David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 962 | This month: 3943 It’s been a rough week of no writing since the last entry. I was mildly sick for a couple of days — just a sore throat, but it really sapped my energy. At work I have been desperately busy, with a couple of major projects due by the end of the year. Spare time has been taken up with holiday shopping, decorating, and parties (which were fun, but do interfere with writing). And then I got a skin infection on my foot that required antibiotics, and then I got a reaction to the antibiotic. So now I’m achy and itchy and tired and crabby. But I made myself write tonight, and produced about a thousand words, for a total of over 2000 on the story. With luck I will still finish it by this weekend. Although at this point it would take a miracle to get this and a novel chapter done by the next crit group meeting. Still don’t know exactly how the story turns out, though a minor character has appeared from nowhere (he took so many lines I just had to give him a name, and now he has a personality and everything). This gives me some hope that the missing plot twist could appear in the same way. Whatever. I haul my poor infected body to bed now.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 577 | This month: 2981 Spent the weekend with my parents in McMinville (didn’t make Bend on account of too much snow in the pass). Saw the Spruce Goose, stayed at the Hotel Oregon, played games, talked, ate too much. After seeing them off at the airport today, Kate encouraged me to sit down and write, and I did. Thanks, Kate! To bed now.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 536 | This month: 2404 And we’re off on another story. This one is set in Hell, and it’s for a themed anthology — not the one called The Anthology from Hell, this one’s invitation-only. Why two Hell anthologies at once? Steam engine time, I guess. I would really like to be working on my novel, too. But I promised I would write this story, and it’s due in January so I’d better get cracking. My goal is a finished first draft in two weeks. We’ll see. This story is the flip side of my “bureaucrats in Heaven” story from Clarion (not yet submitted anywhere). Like the angel character in that story, my demon main character suffers the worst thing that ever happened to me in my job: promotion to management. I know what his current situation is, at both a micro level (he hates his new job and wishes he could go back to being an individual contributor) and a macro level (population pressure has forced Hell to move to a mass-production footing, meaning that talented demons like him are needed to manage the process instead of pitchforking individual damned souls). I know what happens at the end of the story. I’m just not sure yet what happens in between. So far I have set the scene and introduced the character. I like him and I think I have a voice for the story. He’s already in trouble. Now I have to make it worse. I’m going to give him an assistant. Mwah hah hah.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: -64 | This month: 1868 Edited the Jupiter story, now titled “Interview with the Photographer”, and emailed it off to the editor. Despite previous statements to the effect that I could cut it massively, I wound up trimming just 64 words all told. It’s just the length it is, I guess. (I’m giving myself a silver star for the -64 words.) As I have already mentioned several times, this story is probably too long and too late for its intended market (even though I skipped the critique to get it in a week or two earlier), but I decided it was worth sending anyway. If it comes back, I will have it critiqued and then try Analog. When I went to record the submission in my tracking spreadsheet, I realized that the upcoming anthology deadlines of 2/1 and 3/1 are not really “in February” and “in March” respectively, they should really be considered “end of January” and “end of February” — much closer. The end of January is just 7 weeks away, ack! I may have to put the novel on hold for a whle, rather than alternating chapters and short stories as I’d planned. And the zeppelin story will probably not happen at all, unless I can squeeze it out in an enthusiastic weekend. On the other hand, I did do the Jupiter story, start to finish, in 19 days. Go me. I like being productive! For now, to bed.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 1440 | This month: 1932 Finished the first draft of the Jupiter story yesterday morning, huzzah! I read it to Kate and I think it works well. It’s also almost 6000 words. I wanted 3000. I think I can trim it by as much as 10% (600 words) but there’s no way it’s getting much below 5000 in its current form. Oh well. At least it’s a good story, and if it’s too long for Cosmic Tales of the Far Future I think it’s got a good shot at Analog. The current title is “The True Story of Merganther’s Drive”, which is a pretty good title but, unfortunately, isn’t quite accurate (the facts of Merganther’s Drive are never in question within the story, only the facts about this one particular photograph). I think I’m going to fall back to “Interview with the Photographer”. Now I have to decide whether to have it critiqued, or just send it straight to the editor. I’m leaning toward the latter. Ponder ponder ponder. Tomorrow I will get back to work on the novel.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 492 | This month: 492 Darn, I was sure I’d written just over 500 words, not just under. I’m giving myself a gold star anyway. The month is not off to a good start, given that I didn’t write at all for the first three days of it and I need to finish this story by Saturday if I want to get it critiqued at the next session. Monday I was still too pooped from the trip to write, Tuesday we went to Nalo Hopkinson’s reading at Powell’s, followed by a pleasant dinner with her at Pho Van, and yesterday I stayed late at work to finish up a usability test report, then had to go to bed early for a 7am meeting this morning (bleah). Tonight I determined to write something, despite the other chores that needed to be done (did get some of those done, though). The Jupiter story is charging toward its climax. I have destroyed two planets already (and not just your pitsy or obscure planets either, no sir!), with one more to go; not bad for a short story. It’s longer than I’d hoped, might even hit 5000 words before it’s done, but as I said before I think I know where I can cut. Busy, busy, busy. Must rest now.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 182 | This month: 11876 Just a little writing tonight, squeezed in between packing to go out of town and going to bed early (we’re hitting the road bright and early tomorrow). I feel good about the Jupiter story. It’s got a light breezy feel, kind of a Texas tall tale of the far future, and I think I’ve found a way to get a dramatic ending without being either nihilistic or sappy. A real Analog story. It’s about 2700 words now, probably going to be around 4000 when I finish this draft, which means it can be tightened to about 3500. Might even finish the first draft on the trip. If anyone is reading this… have a happy Turkey Day! I’ll be back late Sunday night, but might not post again until Monday.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 582 | This month: 11694 I decided to take yesterday off. Tonight, despite attending a Barenaked Ladies concert (they rock!) I wrote almost 600 words. Yoo rah. I have other things to say here, but at the moment bed calls.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 515 | This month: 11112 Plenty of chores today — laundry, groceries, unpacking from OryCon — and a symphony concert, but still got over 500 words written on the Jupiter story (which I’m now thinking about titling “Interview with the Photographer”) and still got to bed before midnight. I’m pleased. It’s going to be a challenge to finish the Jupiter story and chapter 5 before the next crit group meeting, with Thanksgiving in there. But I just discovered I will be out of town for the next crit group meeting, which casts a different light on things. What to do? I’m going to sleep on it.

Word count: 45058 | Since last entry: 207 | This month: 10597 Like yesterday, I had a busy day, didn’t start writing until way late, and wrote only a couple hundred words (just to keep up the streak). But I received my critiques on Chapter 4 — they still like the book, though they reminded me of the problems I already know about (Jason’s a wimp and Clarity isn’t alien enough) as pointed out some new ones (there isn’t enough physical description of the aliens, especially of individual aliens; there’s no indication why it would be a bad thing if the Green Hills bunch took over; Clarity goes into the task force meeting knowing nothing about the humans she’s meeting with, she would have been thoroughly briefed; the new human characters Flannery and Vance need to be better developed). All good stuff for the second draft. For now, I’m continuing on the Deconstructing Jupiter story. I had been having some trouble coming up with an ending (unusually for me, I started writing without knowing the end of the story), but now I think I have one in mind. The question is: can I destroy the Earth and still have it be an upbeat ending? At the moment I think I can, and it’ll certainly be a hell of a climax (many writers threaten to destroy the world, but not many follow through on the threat). There are all sorts of cues in what I’ve written so far indicating that Something Bad Happened, and I can amp those up to build tension. This’ll be interesting. Also today I picked up my new glasses — my first progressive lenses, but it’s not nearly as traumatic as I had been warned it might be. They’re kind of weird, but not much weirder than my last pair of new glasses, and my near vision is noticeably better than with the old ones. The bad news is that they came with a big scratch in one lens, which will have to be replaced. This evening I attended a party where I didn’t know anyone, but had a nice long talk with syndicated humor columnist Marc Acito, who just sold his first novel, and the movie rights — a real Cinderella story. He was very encouraging, said he liked my pitch. Must sleep now!