remodel. Have you ever stayed at one of those “suites” hotels where you have two rooms and your own little fridge and microwave? It’s nice to be able to have breakfast and lunch in the room, but it’s kind of crowded, and it’s awkward to do any real cooking without proper utensils and stuff, so you eat most of your dinners out. Having your kitchen done feels a lot like that. It’s like we’re on vacation — or maybe traveling on business is more like it — right here in our own home town.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 1064 | This month: 12940 The weekend started off well, with 700+ words written while Kate took a spell at the wheel, and I managed another couple hundred words on Friday. But I haven’t written a thing since then. Despite that, I’m happy with my Not Really National Novel Writing Month. The nearly 13,000 words I wrote in November is significantly better than the 10,500 I wrote for the Pseudo-NaNoWriMo back in March, and I’m nearly to the midpoint of the novel. The Jupiter story stands at 3800 words, with the final complication in place and only the setup for the climax and the climax itself to go. It will probably be about 4500 words when I finish the first draft, but I have some ideas of things I can cut. (It’s important that it be short because I’m trying to squeeze into an anthology that is probably already full.) I also want to rewrite part of a scene I finished earlier, to better establish the main character’s priorities and make the climax more plausible. Still hope to finish the story this week.

Word count: 32765 Just back from a writing weekend at the coast, at the delightful Oregon Writers Colony house with a bunch of other Oregon and Washington writers (Jerry, Kathy, Paulette, Amy, Susan, Jim, and Brenda). Only (?) wrote about 2800 new words, but that includes a half-day re-outlining the current chapter and was about the same word count as everyone else did. The new outline wound up almost exactly like the old one, but where the old one was vague (“things get worse”) the new one is a list of specific incidents (“Clarity’s best childhood friend comes down with the plague”). This is part of that staring-out-windows thing that is so important to fiction writing and I don’t regret it. Apart from the writing, spent a great weekend with a bunch of keen folks. I cooked spaghetti sauce (half buffalo, half hot Italian sausage, all delicious) for Saturday dinner, Amy made a killer chocolate mousse, and each person brought enough food for everyone (we had a total of three pounds of bacon and three and a half dozen eggs for eight people for a weekend — definite overkill in the food department, but better too much than too little). The weather was nice, warm on Saturday and a little drizzly on Sunday, but as is my Colonyhouse habit I didn’t leave the house at all. When I go to the coast to write, I write — or at least hang out with writers. Much writerly gossip was gossiped, and the problems of the world were solved. Fun, relaxing, productive. I want to do this again in a few months. Oh, I ought to note this major milestone: I just passed 30,000 words, which was my goal for the first month’s writing when I did the Pseudo-NaNoWriMo back in March. Okay, it took longer than I had thought. But it’s still significant; I’m about 1/3 done with the first draft. When I got home I found a nice rejection from Ellen Datlow at scifi.com. “It’s very nicely written but there just isn’t enough to it for my taste. Sorry. I do like your work and trust that one of these days we’ll connect so keep on sending stories to me.” Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, as my dad always says.

Word count: 26872 A couple hundred words here, a couple hundred words there. Progress, but not enough. It’s a slog. I’ve introduced Flea and shown Jason making some progress on cracking the alien computer. It feels slow. I hope to have this chapter ready to send to my crit group this weekend. In other news, I just got a keen new “phone”. I put “phone” in quotes because being a phone seems to be the least of its powers. It’s a wireless web browser, email client, calendar, to-do list, calculator, currency converter, GameBoy, and MP3 player too. Maybe more. The manufacturer is pushing it as “the Music Phone” but I bought it for the keyboard, which is terribly cute but reasonably functional. Now I can Google from anywhere, mwa hah hah! Well, almost anywhere — alas, it has almost no signal in my office.

Word count: 24262 Okay, I took a week off to do a new issue of Bento. That’s excusable. But the following week of no novel-writing isn’t. And when I sat down to work tonight, I kept getting up again. But I promised myself I wouldn’t go to bed without at least 500 new words, and I did manage that: the beginning of a gutwrenching argument between Jason and Chris. I’m really putting Jason’s nuts in a vise here, and he deserves every bit of it. More this weekend. I still hope to get 3000 words down before next weekend’s critique group meeting… which will be while I’m at Torcon, but I’m still going to treat it as a deadline. I also got galleys and a cover flat from New Voices in Science Fiction. I like the cover.

Word count: 12326 No new writing lately, but last weekend I went shooting with some folks from the Portland Cacophony Society. It’s the first time I’ve ever fired a gun. I can definitely see the appeal, but I still think it’s generally not a good idea to keep guns around the house. Unlike most other dangerous tools, guns are very easy to use and can kill at a distance. Politics aside, I had a great time. We had marvelous weather for a drive in the country, and I had fun shooting at various old appliances, stuffed animals, and old propane tanks, even though I couldn’t hit a thing. And I picked up a lot of terminology, sounds, and smells I will be able to use if any gunplay occurs in the novel. There isn’t any in the outline, but the character of Sienna is shaping up into someone who, given the choice, would rather shoot than ask questions. Oh, and I’ve gotten over whatever minor bug was bothering me earlier this week.