David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 120730 | Since last entry: -281

Usually if I’m not blogging I’m not writing, and if I’m not writing I’m not blogging. In this case I have been writing, an hour a day or so, but the bathroom remodel and the election have been taking up too much of my mental energy to leave room for blogging. It’s gotten so stressful around here, with strangers banging about and making strange smells and all, that listening to the public radio pledge break was actually relaxing by comparison.

The above word count change represents a week’s worth of editing, incorporating comments from my agent and other first readers. Where possible I have been trying to address comments by taking words out rather than adding new ones, but I did substantially beef up a couple of scenes.

I hate editing, because it’s like trying to make a change in an assembled jigsaw puzzle. Even if all you want to do is change the color of one piece, you might also have to change several of the pieces nearby, and even other pieces halfway across the puzzle that might be related. Changing the shape or position of a piece is even worse. Everything is connected, on a word and sentence and paragraph and chapter level.

The big editing comments yet to do have to do with clarifying, deepening, and strengthening Rachel’s backstory and motivations, and the Anvilites’ theology, and I don’t really know what I can do about them. The problem is that I don’t know Rachel’s backstory and I don’t really understand the Anvilites’ theology. What the heck was I doing having my main character be a member of a contemplative religious community? I know nothing about that mindset. (I know how I got in this mess, actually. In my original concept of the story the religious people were the villains. But then one of them turned into a protagonist…) I will try reading Brother Astronomer this weekend to see if I can glean any ideas from it.

Despite frustration with the bathroom remodeling process, progress continues and it is supposed to be all done in less than two weeks. The tile work took almost a week longer than originally estimated, but it is almost complete now and looks phenomenal (see below). The lavatory is also very nice, a serene expanse of cool white that nicely offsets the busy detail of the tile. We had a lot of trouble finding a wall color that we liked; after buying three different sample quarts and being unsatisfied with all of them we decided that the green color of the sheetrock, of all things, was what we wanted. Hey, we knew it looked good.

I had a pretty good mail day on Tuesday: a countersigned contract for one short story, a check for another, and a check for audio rights (so look for “Sun Magic, Earth Magic” in audio format from Beneath Ceaseless Skies at some point in the future). Also a 41-day rejection from F&SF, alas.

Speaking of BCS, they have a message board where people can discuss my story. One of the readers ranted (his word) that it “relied too heavily on symbolism,” which I find baffling, but I’m sitting on my hands, not wanting to get into an argument. Now that the story has been published, it belongs to the readers.

Finally, as you may know, the website SF Signal has a regular feature called “Mind Meld” where they ask several SF writers to contribute brief essays on a single topic. I was honored to be asked to participate in the latest Mind Meld: “Which authors and books have most influenced your writing?”. Other participants include Joe Haldeman, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Dean Wesley Smith. Check it out!

Word count: 121011 | Since last entry: -562

I’ve finished with this pass through the manuscript. My attempt to cut 30,000 words has failed; I cut a grand total of 8162 words, and in the next pass I suspect the word count will go back up a bit as I add backstory and a few other things requested by my beta readers. But I believe all those words are needed. If a publisher asks for cuts, I’ll just ask them what they want cut. At least it is tighter than it was.

Work on the bathroom continues apace. The tile has been laid on all the walls up to and including the mosaic band all the way around, and a little bit of it includes the chair rail above that. It looks gorgeous, and will look even better once it’s been grouted. There’s still a couple of days’ work to do on that. This weekend we will pick out cabinet knobs and the paint color for the walls.

In other news: my story “Sun Magic, Earth Magic” is now available for everyone to read for free as part of issue #1 of the new webzine Beneath Ceaseless Skies. The direct URL is http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/story.php?s=9. There’s also a discussion forum if you want to talk about the story with other readers.

Also, the schedule for Wordstock, “Portland’s Festival of the Book,” has been posted. Looks like Jay Lake and I will be appearing together on the Community of Writers Portland Stage at 10:30am on Sunday, November 9. I hope to see a bunch of you Portland people there.

Looking a little further forward, there’ll be a group signing by a number of local SF and Fantasy authors at Powell’s at Cedar Hills Crossing on November 20. Mark your calendars; more details will be provided later.

Word count: 121573 | Since last entry: -216

The bathroom remodel is driving me insane.

The cabinets were installed today, and we are not completely happy with them. The linen cabinet was over four inches too tall; we were able to have enough cut out of the middle that it fits under the ceiling, but some drawers are higher than we’d like. I think we’ll live with that. The medicine chest is too shallow and has no shelves and no mirror; one of the drawers in the vanity opens on the wrong side; some of the drawer fronts don’t fit properly. Those will have to be addressed. The cabinet installer, who is Ukranian like the tile guy, was heard to mutter something in Ukranian that included the English words “professionalism” and “idiots.” Also, part of the wallboard had to be torn down to move a backing block that was misplaced (it was supposed to be fixed before the wallboard was put up) and there are some chips in the tub’s enamel that I don’t think were there before.

We should not have to hover over the workmen to make sure that everything is built and installed according to the approved plans, nor to ask them to not damage the items that have already been installed. Grr.

But the sink is in and looks gorgeous. The tile floor is very nice (though we now wish we’d laid out the design rotated 90° from what we did). And the toilet is back, at least for tonight… though there’s no door on the bathroom. Still an improvement from the outhouse we’ve been using since Monday.

Also today we met with our financial guy. Our financial plan anticipated that there would be a couple of downturns during our retirement, but the size and timing of this one are unfortunate. However, unless things get much worse than he anticipates, I should not have to go back to work.

I put in an hour of work on the novel tonight but was not able to cut more than a couple hundred words. These climactic chapters are pretty tight (or else I’m just too much in love with them). There is one scene that I might be able to go back and cut if I really need to, maybe a thousand words’ worth, but it does contain some useful information and character moments I don’t want to lose. At this point I’m resigning myself to a final word count around 120,000.

I wish there was something we could do to relax that didn’t involve calories.

Word count: 121789 | Since last entry: -597

Spent about three hours at the coffee shop this afternoon, mostly reading over my own deathless prose. Unfortunately, all of it seems necessary, and I only managed to cut a couple of paragraphs here and there for a total of about 600 anti-words. Also, it sucks. (How can it suck so badly when every individual sentence is so brilliant? Ah, the gymnastics of the writer’s mind…) Nonetheless, I will soldier on and complete these cuts, followed by a few brief additions and tweaks to address some review comments, followed by another stab at the synopsis. With luck I will have a completed package ready to be elevator-pitched at World Fantasy Convention over Halloween weekend.

No, “elevator-pitched” does not mean “pitched down an elevator shaft.”

Vasily the tile guy has completed the floor and is now working on the wall tile, starting with the baseboard. The bathroom is looking better and better even as the bathroom project drives our daily lives farther and farther from sanity. Currently we are using a porta-potty in the front yard (and isn’t that fun when the need arises in the middle of a rainy night?), the clothes washer is not usable until the cement in the basement sets, and the living room is half-full of boxes of tile and the just-delivered cabinets (which are beautiful, but stink of fresh stain).

Did not watch the debate. Frantically refreshed various political websites for reactions and post-debate polls, though. Cautiously optimistic.

Word count: 122386 | Since last entry: -392

Work on the bathroom resumed bright and early this Monday morning, when the tile guys arrived. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that we did not have the “bullnose” tiles (with one rounded edge) needed for some outside corners. Fortunately, those tiles are a stock item, and Pratt & Larson Tile is right nearby, so with the wave of a credit card they were quickly obtained. The tile guy set up his water-cooled saw on the porch and with many a cheerful “gzannng!” he began laying out the floor.

Unfortunately, laying out the floor required removing the toilet, and it won’t be back for a few days. We have a portapotty for the nonce. Whee.

While the tile guy was “gzannng”-ing away, the plumbers returned to complete the jackhammering-up of the rotted pipes in the basement. The good news in all this is that the next stretch of pipe proved to be in better shape than the first one, and so they didn’t have to carve quite as large a trench in the basement floor as they’d expected (this also implies that the sewer pipe beyond our basement wall is also in good shape).

In the afternoon I got an email from a friend who recently spent some time in the hospital and needed help with her grocery shopping (she’s not yet able to drive, and pushing a shopping cart is also a bit much to ask). I seized the opportunity to escape the noise, and instead went to Costco. This was only a slight improvement in terms of reducing my stress levels, but I can use the karma points.

After a nice dinner of Tomato-Miso Soup, I heard a cheery voice from outside: “Ahoy the house!” This turned out to be our friend Sam, who has been known to pop by unexpectedly and is always welcome. We showed her the progress on the bathroom and basement (the basement was finished when I got back from Costco, and we scratched the date and a peace sign in the wet concrete) and chatted most amicably for an hour or so.

Then I sat down and cut about 400 words from chapter 10. Less than desired, but better than nothing.

Word count: 122778 | Since last entry: -277

A rare day with no workmen. Took it easy: slept in, gym, laundry, dinner with friends, watched The Amazing Race. Edited one chapter, but couldn’t manage to squeeze out more than 300 words of cuts even with two editing passes. Some days are like that.

Word count: 123055 | Since last entry: -3233

So there I was, reading through chapter 8, unable to cut more than a sentence or two every dozen pages. It all seemed necessary.

And then I realized… it was all equally necessary.

Did I really need this chapter at all?

I’d gotten some feedback that this chapter was on the slow side. There were also some technical issues with the main conflict in the chapter (some readers found it implausible that anyone on the ship would seriously consider not letting the alien stay on board, given the kind of people they are). The conflict itself was also, perhaps, a false one… a problem dropped in to raise tension which didn’t exist before this chapter and didn’t have any effect afterwards.

So I cut the whole conflict — about half the chapter — which also allowed me to cut a page or two in the previous chapter that led up to it, for a total cut of 3200 words. It’s kind of late for me to tell whether I’ve plastered over the seams well enough (hmm, where did that metaphor come from?), and I feel bad about losing some of the little character moments in there, but I feel good about this. If I need any of those paragraphs back, they’re available… I always keep earlier drafts around.

Still probably won’t make it all the way down to 100,000 words, but the shorter the better, eh?

Word count: 126288 | Since last entry: -772

The bathroom remodel has been more than usually stressful today.

The plumbers came to unclog the basement drain. We knew it was bad, but it proved to be even worse than they’d thought. The drain pipe in the floor had completely disintegrated, which means that for the last no-one-knows-how-many years, every time we used the kitchen sink or dishwasher at least some of the wastewater went into the soil beneath the house rather than into the sewer as it was supposed to.

They had to jackhammer out six feet of rotten pipe from the basement floor, leaving an open a trench in our basement floor and dirt everywhere. They decided to leave it open until Monday so that the sodden dirt under the floor can dry out a little. Next week they’ll jackhammer out the remaining eighteen feet or so, then fill in the trench with concrete.

At least we can use our kitchen sink and dishwasher, though not the clothes washer, this weekend.

The few of you who have read the magic lesbian plumber story (which has now been at F&SF for over 40 days, which indicates they are at least giving it serious consideration… either that, or the rejection got lost in the mail) will be amused to know that the problematic basement drain is the same one that, right at the beginning of the story, has a nixie living in it.

One thing about remodeling a bathroom is that you get a real feeling for the bones, sinew, and nerves of your house. Also a real feeling that whoever did the plumbing for this place back in 1913 was an IDIOT! He had no sense of the fact that water is supposed to run DOWN and air UP, and a real tendency to cut through important structural elements of the house’s frame to make his plumbing life easier.

The other bathroom-related thing that happened today was that the plasterers came by to put on a second coat. But it’s been cold and rainy, and the first coat wasn’t nearly dry enough for them to do anything. So they’ll be back tomorrow (Saturday), and until then there’s been a constant roar of fans and space heaters in addition to the intermittent jackhammering.

I couldn’t concentrate too well today, for some reason, and wound up cutting less than 800 words. But more than the small number of words removed today, I’m concerned about the fact that I’m on page 245 of a 572-page manuscript and I’ve cut less than 3000 words in total. No way I’m going to cut 30,000 words at this pace… I might get 10,000 if I’m really ruthless. I’m either going to have to do a second and probably a third pass, cutting stuff I’d really rather keep, or go ahead and submit it at about 120,000 words. Currently I’m leaning toward the latter plan. We’ll see how far I get in this pass… maybe I’ll find a whole chapter that can be excised (though even that would only buy me 5000 or 6000 words.)

Word count: 127060 | Since last entry: -1129

If you’d told me two years ago that the Vice Presidential debate would be shown live at half the movie theatres in town, and that the Bagdad (our local) would be completely sold out, with crowds out the doors at every bar down the street, I’d have said you were crazed.

We watched some of the debate and heard most of the rest on the radio. I didn’t get the amusing Palin meltdown I’d been hoping for, though her insane policies and rigid adherence to preprogrammed talking points frightened and appalled me. Biden seemed confident, intelligent, and well-qualified. I was worried that a lot of people would find that Palin’s heavily-coached-beauty-queen-at-a-job-interview performance made her “someone I’d like to have a beer with” but the post-debate polls are encouraging.

If she’d said “9-11” (maybe she did and I didn’t catch it) I would have gotten a bingo. I was playing card 4 from the linked site, though not paying really close attention.

After the debate we went to square dancing, then I got to the heavy cutting of the one scene I mentioned yesterday. 1129 words cut in less than an hour’s work. Yay.