David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 7210 No writing since Sunday, but I have had an excellent email exchange (still ongoing) with my friend Pam the nurse on the symptoms and progress of the alien disease. As part of this exchange, wrote a one-page synopsis of the novel, which I wanted to do anyway, and which points out that there are a lot of hints that need to be dropped earlier to make the climax work.

Word count: 7210 Much writing this weekend! Got Jason set up with his initial puzzle and introduced his lover Chris. Satisfaction. Off to watch Children of Dune now.

Word count: 4787 Two hours of writing tonight, over a thousand words. Wrote the first scene of Chapter A, in which we meet Jason and Jason meets Sienna. That’s all the main characters on stage (though we don’t yet know who some of them are). Lots more to do before the end of this chapter, but it’s almost midnight and time for bed. Early start tomorrow!!

Word count: 3603 I’ve been a bad boy, haven’t written a thing since Sunday. But I sat down tonight and wrote about 800 words. Huzzah. Probably not going to make 30,000 words in March for the sff.writing.novel-dare PseudoNaNoWriMo, but I still mean to try! With Kate out of town until Monday, I plan to spend tomorrow night and all this weekend writing. Got Clarity out of the potato field and on the road to New York… not sure if that’s the end of the chapter, but it’s an end to the chapter. The chapter so far has not gone exactly the way I had planned. This is perhaps a good thing. In other writing news, received a contract and check in the mail (for a story accepted last year), reviewed the galleys from Phobos, and read “Charlie the Purple Giraffe” at the Tugboat Brewpub downtown. Go me!

Word count: 2873 A very productive weekend for getting chores done. Not very productive for writing. Did have a nice long chat with Pam Davis, an old friend who is a nurse, on medical stuff. The best human analogy for the alien disease seems to be graft-vs.-host disease (GVHD), in which transplanted bone marrow begins attacking the patient. Treatment for graft-vs.-host involves suppressing the immune system, which opens the patient to opportunistic infections — it’s a no-win situation. Pam suggests that increased dramatic tension can be obtained by having an initial visible symptom (e.g. smallpox blister or KS lesion) which provides an unambiguous signal that “you are infected with this untreatable fatal disease, and everyone you’ve had any contact with has already been exposed.” If the symptom is one that can be hidden, that provides opportunities for duplicity and self-deception on top of that. I don’t think a visible “pox” makes sense for this disease, but some kind of patchy rash or “ick” is a possibility. (I still haven’t nailed down what the Taurans have for integument.) OK, maybe this is an AIDS metaphor after all. Pam also asked some interesting questions such as “What keeps this resistance fighter from just sharing the aliens’ vulnerability through some public mechanism such as the internet?” and “Are there no alien medicos?” I came up with an outline of a solution to these and other issues she raised, and it is a really scary situation for the characters. Mwah hah hah.

Word count: 2525 Got a little writing done at the square dance tonight. After thinking about the “Dalek” problem for a while I think I’ve figured out a way around it… using the same transmission method, but slower and more subtle so it’s not as easily spotted. Also changing the characters’ attitude toward aspects of the disease to make it harder for them to implement the block. This is not an AIDS metaphor, I swear.

Word count: 2240 Finishing up a customer support document at work, so I didn’t get home until way late. Got another 500 words written on Chapter 1, developing Clarity’s character a bit, but all the characters are still in the potato field. I plan to bring down the boom on Clarity real soon. This morning, during the time between when I woke up and the alarm went off, I had a horrible thought, something along the lines of “omigod, my Daleks can’t climb stairs, how the hell are they going to conquer the world?” The problem being that the disease is too easy to stop. I’m not sure if I have a real solution, but I have something (it involves limited bandwidth). I’ll let it percolate some more.

Word count: 1705 Started in on Chapter 1 this evening, after a long period of staring at the wall wondering just where Clarity is and what she is doing when she learns of her father’s death. Finally put her in a potato field in Eastern Washington. Why potatoes? I don’t know. But it gave me a chance to show a Tauran eating a raw potato. Also today, I learned that I will be one of 3 readers in the inaugural performance of the Portland Reading Series. I’ll be reading a story of mine called “Charlie the Purple Giraffe was Acting Strangely: A Serious Story about Funny Animals.” The reading will be held at the Tugboat Brewery, 711 SW Ankeny Street, on Monday, March 10, at 7:30pm. Neat!

Word count: 1164 Yesterday I had coffee with Mark Bourne and discussed the aliens. He came up with the idea that “seeing is believing” is the core of their philosophy and culture. If you don’t see something with your own eyes, it doesn’t exist; if you haven’t met someone personally, you have no preconceptions about them. Major transgressions are punished by the gouging out of eyes; less-major transgressions may result in “internal exile” caused by people refusing to see you. Minor transgressions result in diminished attention. Rather than “face”, their culture is ruled by attention, the fundamental coin of respect. Visibility equals attention; attention equals influence; influence equals power. No one can have direct influence over more people than can be gathered in one room at a time, but indirect influence can extend further (again, networks of small hierarchies). Theoretically, no government can extend beyond the limits of sight, which makes high places extremely valuable. The moon is the Eye of God, which sees all and is seen by all; this drove their space race, the race to literally claim the high ground and achieve the pinnacle of perception. My idea about the magnetosphere didn’t work for him, but then he’s not an expert in that area. He suggested, though, that perhaps they don’t use radio because communicating over the horizon is gauche. Hmm. Tonight I wrote a first draft of the Prologue. Woo hoo! Word counts from now on reflect only actual novel, not notes and outline.

Word count (outline and notes): 15471 I wanted to start drafting by the end of February. I didn’t make it. But I did spend this evening thrashing my first draft chronological outline into an insanely complicated spreadsheet (with color coding: blue is backstory, prologue, and epilogue; green is the alien plot thread; yellow is the human plot thread). So far I have not done anything to make sure the two threads complement each other well (balancing, echoing, mirroring, etc.). And I see that Clarity doesn’t have enough to do in the second half of the novel. At this point I’m prepared to run with this, knowing that things will change as the work goes on. I can shift incidents between chapters, and even between threads if I have to, to get the balance right. Looking over the outline, I’m excited. It looks like a rip-roaring story; the alternating plot threads seem to keep the tension up nicely, with a turning point at the end of just about every chapter. I hope to begin drafting this weekend.