David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

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.

Word count: 46670 | Since last entry: 1037 | This month: 9204 A difficult scene tonight: Clarity flashes back to her break-up with Jason, and the long-buried (too-long-buried) secret of what happened at Cedar Point is revealed. Didn’t go into a lot of detail, and left some questions open about exactly what Clarity knew and when she knew it. The scene also has a lot of parallels with Jason’s flashback on how he and Clarity met. This is deliberate, but is it too heavy-handed? This flashback actually goes with the revised Prologue I discussed with Jim and Sara at OryCon, though it doesn’t contradict anything in the current draft. I’m also making a few changes in the Taurans’ behavior based on previous critiques, something I said I wouldn’t do, but the changes are fairly minor. I’m very tired. Didn’t sleep well last night. Also spent some of this evening sweeping snow off the walk. Snow! I might be stuck at home tomorrow…

Word count: 45633 | Since last entry: 575 | This month: 8167 Well, 500 words is better than nothing, though I was hoping for 1000+. Spent some of Sunday and a chunk of this evening re-reading earlier chapters to get my head back in the world of the novel, and adding a few points to the outline for this chapter. I have some things I’ve been thinking about for a while now — Clarity gets a change of clothes, Clarity’s perspective on her break-up with Jason, and a murder — which aren’t in the original outline but seem to fit here. Lots to cover in this chapter and not a lot of time to do it, and I’m definitely behind my very tight schedule. But I keep plugging away. Tonight I wrote a conversation with Honor and Clarity in which he reveals just how pissed he is at her, she tries to get his help tracking down the fugitive Jason, and I try to show how and why the aliens use telepathy vs. sign language. Don’t know if it works. Moving forward anyway.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 1710 | This month: 7592 Finished the Hell story and sent it to my critique group this afternoon. Yay! I wound up not killing the assistant off. But in my Hell there are worse things than death: instead I subjected him to an eternity of paperwork. The Curse of Beazoel! It’s gentle and silly and I think it works. We’ll see what my crit group thinks. Now I have one week to write a novel chapter. Tomorrow’s largely spoken for, as are New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Things don’t look good for our hero. But I will try.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 525 | This month: 5882 Spent most of today preparing for and then hosting a Boxing Day open house. Many fine people came, including Jay Lake and Mary Rosenblum. We played Fluxx, Boggle, and Apples to Apples, ate cookies, pizza, and soup, and had a great time. I did manage to write 500 words first thing upon arising, deepening the conflict between the old-style and new-style demons and laying a little more ground work for the climax. This is good, but I must finish this story tomorrow — 1000-2000 more words. And I still don’t know exactly what precipitates the climax. I love a challenge.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 1027 | This month: 5357 Happy Yuletide! Woke up this morning with no work to go to, so lay in bed for 45 minutes thinking about the story. By the end of it I knew how the rest of the story would go. Then, after a day of eating and unwrapping presents and wrapping presents (we haven’t yet figured out when we’re getting together with Kate’s relatives, so I didn’t get their presents wrapped until today) and a second viewing of The Return of the King I sat down and wrote for a couple of hours. At this rate I might even get done by Saturday! Here are my thoughts from this morning (spoilers ho!). First I thought about what my main character can and can’t do — he’s allowed to reorganize his staff, but not hire or fire or transfer staff in or out of his department (and he can’t demote his obnoxious assistant). Then I changed the red devils to pink demons to create a conflict among the staff. (Basically, the pink demons — think man-size plastic Ken dolls with horns — are marketing types, while the other varieties of demon are technical types.) This sets him up to try and fail to resolve the problem — the department isn’t making quota because the majority pink demons are so technically clueless that even the clever and resourceful technical demons can’t overcome it, but though he can shuffle things around he can’t really change the situation. But he does have the ability to create a sub-project, move all the technical demons into it, and assign himself to head it, leaving the obnoxious assistant in charge of all the pink demons. If he puts the pink demons back to work on mass production, which even they can’t mess up, with the Internet for distribution, and adds a limited amount of custom temptation hand-crafted by his team of techies, the department as a whole succeeds. The only problem with this solution is that it lets the obnoxious assistant off the hook. I want him to die. Specifically, I want him to get dispelled because of his own pettifogging, bureaucratic attitude. But I’ve set the situation up so that the techie team cannot succeed by itself, which means that the pink demons can’t be allowed to fail, so the assistant can’t be dispelled for failure to meet quota. Maybe I’ll find another way to kill the assistant off. In the last scene I wrote I found my main character being surprisingly insightful and multi-cultural. I swear I didn’t set the situation up consciously. (He’s turning into quite an admirable chap, despite being a Pit Demon from Hell. I hope the readers don’t find the story too P.C..) So, since the story continues to surprise me, I imagine a solution to this problem will appear as well. By the way… I am not one of those writers who burbles about characters telling me what to do. I am the writer, I am in charge, I am making it all up. But, in creating something as complex as a story, you have to make a lot of micro-decisions as you go. Sometimes these micro-decisions can suggest macro-changes that you hadn’t originally intended. For example, in writing a scene showing the conflict between the two groups of demons, I made a micro-decision about specifically how the main character resolves the conflict (he spits in his hand before shaking hands on a deal), which demonstrates his cultural sensitivity to one of the two groups, which implies things about his character I hadn’t thought out consciously. It followed naturally from other decisions I made, but it was still a surprise to me. Does this make any sense?

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 387 | This month: 4330 Did a little writing between dinner and decorating the tree tonight. Got to the point of having one character actually ask the other “So, what’s the problem?” (Yes, sometimes my characters ask each other the questions I’m asking myself. In many cases this doesn’t survive to the final draft.) Made a couple of false starts at an answer, and finally had the second character (the bad guy, though he’s more annoying than villainous) give his perspective on the problem, which is a surprise to the first character and (though the first character isn’t certain of this yet) objectively wrong. Have not written the first character’s response to this statement. However, I know what he’s thinking, and this little exchange definitely sets up the conflict between them. Now I know where the middle of the story has to go. But I’m lacking some details, and I still don’t know how my main character’s going to get out of it…