The Days Are Just Packed     
The ongoing saga of David D. Levine's writing and other adventures.

I'm a geek, fan, and writer who lives in Portland, Oregon. For more information about me, please see my web page. If you have questions, comments, or just want to chat, you can send me e-mail. Or you can post a comment on my LiveJournal.

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12/30/04: David's Index for 2004

Novel words written: 77,431
Short story words written: 11,082
Notes, outline, and synopsis words written: 13,809
Blog words written: 32,168
Total words written: 134,490
Novel words edited out: 6,103
Net words written: 128,387

New stories written: 2
Existing stories revised: 2
Old stories trunked: 5

Short story submissions sent: 36
Responses received: 38
Acceptances: 7 (4 pro, 3 semi-pro)
Rejections: 30
Other responses: 1 (rewrite request)
Awaiting response: 5

Short stories published: 5
Short stories made available on Fictionwise.com: 6

Hugo nominations: 1
Campbell nominations: 1
Nebula preliminary ballot nominations: 1
Major awards won: 0
Honorable mentions in Dozois' Year's Best: 4

Novels completed: 1

Happy New Year!

Posted 12/30/2004 22:24 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 119459 | Since last entry: 0 | This month: -2718

In honor of the Solstice -- a phenomenon which has been going on since before there was life on this planet and will continue long after humanity has departed (assuming we don't blow the damn thing right out of its orbit) -- Kate and I celebrated in our usual fashion, with pepper-salted squid at Thien Hong and a movie (in this case Flight of the Phoenix -- a little implausible, perhaps, but I liked it).

We held a kitchenwarming party this weekend. Large numbers of people attended, from all our various interest groups (neighbors, co-workers, science fiction fans, writers, square dancers, and various others even more obscurely connected), and they all seemed to find something to talk about with each other. Many were the oohs and aahs over the new kitchen. We made and bought massive quantities of food and drink, which of course guaranteed that everyone would also bring plenty of same. I figure we're set for something to bring to the next five parties we attend.

No work on the novel since the last post. I have a pile of manuscripts to critique, but since putting the novel in the mail I've been focusing on various other holiday traditions, notably decorating the tree and buying presents for friends and relatives (just about done with that, unless I change my mind). One bit of writing news, though: my story "Tk'Tk'Tk" will be in the next issue of Asimov's.

Happy Solstice to all!

Posted 12/21/2004 22:55 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 119459 | Since last entry: -5467 | This month: -2718

In the last week, I...

...added a graphical "time map" to the top of each chapter to help the reader make sense of my unconventional timeline.

...went through the critique comments and made a list of things I wanted to do to the novel. Actually, I only looked at my notes from the oral critiques, and I only put the most important comments on the list. It was still eight pages long.

...went back and highlighted only the most significant issues. That was about half of them.

...did a quick red-pen edit of the manuscript. This was something half-way between Holly Lisle's one-pass revision method and Neil Gaiman's rather facetious six-step revision method and took most of three days.

...checked off about one-quarter of the items on the things-to-do list. Most of those were the simple ones, the ones that could be addressed by adding a sentence or a paragraph. The big ones, like almost all the ones under the heading "make the aliens more alien," remain undone for now.

...sat down and keyed in the red-pen edits, which took only half as long as the editing itself (still a couple long evenings' work, though -- I haven't had more than about 5 hours' sleep in a night this week).

...cut two complete scenes, several partial scenes, and a whole bunch of paragraphs, sentences, and words, for a net gain (by which I mean loss) of over 5000 words (4%). I am proud of this.

...reformatted the manuscript in Courier 12, printed it out, and sent it off to the novel workshop just under the deadline. 509 pages plus cover letter and synopsis. Go me!

So how do I feel about this significant accomplishment? See the title above: It Sucks. I have been looking at nothing but the flaws, missing details, missed opportunities, and most especially the petty, whiny, reactive, boring characters in this novel for the last week, and of the dozens and dozens of changes I wanted to make to address those flaws I was only able to make the simplest 25%.

But. There were also many positive comments (about as large, and welcome, a percentage of the total as the raisins in raisin bran, but critique is focused on the areas for improvement) and at least I am done with the damn thing for a while. And I did feel a sense of accomplishment as I put the tightly-wrapped manuscript in the mail.

Next: catch up with everything else in my life, which has been on hold for the last week. Then start in on critiques for the other novels in the workshop.

Posted 12/15/2004 22:39 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 124926 | Since last entry: 58 | This month: 2749

I had a number of things to do this evening. The main one was to write a list of things to do, and watch out for, during my quick revision pass. (It has to be in the mail by next Wednesday, aiee.)

I started with my file of miscellaneous notes (which I haven't added to in months) and the notes I have written at the top of some chapter files. While I was looking at those chapter notes I decided to go ahead and put all the chapters in one file.

It took me, fundamentally, all evening to do that -- put all the chapters in one file, in the right order, with consistent formatting and spacing.

The file is 893 KB. It's 317 pages long -- with 1" margins in 10-point Times New Roman. It'd be 532 pages in industry-standard 12-point Courier, which is what I'm going to have to do for submission, but since this printout is just for me I'd rather save paper with the smaller font.

Oof. No wonder it took two years.

Next steps: Look at the notes from all my chapter critiques and finish the to-do list. Print the giant document out. Start revising.

I think my little WinCE device may not be up to the task.

Posted 12/08/2004 22:15 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 124868 | Since last entry: 126 | This month: 2691

I made a few edits to the last chapter and epilogue before printing them out and giving them to my crit group. Also got my crits on the previous chapter, chapter I (that's letter "eye," not Roman numeral one); generally positive.

That was Friday and Saturday. Now it's Tuesday. I seem to have spent the intervening time commuting back and forth between my to-do list at work and my to-do list at home (a mix of novel-related, kitchen-related, and general life stuff like groceries and laundry). Tonight I folded large quantities of laundry and did the thing of going through the last couple of sets of critiques and recycling all the pages with no marks on them. Not exciting, but necessary. During these tasks I also watched a couple of truly Godawful reality shows. Another reminder, if one were needed, why I so rarely watch television.

Next step is to go through all the critiques and my various notes to myself from the last year and make a to-do list of changes to make during the editing pass. I'll have to prioritize it, because there's not enough time to do everything I want to do.

Yes, one of the items on my to-do list is to make a to-do list. Truly I am lame.

Oh, as long as I'm here I thought I would share with you something that came to me in the shower this morning:

Blade runner, that replicant's after you
Blade runner, if he catches you you're through

That Roy Baty is really a crazy clown
When will he learn that he never can mow him down?
Poor little blade runner never bothers anyone
Just huntin' down a skin-job's his idea of havin' fun

Posted 12/07/2004 23:27 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 124742 | Since last entry: 1482 | This month: 2565

Okay, now it really is all over, including the shouting.

I thought I'd finished the penultimate scene in the last chapter yesterday, but when I woke up this morning (at 5am, after going to sleep at midnight, oy) I realized the villain had been defeated too easily. So tonight I extended that scene with about five hundred words of serious physical action. Then I wrote the anticlimax, as planned, and dove right in and wrote the epilogue too: 775 words. I thought it would be brief, but I wonder if it's too brief. And the very last sentence seems kind of weak.

But... it's done. The first draft is all done. One hundred twenty-four thousand seven hundred and forty-two words (plus about 87,000 words of notes, outlines, and journal entries) in just under two years. I still have some summary and synopsis stuff remaining to do, but...

I wrote a novel.

I WROTE A NOVEL!

Falling over now. Thud.

Posted 12/02/2004 23:39 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 123260 | Since last entry: 1083 | This month: 1083

It's all over now but the shouting. Dozens of bodies on the floor, including several main characters. Blood everywhere. Just a short anticlimax left to write, explaining how the few survivors make it home, and the last chapter's done.

The last chapter. Done.

And I just killed off... someone I've spent the last two years with.

Jeez.

It was a good death, I think. Deserved, but not unredeemed.

I've been planning this moment for so long... I've had this scene in mind for months, maybe in some form all the way back to the beginning. (Yep -- I just checked, and this character's death was in the "Sketch a Novel in an Hour" outline I did at OryCon in 2002, though I didn't know then exactly how it would happen.) So it's not unexpected, and I'm not particularly upset about it.

I think?

At the moment it's nearly midnight and I do have to sleep. Maybe I'll cry later. Maybe not.

Good night, sweet prince.

Posted 12/01/2004 23:57 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 122177 | Since last entry: 1210 | This month: 9995

Back from a long weekend in Seattle and Vancouver, where we visited with relatives, had at least three Thanksgiving dinners that couldn't be beat, and did much square dancing. Weather was great and I only gained two pounds for the weekend. Thanks to Will and Grant for their hospitality, and to Jeremy for taking me out for a late lunch on Sunday.

I generally managed to write a couple hundred words a day, which is really unusual for me when traveling and brings my total for the month to a very respectable figure of almost ten thousand words. I got Jason and Sienna safely into orbit, where Green Hills soldiers menace them with maser pistols as they prepare to take them to Raptor. Only one scene to go, I think, in this final chapter -- probably about a thousand words -- and then I just have a brief epilog to write, plus the usual summary of the previous chapter, before Saturday's critique group meeting. I might not get the epilog written in time, but I'm going to try.

Preparations have begun for the novel workshop in January. I need to send out the complete novel to two people, plus chapters and outline to five, by December 15. I won't have time to do much more than a very cursory editing pass, unfortunately. Then I'll have two complete novels and five chapters-and-outlines to critique by January 15. Plus all that holiday stuff. Whee. But the workshop itself should be a lot of fun.

One other bit of good news: I sold another story to Realms of Fantasy. It's "The Ecology of Faerie," AKA "the one with the frogs," which I originally wrote for The Faerie Reel and then nearly sold to the Usborne YA Fantasy anthology. This is my first YA story sale, a sweet and gentle tale of magic and batrachians which nonetheless is a bit of a horror story as well. It's also the first time I've sold a second story to the same market.

Posted 11/30/2004 23:03 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 120967 | Since last entry: 2274 | This month: 8785

Eighteen hundred words tonight! Plumped down in my writing chair right after dinner and didn't get up until I'd written a scene in which Clarity and Jason launch into space, lasers blasting all around them, as they move into orbit for their final confrontation with Raptor. Zowie! And a million toy balloons save the day. That last detail is something I hadn't had in mind until just today, when I realized that the ordinary human populace (represented by Garrett) had to have a part to play at the climax. It also solved a plot problem without unnecessary violence. I'm quite proud of it.

And in case I don't get to post tomorrow... Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted 11/23/2004 23:00 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 118693 | Since last entry: 672 | This month: 6511

So much for writing every day in November. I just missed two days in a row, and only got any writing in today through sheer cussedness (200 words during intermission at the symphony).

But the kitchen looks gorgeous -- we spent most of the weekend shopping and unpacking. We have most of the pots and pans in place, all of the spices, and most of the sauces. We bought a very nice teak step stool (necessary now, because we've made all the cabinets taller to compensate for the decreased width that gives us more elbow room) and a gorgeous, gorgeous bamboo cutting board which will live on the granite countertop because it is so very pretty. But we gave up on finding the telephone we wanted locally and ordered it from the web.

Okay, I admit it -- I am a good little consumer. New posessions make me happy. But we've also put a lot of old stuff in the "garage sale" box as we've been unpacking.

There has been much discussion of the question "where does this want to live?" for various objects -- we can't put everything back where it was in the old kitchen -- and all the answers are provisional and subject to change. But the new layout is very, very practical; it works exactly the way we hoped it would when we laid it out, as we found when we prepared fried rice tonight. Kate was easily able to reach the spices without getting in my way at the stove. Also, the bright halogen lighting in the new stove hood makes everything on the stove look delicious and wonderful. I feel like I'm in a cooking show. We have never had any kind of lighting over the stove, believe it or not, and have been cooking in our own shadows as long as we've been together.

Posted 11/21/2004 23:05 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 118021 | Since last entry: 907 | This month: 5839

Nothing yesterday. Tonight, wrote a scene with Jason and Clarity, in which they establish that they no longer love each other, but they do trust each other, despite everything. This sets up Jason dumping a bit of information on Clarity which she is not yet in a position to understand. I have to keep some surprises for the very end...

Only a couple thousand words to go. It feels almost like a short story now, apart from the seventeen tons of backstory providing momentum. Jo Walton says something about the arrowhead and the shaft, which I cannot quite comprehend at the moment but I think it may be relevant.

Long day. Tired now. Going to sleep.

Posted 11/17/2004 22:17 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 117114 | Since last entry: 1264 | This month: 4932

I haven't exactly written every day since my last post. Most of the weekend was spent on kitchen stuff -- we know exactly what we want in a garlic keeper, step stool, telephone, etc., which entails much going into stores, pointing, describing, and being met with blank looks. Despite this we did manage to obtain nearly half the objects on our list. We also unpacked several boxes, and tonight we achieved the triumph of the first meal cooked in our new kitchen! Okay, it was just a little sauteed onion and ground beef mixed with bottled pasta sauce, over bowtie pasta, with frozen corn warmed up in the new microwave. But we actually cooked! Our first home-cooked meal in over two months. And there was much rejoicing.

I have gotten some writing done, though, and most days that didn't have any writing in them had "writing-related activity," like writing the synopsis of the chapter 9 and copying chapter I for critique. I also got some feedback on chapter 9 (the crit group meeting was sparsely attended), generally positive though one critiquer said she wished Jason wasn't such a "cranky little man" and Clarity was "more of a fighter" (despite all the work I've put into them, sniff waah). But there's little to be done about those problems at this point, with just one chapter to go.

It continues to be the case (as it has since the very first critique at Wiscon last year) that nearly every reader has a different, strong opinion about which character is the best and which is the one they just want to drop-kick. I'd be happier if every reader liked every character (liked them as well-written characters, I mean -- some of them are pretty unlikeable as people) but I'm prepared to accept this mixed bag as an indication that the characters are at least complex enough for people to have different opinions about, depending on their individual perspectives. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Things are moving really, really fast now, plot-wise. I'm finding that the things that need to happen just whiz by, pieces slotting into place and the characters running as fast as they can to keep up. The chapter still might be a long one, but it might not. Most of the secrets I've been keeping from the reader (and, in a few cases, wondering about myself) for as much as two years are out in the open now, with just a couple of revelations to go (such as: Raptor's hidden motivation, though it might be obvious by now to some). I'm still not 100% sure how some details in the final climactic scene are going to play out, but at this point I'm confident it will shake out in the actual writing of it.

Must sleep now. 8am meetings every day this week, oh joy.

Posted 11/15/2004 23:18 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 115850 | Since last entry: 1684 | This month: 3668

I thought I finished the penultimate chapter yesterday. I was wrong. When I went to write the first scene of the final chapter I realized it had to be told from Jason's PoV, so I went back and stuck it at the end of the previous chapter. Also wrote 200+ more words of notes in the final chapter.

Sienna surprised me tonight with a Han-Soloish self-centered mercenary act. But, given the way I'd treated her, it was the appropriate thing for her to do. I couldn't just leave her standing around, anyway. And she made it up to Jason at the end.

Also tonight: started unpacking boxes in the new kitchen! Woo hoo! There are still a few details to take care of -- we're still waiting for the screen door and faucet handles, the countertops need to be refinished, and the microwave turned out to be too big for the space designed for it (oops). But everything else is done, so we're moving back in. Yay!

Posted 11/10/2004 23:28 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 114166 | Since last entry: 938 | This month: 1984

Usually I post here whenever I write -- if you haven't heard from me lately, you can assume I haven't been writing. But in this case I have been plugging away, generally in the last half-hour or hour before going to bed (and going to bed way later than I should) so I haven't had a chance to post about it.

I have been successful in writing a little something every day. I've done a couple hundred words most days, except for Sunday night after OryCon when I managed just 41 words in a bleary half-hour before I admitted I was too tired to produce anything useful. But bit by bit I have reached the end of the chapter. It's a short one, but intense, and it ends with the reunion of the main characters of the two plot threads. I will look the chapter over tomorrow and maybe tweak it a bit before printing it for Saturday's critique. Only one (long!) chapter and an epilogue remains now.

On Saturday night of the con I didn't do anything on the novel, but I stayed up until 2am with Sara outlining a story tentatively titled "The Push-Button Unicorn." This is an idea that I had some time ago which I decided should be a collaboration, because Sara knows more about horses than I ever will but has little experience with short stories. We're both really excited about this story.

The convention was generally good. I had a full house of about 20 people for my reading on Friday afternoon, with reasonable crowds for all the panels and other items I was on. I got in some good lines at several of them, like the comment at the Mad Scientists panel on the Fantastic Method (regular scientists use the Scientific Method, which involves many experiments with a mix of successes and failures, while mad scientists use the Fantastic Method, in which you do one big experiment at the end of the book -- if you're the hero, it succeeds, and if you're the villain, it fails). I was also in Opening Ceremonies (in which I died four times) and Whose Line, and though I thought neither of them went particularly well I had people coming up to me all weekend saying they'd hurt themselves laughing. Go figure.

I also signed about a half-dozen copies of the zeppelin anthology. Add that to the half-dozen I signed at World Fantasy, and the fact that Wrigley-Cross Books in the dealers' room sold out (18 copies), and you can tell that this book is generating some real excitement. I'm so happy to be in it, and I'm looking forward to reading the other stories.

The downside of the con was that I was so busy on programming and such that I missed many of my friends and barely got lunch at all. But I did have many good dinners and conversations and hugs, and racked up a sleep deficit that will take weeks to repay, so it must have been a good con. And I just found out today that an editor to whom I pitched this novel three years ago is still interested in it, and is actually in a position to buy more fiction now than he was then. Opportunity! Gulp!

But now to bed.

Posted 11/09/2004 23:44 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 113228 | Since last entry: 1046 | This month: 1046

I started and deleted several journal entries today, trying to express my rage and anguish over the elections, but in the end I decided that everything I wanted to say had already been said by others, in the blogs and LiveJournals I've been reading obsessively for the last several days. My failure to come up with anything I thought worth posting might be partially explained by the fact that I went to sleep around midnight and snapped awake at 4:30. Heck of a way to go into a convention (OryCon starts tomorrow).

So today I decided to withdraw from the political world for a while. I listened to music on the radio, not news, and when I got home from work to find Kate, home from Phoenix at long-awaited last, I said "let's watch The Court Jester." And so we did; yea, verily, yea. There were substantial bits in there that neither of us remembered; I wonder if we've ever watched the disc before?

After the movie I wrote on my novel. It feels so pointless, and yet in some ways it is therapeutic, because (see the entries from way back around the beginning of 2002) this novel is in part about my anger with the lies and manipulations of those in power and the idiocy of the general public. And besides, it's NaNoWriMo, and though I'm not formally "doing" NaNoWriMo, my goal is to write a little something every day and I didn't even miss Election Day. So I wrote another couple hundred words, for a total of over 1000 words in the first three days of the month. Slow and steady is the way to make progress.

Slow and steady. And don't forget to breathe.

Oh, one tiny bit of good news: I just sold Swedish rights for "The Tale of the Golden Eagle" to magazine Nova Science Fiction.

Posted 11/03/2004 22:40 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 112182 | Since last entry: 2327 | This month: 9721

The above word count represents a half-chapter written on the plane to and from World Fantasy Convention. The "this month" total is for October. WFC report coming soon. Must sleep now...

Oh, and though I am not doing NaNoWriMo I have decided to write something every day. And it would be a shame to break the streak on day 1. So after writing the above paragraph I just wrote about 200 words (not reflected in the word count at the top of this entry). And now I really am going to go to sleep.

But first, one more thing:

VOTE!

Posted 11/01/2004 23:27 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 109855 | Since last entry: 487 | This month: 7394

I promised myself I would really, truly start on the next chapter right away instead of waiting a week or more. I promised myself it didn't have to be good, and it didn't have to be much, I just had to start.

I've started. It's not good, and it's not much, but I started. Jason and Sienna are on the train headed back to New York.

The outline for this chapter seems kind of thin, and I'm wondering if there's really whole chapter in it. But I seem to recall I felt the same about the previous chapter at this stage, so I'm prepared to see what comes of it.

Got my critiques on the previous chapter yesterday. There were a few suggestions about raising tension (the consensus is that the computer hacking scenes went on just a bit long) but really people don't seem to have much to say about the big issues -- everyone's just hanging on for the ride at this point. I hope they like the destination when we arrive there.

Posted 10/24/2004 22:14 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 109368 | Since last entry: 1787 | This month: 6907

And in one great burst of writing I finish the chapter, with a long scene in which all Clarity's plans collapse in flames. Things couldn't be worse for Clarity now, which is perfect because there's just two chapters left to go: one Jason chapter and one which is currently planned to be a Clarity chapter. I'm thinking of either breaking that one in three (Clarity, Jason, Clarity) or doing alternating viewpoints within the chapter -- something I've never done before, but the last chapter is a special place and might not have to follow all the rules. In either case I have about six weeks for all that plus the epilogue. Fortunately it's all outlined.

Also, the kitchen is really coming together now, with countertops and tile and crown molding and it is just looking completely nifty!! See kateyule's LiveJournal for photos.

I'm pleased. Very, very tired, but pleased.

Posted 10/21/2004 22:56 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 107581 | Since last entry: 305 | This month: 5120

Went to a voting party tonight. Here in Oregon we vote by mail (everyone, every election) -- ballots went out last week and are due by November 2. So some friends convened a potluck to get together, talk about some of the more confusing ballot measures, and fill out our ballots. It was way keen -- Kate pointed out that now she's certain she hasn't voted for any person or measure who looks good on the surface but has a nasty surprise buried inside. On the way back from the party we dropped off our ballots at the county elections office.

Wrote a little bit after coming home from the party -- I'm tired, tired, tired, after several very busy days at work (with no end in sight this week) but I need to keep plugging away if I'm going to make my next deadline (this Saturday). I wrote the beginning of the last scene in the chapter, in which protestors begin to gather around the Platforms. Lots of tell here, rather than show, but it would be insane for Clarity to be in the middle of this situation. I'll strive for it to be as visceral as possible as things wind up to a fever pitch, though.

Posted 10/20/2004 22:52 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 107276 | Since last entry: 1186 | This month: 4815

I attended a funeral today, of one of my apartment-mates from college. Even though we lived in the same city after graduation, I didn't keep in touch with him; I think the last time we saw each other might have been at my wedding, 13 years ago. He passed away suddenly this weekend, of a massive heart attack. We were the same age.

I really ought to spend more time with my friends.

A good evening's writing, though. I wrote a scene in which... a major character dies. I swear, that's what came next in the outline. And I don't think the real funeral had any impact on the actual death scene, because the characters' relationship to each other was completely different from my own situation. But it is weird. Very weird.

I also used this scene to summarize the plans that the characters have made in the last couple of days, leading up to the massive assault to follow. Because, even though this is some pretty heavy action, it's not really important to the main questions of the plot.

One scene left to go in the chapter. It's a biggie.

I spent far too much time looking at a map of the world's largest cities and an earth/moon/sun map viewer (Home Planet) trying to figure out the best time for a simultaneous worldwide strike on December 13, 2051. Turns out that, even with today's population, 8am UTC (3am New York time) is the best time for most of the 24 biggest cities -- it's just before dawn for London and Rio and just after sunset for Tokyo, with most of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia in daylight. Only North and Central America, with 3 of the top 24 cities, are in the middle of their night. The situation will be even more heavily weighted to Asia and Africa by midcentury.

Well, isn't that going to make things interesting for Clarity...

Posted 10/18/2004 23:08 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 106090 | Since last entry: 1860 | This month: 3629

Usually I post an entry here every day I write something, but in the past few days things have been better for writing than posting. So, by dint of plugging away, a few hundred words on an okay day and a thousand words on a good day, I've got 1800 words since the last entry, for a total of 3500 words in the chapter so far.

And it's war. Civil war between two factions of the aliens.

I didn't know it was going to be war, but there really wasn't any alternative. As soon as Clarity and company realized what Raptor had in mind, how great the stakes had gotten, an all-out military assault became the only sane alternative. I realized this by thinking about the question "given what he plans anyway, why doesn't Raptor just..." and realizing there was no reason he couldn't, or wouldn't. And my main characters also know this, so they have to stop him by any means possible. And the means remaining to them are pretty slim.

One good thing about this situation is that it really allows Clarity to show what she's capable of. She's uncertain whether she's doing the right thing, of course -- as any sane person would be -- but she doesn't let that stop her from taking action. And when a confrontation came with one of her Councilors -- a confrontation I'd planned to end with him storming out, to show just how tenuous her support was -- damn if she didn't deliver a speech so rousing that he just had to stick around. It wouldn't have been fair to her to let him go. Just as well, she has plenty of other forces ranged against her, as she'll be finding out before the end of the chapter.

At this point I'm wondering just how much violence is actually going to occur when things really start to roll, and how much of it to show on the page. I recently read Metropolitan by Walter Jon Williams, where a really massive campaign is waged on the other side of the world while our hero, central to it though she may be, watches on television. This may be the only way to convey something this big in a story that is, fundamentally, about two little people in a great big crazy mixed-up world. So I may wrap up the actual fighting part of the war in just a couple thousand words. Or it might drag on in some form until the end of the book.

Writing is full of surprises, let me tell you. Anything could happen.

Posted 10/17/2004 19:27 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 104230 | Since last entry: 350 | This month: 1769

Some progress tonight, not as much as I'd hoped. Too many other things to do... many of which didn't really need doing, but I did them anyway. I spent quite a bit of my writing time going back and adding details to what I'd written already, and continuing to work out the outline for the last few chapters. Questions I've had for almost two years about exactly how the story ends are falling into place, and Clarity's going to really kick ass and take names.

Meanwhile, the universe being what it is, my whine in the last entry knocked loose a response... a rejection, 346 days on a short-short. At least it was an encouraging rejection. This was the first story I wrote at Clarion, over four years ago, and it's already been just about everywhere that I thought might want it (which is why it was at a market known to have response times up to a year). Into the trunk it goes. But I still hold out some hope for some of the other stories still out there.

Some good news, though: I've now seen the cover for All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, and it's fan-freaking-tastic. The book will launch at World Fantasy Con, Halloween weekend, so I've put up a page about my story (including the cover) here.

Posted 10/14/2004 22:29 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 103880 | Since last entry: 493 | This month: 1419

Hare reveals her reasons for returning, which are not as altrustic as Clarity had expected. Nor, frankly, as I'd expected. But when I actually wrote the speech I realized that Hare's priorities are not Clarity's and the thing that would drive her over the edge is not what matters most to Clarity, or to the reader. This way also will help to drive Jason harder in the following chapter.

Meanwhile, I'm getting antsy for responses to short story submissions from a couple of markets that have been sitting on stories a lot longer than usual, plus another market that is known for long response times but this is getting ridiculous. I hope these long response times are indicative of good news, but I know that isn't always the case. (Whine, whine, whine.)

Posted 10/12/2004 22:28 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 103387 | Since last entry: 752 | This month: 926

Some more re-outlining today, making sure that all the pieces are in place for the grand finale. There's a lot of stuff that has to happen in the last three chapters, and I think I now have all of the spring-loaded bits stuffed in where they need to be, but I'm not convinced that the amount of time in the outline is plausible for it to happen -- but other factors require that it can't be extended. Well, maybe some things happen faster in the future.

Then I actually (huzzah!) began adding text to the chapter again. Seven hundred new words in which Hare returns, by helicopter. She is greeted with suspicion by all but Clarity, so I haven't gotten around yet to the first point in the revised outline, where she reveals the reason she came back. On the other hand, if I hadn't covered these suspicions and Clarity's reasons for believing Hare despite them, I'm sure that one of my critiquers (JWF) would have called me on it. And rightly so. Thanks to his comments I'm going to have to go back during rewrite and add much more suspicion and paranoia -- Clarity is just too trusting, and even if she is a little naive at the beginning of the book she'd be surrounded by people whose job is to keep her safe.

Speaking of paranoia... this weekend we saw the remake of The Manchurian Candidate, which I thought was actually a better film than the original. I came out of it realizing that, just as Blade Runner (the movie) looks like Neuromancer (the book), the new Manchurian Candidate looks like I want my book to look. It's got the New York setting, the movement from the corridors of power to the most squalid little apartments and back, the constant swirl of underlings around the powerful people at the center of the plot, the mix of white people and black people, the fact that you're never really sure who are the heroes and who are the villains... but this movie is a lot richer in detail, with a lot more motion and a lot more light and shadow than I've had in my mind while writing the book, which means my book probably won't look as good in the reader's mind as the movie does. I want to add more detail (more senses, too, not just sight and hearing), more motion, more chatter, more underlings. (It would help if I knew in a more personal way what New York is like. But I don't think I can justify a field trip just now.)

We also watched the last bit of Angels in America on tape. The dialogue is wonderful... elliptical, indirect, contradictory, fragmentary. Very real. And the characters are so twisted, in many cases unlikeable, and yet sympathetic. No wonder it won all those Tonys and Emmys. We'd seen it in the theatre, but with the cinematography and special effects -- not to mention Meryl Streep and Al Pacino -- the miniseries might be even better.

Meanwhile, the kitchen is starting to look like a kitchen again. See Kate's journal for more details and pictures.

Posted 10/10/2004 22:05 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 102635 | Since last entry: 174 | This month: 174

Spent the evening re-outlining the last 3 chapters, since my current outline for those chapters has gotten a little out of sync with what I've written and what I've got planned. It's hard to really internalize the idea that, after so many months of looking so far down the road to the end, it's now practically here. Suddenly there are so many loose ends to wrap up. And how the heck am I going to bring some of the necessary information on stage, given that the only people who know it wouldn't tell the viewpoint characters about it under any circumstances? I'm going to have to settle for letting my viewpoint characters make some clever deductions. In some cases they have almost all the information they need to do it; I do have one wild card I can play to bring a little more info on stage.

Now I know why the villain always brags about his fiendish plan while he has the hero tied up. It's the only way for the author to get that information onto the page/screen when only the villain knows it! I hope to avoid that cliche, though.

I will still have to figure out how Jason learns a key skill, how he can put that skill to use in just about no time, and how he determines that he has to be in the right place for his climax. (I think I have earned a little bit of implausibility.) But that's not for a couple of chapters, and my ideas on those questions are firmer than they were a few weeks ago. A solution will present itself in time, I'm sure.

Posted 10/04/2004 22:12 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 102461 | Since last entry: 2639 | This month: 11411

Item: Took the train to work today, so as to use time normally wasted in commuting on writing. It paid off handsomely, as you can see by the word count above.

Item: Passed 100,000 words, somewhere on the bus to work. Yay!

Item: Finished chapter H, with a day to spare. Yay! It's 8785 words, and probably could use a little trim off the sides, but it's not going to get it right now.

It's a funny thing, how you can write a scene where a character is just sitting around and you give him a little bit of business just so he has something to do. And then, a few scenes or chapters later, you discover that little bit of business turns out to have been exactly the set-up he needed for the big revelation that happens now. Either that, or the big revelation happens the way it happens because you had that little bit of business before. It's hard to tell which way the serendipity really runs, but it happened about three times today. The third one is a lulu, and ties together the two plot threads in a way I hadn't even thought about until about one paragraph before it came off my fingers. Now everyone is implicated in everything and there's plenty of guilt to go around. It's almost like Memento, where (spoiler ho!) Guy Pearce winds up pulling the wool over his own eyes.

Must sleep now. Many meetings tomorrow. Things are really heating up at work -- I'm a key player on at least three major projects in the next quarter. The good news is that I will get one or two additional people to help me; in exchange I'm supposed to mentor them. I'm feeling suspiciously responsible.

Posted 09/30/2004 23:25 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 99822 | Since last entry: 974 | This month: 8772

Wrote another full scene, in which Jason continues hacking on the FFL's mail server to try to find out who it was who set him up by providing the biocomputer documentation. A couple of big revelations coming soon. (They'd better be soon, I have to finish this chapter by Saturday!)

I sometimes wonder if these hacking scenes are interesting. Some readers really like them, and I know that this is an area that I can write as few other writers can (well, except for those who have been technical writers, and there are quite a few of those). I'll leave them in for now, and if feedback indicates they are boring I can trim them back.

I see that I will probably pass 100,000 words tomorrow. That's quite a milestone. There's probably 500-1500 words left in the current chapter, with 3 chapters and an epilogue after that, so we're still looking at about 115k-125k words for the completed first draft. That's within reason, though I'll have to focus on trimming down rather than adding as I revise.

Onward!

Posted 09/29/2004 23:07 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 98848 | Since last entry: 467 | This month: 7798

Spent much of the evening adding a new shelf to the CD bookcase -- a project we've meant to do for, oh, about twelve years, but Kate finally got around to buying all the pieces today and all I had to do was haul out the hammer and screwdrivers and Power Tools and install it. Grunt. That and getting dinner just about killed the evening; going out to eat every night is really time-consuming. I'll be glad when the kitchen is done.

Only about 300 words of actual new prose tonight; the rest is notes on the difficult question of "how the hell does Jason figure out what is really happening, given that everyone involved is hiding their part of the facts from everyone else?"

In this chapter Jason has to find answers to two key questions, one of which has been driving him for basically the whole novel and the other has turned his life upside down in the last couple of chapters. (Of course, those answers only make things harder.) I've figured out a way for him to find the answer to question 2: it involves him being the only person in the world who is in a position to see all the pieces at once, or having any reason to look. Finding the answer to question 1 is harder, but I had an important realization: if it's Sienna who holds the final link in the chain of evidence that leads to the answer, I can have her reveal it at the very end of this chapter, which gives that scene some needed oomph and also motivates a decision of hers that is otherwise rather inexplicable. So all I need is to figure out what that link is, and the other links will fall into place.

I think I'll have to futz with the calendar a little, since this chapter is outlined as taking place over three days and I'll need at least four for all the above to happen plausibly. Further calendar rejiggering will be required due to the fact that all of this is happening on Thanksgiving weekend, which just can't work (most businesses would be closed on Thanksgiving). Or should I have Sienna's key revelation happen at Jason and Sienna's squalid little impoverished two-person Thanksgiving dinner? Naah, too Hallmark, and besides I think it's better if it coincides with the rebellion that started on December 8 in the last Clarity chapter. That'll really bolt the two plot threads together.

Man, it's like juggling jigsaw puzzles in here. There's pieces all over the place. Good thing I still have that hammer...

Posted 09/27/2004 23:30 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

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.

Posted 09/26/2004 20:23 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

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.

Posted 09/23/2004 23:10 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

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.

Posted 09/19/2004 20:11 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

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.

Posted 09/16/2004 22:34 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

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.

Posted 09/14/2004 21:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 93678 | Since last entry: 43 | This month: 2628

Just a little bit of clean-up on the chapter today, but I got it formatted for critique and printed out, and I wrote the synopsis of the previous chapter (not counted as novel words) and printed that too. Then I critiqued one of two stories; one more crit to do and then I'm all set for tomorrow's critique session.

I heard back from Dean: I am definitely on for the January novel workshop. So now I must finish my novel by the first week in December. That means going a little faster than I have been managing -- 4 chapters and an epilogue in 12 weeks. I can do this. If I can go even faster than that I can do some revisions, too. So I will dive right in on the next chapter right away! (Yes, I've said this before, but now I have a deadline!)

I have photos from Noreascon and the kitchen remodel that I haven't gotten out of my camera's memory yet. Until then you can look at James Patrick Kelly's page for photos of me and some other "young turks." (I take no responsibility for any nightmares resulting from looking at the picture of me halfway down the page.)

Posted 09/10/2004 22:25 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 93635 | Since last entry: 1052 | This month: 2585

Well, I've come to an end for chapter 8. I didn't get all of the incidents I wanted into the chapter, but the last sentence I just wrote is so climactic that just about nothing can follow it. And the incidents that are missing either have to follow that chronologically or had to be left out of the place they were outlined because the character isn't emotionally ready for that incident to take place yet (it might never happen). So chapter 8 is done (sort of), at a decent length of 5244 words, in time for me to do my copying and write What Has Gone Before at work tomorrow. (Don't tell my boss.)

Meanwhile, I just learned today there is an opening in Dean Wesley Smith's next Novel Weekend. This is a chance to very seriously workshop a whole novel with a great bunch of people. Unfortunately, to attend I would have to have my novel finished by the first week in October, and after careful consideration and discussions with Kate I've decided that just isn't going to happen. There's about 20,000 words to go, we're in the middle of a major kitchen remodel, the day job's heating up, and we have to buy a new car. The most I've ever done in a month before this (apart from Clarion) is 13,000 words. So, alas, I told Dean I couldn't take the available workshop slot.

The next Novel Weekend deadline is in December, which is much saner. So I've asked Dean if I can get into that one instead.

Posted 09/09/2004 23:39 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 92583 | Since last entry: 0 | This month: 1533

Friday, continued: I arrived at the bar to find Jay Lake, Laura Anne Gilman, Keith R. A. DeCandido, and Janna Silverstein already set up and ready to go for the Two Beers And A Story Challenge, along with a number of onlookers and supporters (including Aynjel -- who would have been my Clarion East classmate if I hadn't gone West -- and Jay's agent Jennifer Jackson). The rules of the Challenge were simple: write a complete short story in the time it takes to finish two beers.

If you know me, you'll know that I can usually finish a novel more quickly than I can finish a beer. But in this case we had the cheering crowd shouting "Drink!" every minute or two, and by the time I reached the end of my 864-word opus, a Bradburyesque little horror tale titled "Moonlight on the Carpet," I found I had downed a full pint of Sam Adams and two-thirds of another. Not to mention participating in the singing, trash-talking, telling of rude jokes, and other miscellaneous hilarity (including the mating call of the Giant Clam). We were having way more fun than the whole rest of the bar put together, from the sound of it.

Janna, alas, suffered a Macintosh meltdown and had to compose her story on Aynjel's Palm Pilot, which added to the stress with a wonderfully intuitive user interface (Command-Q to save?!) and a battery that threatened to expire at any moment, but nonetheless she finished her SF erotica story. Laura Anne's battery did give out before her story did, but she still produced 1000 words of a peachy SF action tale. Jay was the first to finish, with a bizarre story of whales invading the land, but Keith's story, all in dialogue, was the longest. We read them all aloud at the end and I was amazed that in that raucous atmosphere we had produced five stories that were not merely entertaining, but actually good -- maybe even salable. Jennifer suggested we should produce an anthology to benefit the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund, but if that doesn't happen I think I'm going to send mine to F&SF.

We shut down our computers and repaired to Frank Wu's party, still going strong, but I was tired and tipsy enough that I decided to bail out after a fairly short time. I thanked Frank for his hospitality, ate one last chocolate-covered pretzel (love 'em), and went to bed.

Saturday I breakfasted with some of my Writers of the Future classmates (Carl Fredrick, Pat Rothfuss, Tom Brennan, Jae Brim, and Ari Goelman) at the Trident Bookstore/Cafe, while Kate ran off to Neil Gaiman's reading. My WotF class is a great bunch and I predict you will hear these names again. We spent a couple of hours chatting over pancakes and omelets, and on the way back to the con we stopped and talked with Jenn Reese and Greg Van Eekhout as they ate at a sidewalk cafe.

In the afternoon I attended one panel, called "Is It Fair?" with Carl moderating editors Scott Edelman, Shawna McCarthy, Sheila Williams, and author Resa Nelson in a discussion of who gets published in the magazines and why. It was a fairly standard panel, but I attended because I had never met either Shawna (Realms of Fantasy) or Sheila (Asimov's) before and I wanted to gain any insights I could about what they are looking for. Shawna mentioned that she doesn't like stories about talking cats, but I pointed out that she did buy one from me about a talking giraffe. I introduced myself to both editors after the panel; Sheila looks like no one in particular, but Shawna has the most intense eyes.

After that I headed off to the Hugo rehearsal, which for the nominees was really straightforward: if your name is called, you come up to the stage this way and leave the stage that way. "It may seem simple, but the only person last year who didn't practice it was the only person who stumbled as they came on stage." So I did. And it was at that moment I began to be nervous. Up until the rehearsal I'd simply assumed that I wasn't going to win, but standing on that stage in front of all those empty chairs I thought there might perhaps be a chance. I talked for a while with designated Plokta accepter Caroline Mullan before running off to my next panel, "Great Cliches in SF and Fantasy."

I was the moderator for this one, which meant I had to hurry to the green room to pick up the table tents before the panel started. Don D'Ammassa, Craig Gardner, and Josepha Sherman all did their parts, but S.M. Stirling, despite being somewhat ill, was the star of the panel, illuminating the discussion of cliches old and new (they do have their uses -- especially if you are aware of them and use them to twist the reader's expectations rather than letting them take control of your story) with plenty of examples from history. I learned a lot from him.

When that panel ended it was 3:00 and I hadn't had a thing to eat since pancakes at 10, so I took myself over to the food court in the adjacent shopping mall and, in a sudden attack of machismo, ordered chicken vindaloo. It was hot enough that it made my stomach a bit upset, a problem I don't usually have and really didn't need right before the Hugos. Fortunately I had enough time to dash back to the room and take some Pepto-Bismol before my next panel appearance: "Bad Con Advice for Newbies" with Sandra McDonald, Laurie Mann, and Pricila Olson. This was a really humorous mix of actual congoing advice couched in negative terms (e.g. "if anything goes wrong, yell at the volunteers -- they appreciate the feedback") and convention horror stories. I got a great laugh by saying, in the middle of a comment from the audience, "Don't interrupt!" -- and, a minute later, "Don't interrupt again!"

After that it was time to change for the Hugos. But Lyda Morehouse had offered to sneak me into the Ace party and introduce me to her agent, an opportunity I couldn't pass up. So I wandered through the habitrails of the shopping mall to the Marriott, where I talked with Lyda, Leah Cutter, and several other keen author-type people as well as the agent, Martha Millard. She said Lyda had said many nice things about me, for which I am thoroughly grateful. But I couldn't hang around long. I hurried back over the skybridge and through the mall to my room, where I changed into my Nervous Suit. (Whenever I wear this tux, no matter what I'm doing -- getting married, attending the Hugos, or Writers of the Future -- I feel nervous. It's gotta be the suit.)

Kate wasn't back yet, having gone to Cambridge for the afternoon, but somehow I managed to dress myself without help (hey, you think French cuffs are easy?) and headed down to the Hugo reception, where I found Paulette Rouselle and Amy Sisson from my Clarion class, along with Amy's husband Paul and every glittering star in the science fiction firmament. I munched very good hors d'ouvres and drank Kaluha and cream, my tipple of choice when someone else is paying, while talking with authors and editors and agents and big-name fans, all wearing their spiffiest outfits except for Gordon Van Gelder, who was dressed as a "working editor" in a blue-collar shirt. He advised me to think about who I wanted least to win the awards I was up for and imagine they had already won it -- after that, whatever happened would have to be an improvement. Fellow Campbell nominee Tim Pratt introduced me to his agent Ginger Clark, and the photographer from Locus made sure to get pictures of everyone.

We all trooped down to the auditorium and took our seats in the nominees' section. Kate and I (she had showed up during the reception, as promised, looking great) wanted to sit next to Jay Lake but wound up in front of him, in a pair of seats in the very front row with an empty space (for a wheelchair) marked out in tape on either side. At one point someone from the committee tried to boot us out of the front row to make room for Fredrik Pohl, but Charlie Brown of Locus told him Fred wasn't coming. I owe him one.

And then... the awards ceremony. Neil Gaiman was a wonderful emcee, but what I remember most is that my hands were cold as ice and I probably did serious damage to Kate as my grip tightened before the winner in each of my categories was announced. Jay was a real mensch; he thanked me in his Campbell acceptance speech, which was well above and beyond, and put his hand on my shoulder during that endless trembling moment before the Short Story Hugo announcement.

So how do I feel about losing two Hugos (even though one of them wasn't really a Hugo)? As I said to many people the next day, "Apart from the bitter, clawing jealousy and rage I'm just fine." (And when Jay was in earshot I added "...and I'll get that bastard Lake if it's the last thing I do.") But it really is an honor just to be nominated -- even though I was just about ready to smack the 50th person who said that to me the next day. And I did come in second on the Campbell, which is nice.

All of us Hugo Losers were ushered to the top of the Sheraton, where a suite had been decorated all in white, with faceless white masks hanging from white helium balloons and slide projectors flicking SF quotes on the walls and ceilings. It was, frankly, bizarre. But the food was good, and I had a nice talk with George R. R. Martin and Michael Swanwick among others (hey, wait a minute, he's a Hugo Winner -- who let him in here?). When that party got too crowded we adjourned to the Baen party at the other end of the floor, where we met Ted Cogswell's daughter and her husband, artist David Mattingly, and looked at 3-D pictures until we fell over about 1am.

By the way, here are my notes for my acceptance speech: Pat Murphy - Gordon Van Gelder - David Hartwell - Jonathan Strahan - Candas Jane Dorsey - Jim Van Pelt - James Patrick Kelly - Lyda Morehouse - Clarion West class of 2000 - Writers of the Future class of 2002 - Lucky Lab Rats critique group - and, always and forever, Kate Yule.

Sunday we decided on a quick breakfast in the hotel, but when we couldn't even get someone to seat us in the hotel restaurant we gave that up as a bad idea and settled for a latte and muffin at Starbuck's instead. There we ran into writer Mary Rosenblum (meeting there with her agent, Martha Millard) and Diane Duane & Peter Morwood, who told us all about raising Hermes scarves for fun and profit.

After breakfast I attended a couple of panels, on titles and books that died despite everything, then went off to my Kaffeeklatch. I didn't have high expectations for this -- I'd put all my self-publicity efforts into my reading -- and I wasn't surprised to find that no one had signed up for it. But while I was waiting for the table to be cleaned I met someone I knew -- Marcia Lambert and her husband. Marcia and I went to the same university, though in different colleges; we didn't meet until our 20th reunion when we sat next to each other at dinner. As long as there was an empty table with my name on it, we sat down at it to chat, and after a little while two more people joined us: Tricia Liburd, a new writer from Toronto whom I'd met at Torcon, and a complete stranger. So the kaffeeklatch turned out to be a success after all.

In the afternoon I talked with Ctein and with Seattle fan Dave Howell, who used his artist ribbon to get me past the line of people waiting to get into the art show when it reopened after the auction, then gave me a whirlwind tour. If he hadn't done that I might not have seen the art show at all, because I soon had to run off to my final panel, "The Great Character Swap." Which was, frankly, lame. But it still had a decent crowd, as did all of my panels, so I shouldn't complain.

After that I met up with Kate and with Tom Brennan, Lyda Morehouse, and techie Hugh Daniel ("How many wires are there in a wireless network?") for tapas. Tom, from Liverpool, thought at first we were proposing a "topless" restaurant, and Lyda, from St. Paul, had never had tapas before, so it was a bit of an adventure, but the food (tapas, in case you don't know, is Spanish for "many delicious little appetizer-like fiddly bits") was excellent, as was the conversation.

As we walked back from dinner, Lyda and I quizzed each other and determined that neither of us knew of any cool pro parties. We went to her room, met her roommates, and called several people in search of the cool kids, but it seemed that none of the cool kids were throwing a party this evening. So Kate and I went to the SFWA suite instead. It had been so crowded and noisy the night before that it had been shut down by con security, but on Sunday night (possibly because of the previous night's fracas, or maybe just because everyone was still at the Masqerade) it was quite pleasant -- neither jam-packed nor empty. I talked with fellow Hugo loser James Patrick Kelly about how Jay Lake's careers and mine have paralleled each other; he compared us to Silverberg and Ellison (without saying which was who) and offered to blurb my collection when I have one. I also talked with Shawna McCarthy again, but this time in her agent hat.

Eventually we left, to wander the halls and check out the bid parties, but they were all Too Full (Montreal) or Too Empty (SFF.Net). Carl Fredrick ran into me in the hall and said it was probably for the best that I hadn't won. Finally we landed in the bar, where we talked with some of the Writers of the Future folks (Pat Rothfuss said he'd recently had his best Internet shopping day ever, buying a strait jacket, a Latin textbook, and eight pounds of granular caffeine) and Tor assistant editor Liz Gorinsky as well as Tall Duane from Seattle's University Bookstore. But, at last, fatigue set in and with many hugs and fond farewells we toddled off to bed.

Monday. Packed. Ran into Clarion grad Diana Sherman in the lobby, otherwise saw no one we knew until we got to the airport, where we found Portland fan Ariel Shattan and her family, Lyda Morehouse, and Lyda's friend Tim were all on our flight (Lyda and Tim got off at Minneapolis). Kate rented a DVD player for the trip; I slept, and finished reading Heaven by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart. I really should have written something on the flight, but my brain was too full. I also noticed I had a bit of a scratchy throat, which I hoped was just from dry air and too much talking, but by the time we got home there was no doubt I had caught a mild case of Convention Crud, and the next morning it was clear that Kate had too. At least it didn't get in the way of the con itself.

And then Tuesday morning, bright and early, the remodelers came and tore out the kitchen. But that's a story for another day.

Posted 09/08/2004 22:25 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 92583 | Since last entry: 1533 | This month: 1533

Teresa Neilsen Hayden famously said of the San Antonio Worldcon that it had too much white space. This con wasn't like that, at least not for me: it was quite comfortably packed with content from margin to margin, all in neat rows and columns. Everywhere I went I found keen people to talk with and interesting things to do, and all the scheduled items happened exactly where, when, and with whom they were supposed to. (Admittedly, I didn't go to the Masquerade.)

Wednesday was our travel day. On our flight to Minneapolis, by chance we found ourselves in a half-row just abaft of First Class, with tons of legroom, a handy little cupboard for our carryons, and our own video screen. Later, in conversation with Duane (the 6' 6" manager of Seattle's University Bookstore) I discovered this is called a "bulkhead row" and giving it to a person as short as me should be a crime. But it was terribly pleasant, and I got almost 700 words written on my novel.

We arrived in Boston without incident, to find the airport under construction (so what else is new?) and there was no clear indication where to catch the shuttle to our hotel. But we did eventually find one, complete with a couple of fans already on board, and soon arrived at the Sheraton, where we stood in the short Starwood Preferred Guest line and got a room with a great view on the 25th floor. Kate was a little guilty that we got such a nice room by virtue of traveling a lot, but I pointed out that anyone can become a Starwood Preferred Guest just by filling out a form -- it's free. Maybe we didn't really belong in that line?

Once we had dumped our bags in the room, we went off in search of dinner and soon found nearby Steve's Greek Restaurant, and Bay Area fans Spike Parsons and Tom Becker and their friends Ruth and Ian. The waitress very kindly reconfigured the tables to let us all sit together, and the food was delish. Then, on returning, we ran into my Writers of the Future twin Carl Fredrick in the lobby. While we were standing there talking, we were joined at various times by Amy Sisson from Clarion, Tom Brennan from Writers of the Future, Ariel Shattan from Portland, Janice Murray and Alan Rosenthal from Seattle, Hope Leibowitz from Toronto, and many others. As I explained to Tom, whose first Worldcon this was, this is my typical Worldcon experience: getting about six feet in the door (of the hotel, dealers' room, party, bathroom, etc.) and immediately becoming engaged in a two-hour conversation with an ever-mutating group of friends old and new.

Eventually, though, that conversation broke up and we went in search of parties. First we hit Lise Eisenberg's traditional before-the-con-even-gets-started room party (where I got a great laugh off the old line about "separate dishes for milk, meat, and trayf -- and another set of each for Passover," but had to explain what I meant by "a rood screen for dogs"), then wandered down to the Japan in 2007 bid party, where we saw a modern working replica of a hundred-plus-year-old Japanese tea-serving robot doll. This explains much.

Thursday started off with breakfast at Charlie's Sandwich Shop, a tiny ancient crowded diner with the best turkey hash I have ever dreamed of eating. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at Flour, a delightfully decadent bakery/cafe, and walked through picturesque residential neighborhoods, all brick and stoops. We caught a cab to the marvelously eclectic Isabelle Gardner Museum, a grand old mansion filled with art and antiques, including a large collection of famous people's letters. We saw a letter from cadet U.S. Grant complaining that his West Point report cards were being sent to the wrong address, and another from John Quincy Adams sending some magazines from London to a publisher in Washington -- in effect, a two-hundred-year-old LoC offering The Usual. After we tired of the museum we walked through the fens of the Fenway neighborhood (yes, famed Fenway Park is named after a swamp), then took a bus home and a brief nap before hitting the convention proper.

As it turned out, the first two program items we saw were solo presentations: Gary K. Wolf on the history of Roger Rabbit (the book, the movie, the phenomenon) and Teresa Nielsen Hayden on the literary genre known as Mary Sue. I pointed out that the New Testament could be considered the oldest and most extreme example of an Author inserting himself into his Creation. Walking out of the Mary Sue panel we engaged author Jo Walton (Tooth and Claw) and blogger Rivka (Respectful of Otters) in conversation, and proceeded with them directly to a fine dinner at the nearby Atlantic Fish Company. After demolishing our share of crustaceans, Kate and I went for ice cream at the famed Emack & Bolio's, finishing up the evening at the First Night carnival and Mary Kay Kare's LiveJournal/blogger party. The carnival felt a little desperate to me at times, but it certainly performed its intended job of getting everyone to mingle together; the party was a huge success (though, as I've only been on LiveJournal for three days, I knew few people by username and even fewer by sight).

Friday we hiked back to Flour for coffee, yogurt, and possibly the best pain au chocolat I have ever eaten. But it was much farther from the con than we'd remembered, and we barely got back in time for the Thackeray T. Lambshead reading, where the authors were having entirely too much fun. After that Kate and I separated. I hung out for a long while in front of the SFWA table in the dealers' room with Jay Lake, Ellen Klages, Tom Brennan, and various others, eventually wandering off for lunch at Au Bon Pain with Seattle writer Brenda Cooper. Then I had a nice long talk with Davey Snyder at the NESFA Press table before I had to run off for my own first panel: Introduction to Worldcon for Neo-Pros.

The panel went well, with SMOFs Pricila Olsen and Janice Gelb, editor/fan Toni Weisskopf, and author/fan me. I compared attending Worldcon to dating -- by which I meant that that you have to be interested in order to be interesting -- but Janice pointed out that some people have been on a lot more bad dates than I have. From there the panel devolved into a collection of horror stories about Pros Behaving Badly ("kids, don't do this at your con!") but I think it got all the important points across. I had printed up 25 copies of the "Worldcongoing" article from Making Light, and all but 3 of them were picked up.

After my panel I wandered back to the dealers' room -- for some reason I tend to gravitate there at Worldcons when there's nothing specific to do, though I rarely buy anything -- where I talked with artist Ctein and writer Tobias Buckell (whose first novel will be coming out soon!) before heading off for my reading. I'd been handing out business cards with the time and room number of the reading on one side and my at-con contact info (hotel, cell phone, email, and LiveJournal username) on the other, but this was the first time I'd tried doing a reading without a bribe of chocolate and I wondered how many people would show up.

On the way there I ran into novelist and fellow fraud Lyda Morehouse (we bonded a few cons ago when we were both on an "I Feel Like A Fraud!" panel) and her friend Tim, and persuaded them to accompany me to my reading. As it turned out, there were about a dozen people there -- including two people who didn't even know me, one from Wednesday's airport shuttle and the other a complete random stranger! I read the first two chapters from my novel (its first public reading) and got a great round of applause at the end. Lyda said "I want to write slash in your world" and recommended her agent, Martha Millard. I was grinning like a fool.

Kate and I took the T to North Beach, where we listened to old men yelling at each other in Italian, nibbled on cannoli and excellent pastries, and had a fine dinner at Piccolo Venezia. I was astonished how few cars were on the streets. We got back to the con in time for a nap before the Rumor Mill gathering in the bar, but I stayed in the bar chatting with Clarion compatriot Amy Sisson rather than going up to the Klingon Birthday Party with the rest of the Millers. While Amy and I were talking several other interesting people joined us, including Ken Brady from the Wordos in Eugene, and Ken and I eventually decided to wander off to the Writers of the Future and Frank Wu parties. Frank's party was smaller, but had better food and no Scientologists. But I couldn't stay long -- I had to head back down to the bar for the Two Beers And A Story Challenge!

TO BE CONTINUED...

Posted 09/07/2004 23:15 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 91914 | Since last entry: 1272 | This month: 4488

A very good day's writing, and I went to the gym and got a bunch of other chores done as well. We should ship a major release more often.

In the last couple of days I've written three and a half scenes that point out exactly how bad the situation has become. 1. Clarity has to deal with the human governments wanting to know what the hell is going on; 2. the Green Hills clan begins evacuating to orbit (and Clarity fears that they secretly control the orbital lasers and will take the plague back to the homeworld); 3. Clarity argues with the other Council members about whether a suicidal attack on the Green-Hills-controlled launch Platforms would be entirely futile or just mostly futile -- that last is the half-scene, because the argument is interrupted when 4. Raptor, chief of the Green Hills clan, calls to complain that Clarity has misinterpreted his actions (dodging all requests to explain his real motives) and to threaten serious reprisals for any attempt to recapture the Platforms.

And there's more violence, destruction, and betrayal to come before the chapter's out. Whee!

Posted 08/27/2004 22:39 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 90642 | Since last entry: 1054 | This month: 3216

Today didn't go exactly the way I'd thought it would. I took the train to work, thinking I would get plenty of time to write on the way there and back. But we shipped a major product today (ePolicy Orchestrator 3.5, which is what I've been spending most of my time on for the last year) and there was a celebration at a restaurant downtown. I got a ride there, and a ride home from there, so no writing in the afternoon. And then, for a variety of stupid and inexcusable reasons, I didn't even sit down to write again until about 10:30. But now it's almost midnight, and I look up and I see I've written over a thousand words.

And there's more good news. The VP of my division announced that, in further celebration of our accomplishment, everyone gets tomorrow off! So I hope to get much more writing done tomorrow... was well as several other chores.

Congratulations, us.

Posted 08/26/2004 23:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 89588 | Since last entry: 13 | This month: 2162

Hiya! I've been away for a while, I know. Kate and I did a new issue of Bento, which took up most of my non-work time, and tonight I worked on a new engine for my novel journal -- it's based on Blosxom and it's pretty cool. The most important thing is that it will reduce the size of the files, which have gotten appalling (almost 300k each for the two "all entries" pages); it also supports other cool stuff, like user comments, which I'll be adding later as time permits.

I will be running the two blogs in parallel for a while, the old one at http://www.bentopress.com/sf/journal and the new one at http://www.bentopress.com/sf/journal/index.shtml. The new one is mostly identical in appearance to the old one, except that it has a calendar you can click on to navigate among the entries. Check it out and let me know if you have any problems with it.

The new blog has its own RSS feed, at http://www.spiritone.com/cgi-usr/dlevine/blosxom.cgi/index.rss. If you use RSS, please try it and let me know if it works properly.

I really should have spent the evening working on the actual novel, since I missed the last critique group deadline (due to Bento) and I really need to get back on the stick. I'll do that tomorrow.

Posted 08/25/2004 22:34 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 89588 | Since last entry: 953 | This month: 2149

I have two weeks to finish this chapter. I also have the same two weeks to write an entire issue of Bento. So I spent this evening (and too much of it; it's nearly midnight) revising a short story.

I had an excuse. I got a revision request from Gordon Van Gelder at F&SF on the Jupiter story, and that's an opportunity not lightly set aside. I finished the revision, and I'm going to print it out and look it over tomorrow before putting it in the mail. With any luck I'll get a response before the Worldcon. With any more luck, it'll be an acceptance. I've never gotten a rewrite request from Gordon before, so I don't know what the odds are...

Posted 08/11/2004 23:57 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 89588 | Since last entry: 1196 | This month: 1196

No writing today, but I did get 1200 words written on Friday and Sunday, comprising the first scene of chapter 8. It's always hard for me to get up and running on a new chapter, what with having to load everything I know about the alternating viewpoints back into my brain after having forgotten it for a few weeks. This problem should go away in a few more chapters as the two viewpoints converge. I have the same problem, on a smaller scale, whenever I pick up after finishing a scene. I should really be doing what several writers have advised: stop before the end of a scene, so you can more easily pick up the writing the next day.

I had originally outlined this section as a fairly intellectual stand-off in which the villain withdraws to orbit. It's coming out as an armed rebellion, with ornithopters getting shot down by lasers and bodies in the streets. Probably better this way.

I recently realized that, unless the remaining 5 chapters are very very short (not likely!), the book's going to be at least 120,000 words, not the 100,000 words I've been thinking of. So I'm not as close to the end as I'd thought. But if I keep writing a chapter every 3 weeks I will be done by November.

However, it's going to be a challenge for me to finish this chapter in time, since during the same 2 weeks my wife and I have to write a whole issue of our fanzine Bento. We always do a new issue at the last possible minute before the Worldcon. Which this very nearly is.

In other news, I got my contributor copies of Talebones #28 with my story "Where is the Line." This story is also being offered as a free sample at www.talebones.com (click on "Preview" near the top of the page, then "Fiction" on the left). Check it out! Let me know what you think!

Posted 08/09/2004 23:53 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 88392 | Since last entry: 2027 | This month: 9744

Another heroic writing day. The chapter is done and printed. Yay! It's also almost ten thousand words long -- by far the longest chapter yet. Boo!

Now, there's no particular reason a chapter has to be a certain length, but I really do feel this one may be too long. Perhaps some of the incidents should be shifted to other chapters, perhaps it's that there's way too much of Jason brooding and computer neepery. (Certainly the whole last half of the chapter takes place almost entirely in Jason's head.) I did trim the worst of yesterday's computer neepery, but then I added a thousand words more today.

Well, at least it's done, and having a draft that needs trimming is better than not having a draft. If it doesn't work, my critiquers will tell me so.

I have blown off a lot to finish this chapter in time. I'll have to catch up on all those things now, and not let myself slack off on the next chapter (like I did this one for the first couple of weeks) either.

Posted 07/30/2004 23:31 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 86365 | Since last entry: 2171 | This month: 7717

Took the train to work today, back home by way of a haircut, and dinner by myself, all of which contributed to today's truly heroic wordcount. Wrote a couple of complete scenes: one showing Jason getting off from his shit job and learning of the effect of the plague on the human and Tauran populations, and the other showing Jason and Sienna playing with their new datappliances. I must confess I had entirely too much fun with the computer neep stuff (which is part of why this chapter is already almost the longest one yet), but my readers seem to like this sort of thing when it's done right. I'm also skating on the edge of what I know about computer security; I'm sure most readers will find it perfectly convincing, but I really should get someone at work to look at it.

I had hoped to finish the chapter today so I could print it off at work tomorrow. That didn't happen. But there's just one scene left (or two short ones); I might write it/them at work tomorrow, or maybe I'll just print what I've got and do the rest Saturday morning. Either way I should have the chapter done in time for crit group. Whew.

Oh, and I still have to vote for the Hugos.

Posted 07/29/2004 23:28 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 84194 | Since last entry: 1033 | This month: 5546

A productive evening's writing, and we watched "The Message," one of the two Hugo-nominated episodes of Firefly. So far it's got my vote.

Wrote a long scene in which Jaon and Sienna, holed up in a squalid hotel in New Jersey, watch the news on a pornography-infested hotel TV and learn that Clarity has become CEO of the Corporation. Jason is troubled, but Sienna tries to take his mind off the news. Is she being too obvious? But Jason does need to get suspicious enough to take serious action by the end of this chapter.

Posted 07/27/2004 21:54 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 83161 | Since last entry: 263 | This month: 4513

Spent the weekend at the Oregon Coast, at the Strange Horizons Workshop Reunion at the Colonyhouse. It was like a very small con, or a three-day party, with ten cool writer-type people. We did critiques in the afternoons, and otherwise just hung out in the house, or walked and did martial arts on the beach, or ate. I tried my hand at kendo, but I have no coordination whatsoever.

It wasn't a good environment for writing -- too many keen people to talk with -- but I did do a little, and a little more today. I went back and wrote the "Jason reacts to the events of the day" scene, which required a tweak to the following scene to remove some things that had already been covered, so the word count change doesn't reflect the effort I put in. Still, I need to really crack down in the next few days if I'm going to have the chapter done by Saturday.

Kate wasn't there, though she was supposed to have been. She came down with a fever late last week and decided she'd rather just hang out at home. When I got back she was feeling better, but was afflicted with some kind of rash. She saw the doctor today and got some prescription drugs, which seem to be helping, but I feel bad for having run off without her. She assures me she was just as happy staying home.

At the Colonyhouse I asked for advice on a problem I'm currently having, which is that I don't know how to keep Jason from leaving Sienna as he begins to suspect she has betrayed him. One of the other writers suggested that Sienna should get pregnant. This floored me -- it is so not the kind of thing I would have thought of (which is, I suppose, the point of asking) and it does solve some other problems as well. But it completely invalidates one of the things I was trying to do with Jason: that he is gay, and is tempted by a woman (who is all wrong for him), but in the end he returns to his male lover and is happy. It probably won't happen that way now -- the original concept has changed a lot in the last year and a half -- but I still resist the conventional plot of "gay man is redeemed by the love of a woman and becomes a happy father." At the moment I'm leaning in the direction of not doing this, but if I don't I will still have to find a solution to my original problem. And I'm worried about exactly what happens at the climax. I know in broad terms what has to happen, but the devil really is in the details and it would be easy to get wrong.

In other news... the issue of Talebones with my story "Where is the Line" is back from the printer and should be in subscribers' mailboxes shortly; the editor is also going to put up my story on the Talebones web page as a sample of the issue. And I've gotten my program schedule for the Worldcon:

• Friday 1:00pm: A Worldcon Orientation for SF Professionals
• Friday 3:30pm: Reading
• Saturday 2:00pm: Great Cliches in SF and Fantasy
• Saturday 4:00pm: BAD Con Advice for Newbies
• Sunday 12:00 noon: Kaffeeklatsch
• Sunday 5:00pm: The Great Character Swap (what would happen if various SF characters were dropped into other universes' stories?)

It's a good schedule -- busy but not insanely so. I'm not really expecting anyone to sign up for my Kaffeeklatch, but I'm glad the committee thought it was worth a try. And I'm really glad they gave me a reading.

Don't forget to vote in the Hugos! Deadline is July 31. (You must be a member of the Worldcon to vote.)

Posted 07/26/2004 22:33 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 82898 | Since last entry: 162 | This month: 4250

I decided not to write the "Jason gets the heebie-jeebies as his situation sinks in on the way out of town" scene and skipped straight to a squalid hotel in New Jersey four days later. I actually wrote more than 162 new words, but I also tightened up the "escape from the UN" scene a bit. I do wonder if I shortened it up too much, but, well, those words are gone now.

8:00 meeting tomorrow. Time for sleep now.

Posted 07/20/2004 22:53 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 82736 | Since last entry: 704 | This month: 4088

Had a good, productive weekend at home. Laundry, shopping, critiques. Saw a movie. Went to the gym. Spent far too much of Saturday installing a new DSL modem and wireless access point -- now I can access the Internet from anywhere in the house on the little sub-laptop I use for writing. (This may be a mistake -- one of the advantages of this gizmo as a writing tool has been that it lacks the distractions of the Internet. But its little browser is so slow and antiquated that it shouldn't be all that tempting.)

Finally sat down to do some writing at about 8:30 Sunday night, and wrote until 11:30. Much too late, will regret it tomorrow, but I did get to one of the key scenes I've had in my head for months: the scene were Jason has to give up his wristwatch computer, with all his personal data on it. This scene represents the breaking of all links with Jason's earlier, normal life -- now he is a complete outlaw. I did make one change from the way I'd originally envisioned the scene. Now it's Jason who tells Sienna that they both have to give up their computers, rather than the other way around. This makes him more of a protagonist, and anyway he's the one who would have the technical knowledge to realize that they have to do this.

This may or may not be the last scene of Remembrance Day. I had been thinking about one more scene, on the train heading out of town, where the events of the day sink in, but given what I wrote tonight I'm not sure that's either needed or plausible now. Will consider it tomorrow.

Posted 07/18/2004 23:35 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 82032 | Since last entry: 557 | This month: 3384

Finally got Jason and Sienna out of the UN, huzzah.

Having spent the last chapter and a half on one day (a very significant day, to be sure) I'm shortly going to be shifting gears to cover more than a month in the second half of the current chapter. The trick is going to be to keep Jason busy enough that he doesn't realize how emotionally messed-up he is. There's plenty for him to do, though.

Posted 07/16/2004 23:22 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 81475 | Since last entry: 783 | This month: 2827

I just killed two red-shirts and a major secondary character (well, he's not dead yet, but he's not at all a well cat) in a gunfight -- the first such action in this book. I hope I didn't make any major firearms or wound errors, but one of my critiquers is a Vietnam vet, so if I got anything wrong I'm sure I'll hear about it. The shooting itself was over in a couple of seconds realtime; tonight's 783 words (a bit less than an hour and a half of writing) cover at most three minutes of the fight and its immediate aftermath.

Here's a funny thing. I'm a pacifist, solidly anti-handgun, and before starting this novel I had never even fired one. But my Writers of the Future prizewinning story was about a commando and a terrorist, and featured several gunfights. One of the WotF staffers was surprised when he met me -- after reading my story he thought I'd be some kind of big, burly military guy (I'm five-foot-five, 140 pounds). So, as unconfident as I am, I know I can write a convincing gunfight, especially with friends to check my technical details.

Jason and Sienna are now almost out of the U.N. They'll be bursting onto a New York sidewalk -- bloody and carrying guns -- in a few dozen words. They don't have a car.

How the heck am I going to get them out of this?

(Okay, I have some ideas...)

Posted 07/14/2004 23:25 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 80692 | Since last entry: 324 | This month: 2044

Having barely escaped one confrontation with guards, Jason and company run smack into another. Am I milking the situation too much? Maybe -- if so, I can easily cut some incidents. I don't want a James-Bond-style "slip unnoticed past the guards," though -- that seems unrealistic.

But something is going to have to snap soon.

Posted 07/13/2004 22:51 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 80368 | Since last entry: 775 | This month: 1720

On the way out of the UN, Jason and company encounter a security guard. They almost manage to bluff their way past. Almost.

I haven't shot anyone yet in this novel (well, not onstage), but I think it's going to happen soon...

Posted 07/12/2004 22:56 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 79593 | Since last entry: 606 | This month: 945

Still haven't got Jason out of the UN -- it'll be another thousand words or so at this rate. The situation is sticky; it'll be difficult to get him out in a plausible way. But this also means that the situation is fraught with dramatic tension, which is a good thing. Emotionally, too, Jason's in a quagmire, but I hope to keep him so busy he hasn't got time to cope with it.

I got my critique comments on chapter 7 yesterday. Sara pointed out that there needs to be a big, specific reason in the Taurans' history for them to do one of the things they do -- an excellent point that I had not considered, and incidentally a possible hook for "making the aliens more alien" in the second draft. Even though she has threatened to beat me with a sack of oranges, I'm still so glad to have her comments.

Posted 07/11/2004 23:18 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 78987 | Since last entry: 339 | This month: 339

I am ashamed. This is the first time I've written a thing in almost three weeks, and I only managed five paragraphs. I'm clearly not going to have a new chapter done for Saturday's crit group meeting. Woe.

What have I been doing instead? I had a reading and signing (with Jay Lake) at a local bookstore, which went well. I attended a friend's wedding. I went to Phoenix for a square dance convention. I had relatives in town for a couple of days (my niece's having surgery at a local hospital -- which was postponed, so they went home but will return next week). I've gotten some reading done and seen some movies. Not much, really -- I've kept up with the writing through busier times.

Mostly I've just been feeling mopey -- lacking the energy to start anything either at home or at work. This feeds on itself, of course: not accomplishing anything leads to a sense of futility, which makes it harder to accomplish anything.

But they say it's easier to "do" yourself into "feeling" better than it is to "feel" yourself into "doing" better. So thanks to Kate for encouraging me to write tonight -- something is better than nothing -- and I will try to write something tomorrow as well. Excelsior!

Posted 07/08/2004 22:19 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 78648 | Since last entry: 179 | This month: 4127

Basically all I did was copy the outline for the next chapter into a new file. But: well begun is half done, as they say.

Posted 06/21/2004 22:16 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 78469 | Since last entry: 1602 | This month: 3948

Nearly finished chapter 7 on Friday, and printed out and copied what I had, then wrote the last few hundred words and the summary of the previous chapter Saturday morning. Got everything printed out and copied with over an hour to spare. Luxury.

Also got my critique of chapter F. In general, they liked it, though one person threatened to pummel me with oranges if I let Jason have a crisis of conscience in his next chapter. I knew this was going to be a tricky bit...

I'm finding the process of writing to be rather oppressive right now. This might have something to do with the fact that I have raised the pressure on both main characters to Marianas Trench levels -- it really sucks to be them right now. Unfortunately, being them is something I have to do in order to write about them. (At Clarion, Geoff Ryman said that writing is more like acting than directing.) This hasn't been a problem with short stories, but for a novel I find myself going to that dark place for months at a crack. And it's going to continue until September or October at this rate...

But. Chapter 7 is done. On to chapter G! And I'm not going to let myself leave so much until the last minute this time.

I'm not officially doing the Shadow Clarion Challenge, but I'm going to continue to try to write every day during the next 6 weeks.

Posted 06/20/2004 21:03 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 76867 | Since last entry: 1217 | This month: 2346

Finished up a scene showing Clarity at a difficult press conference, followed by a brief respite of lunch with a human friend (showing that she's coming to identify more with the humans than with her own people). I had originally started to write the press conference as a task force meeting, but I realized I've been showing Clarity in a lot of internal meetings and ignoring the public-relations aspect of her job. I want to keep the pressure on her from all sides -- from the humans as well as from her fellow Council members. There are a lot of things I've introduced in previous chapters (the press, the task force, her cousin Candor, etc.) that ought to be kept on stage to emphasize just how complicated and scary Clarity's life is getting.

One more scene to go in the chapter. If I can finish it tomorrow during the day, I can take care of the copying at work and then go to a movie in the evening.

By the way, I failed to note in yesterday's entry that I just passed 75,000 words. Three-quarters done! (Unless my estimate of 100,000 words for the whole thing is off; it might be a bit low.)

Posted 06/17/2004 22:30 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 75650 | Since last entry: 1129 | This month: 1129

After Wiscon I was very busy with various things that had to be done before the trip to France. Then we had the trip itself -- much delicious food was eaten, castles and caves visited, etc., and I wrote over 1000 words on the plane heading there, but nothing while there and I slept most of the way back -- and since then I've been suffering badly from jet lag and haven't been coherent enough to write a thing.

Another thing keeping me from the writing since returning from France is that we've had lots of stuff to do on the kitchen remodel -- just signed the contract today, and wrote what I think might be the third-biggest check of my life. The final quote came in at almost 1.5x the original estimate, which was in turn nearly 2x what we'd originally expected. But it's going to be gorgeous.

I was hoping to get something written today, but at this point it seems it's not to be. I have 1000-3000 words to go on chapter 7, which is due Saturday. Looks pretty grim.

One bit of good writing news: when I came home from France I learned that my story "The Tale of the Golden Eagle" is a nominee for the Theodore Sturgeon Award.

Posted 06/16/2004 22:36 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 74521 | Since last entry: 613 | This month: 7899

I got some good writing in on the plane to the con, but nothing during the con, and on the way home I either slept or read. I always feel so ill-read coming back from a con like Wiscon.

I'll have a full con report later. For now, I need sleep.

Posted 06/01/2004 22:29 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 73908 | Since last entry: 894 | This month: 7286

I've been snatching a half-hour here and an hour there in the last few days, between work (8am meetings every day this week, sigh) and various chores and errands. I managed to kill almost all of last Sunday trying to install a Wi-Fi access point on my home PC, and much of Monday evening undoing Sunday's work just to get the system working again. Damn Windows anyway. I have ordered a new DSL modem/router with built-in wireless support, which should make it easier to complete the task.

I'm less than half done with chapter 7, though I'm pleased with the chapter so far; I just dropped a pretty big rock on Clarity's head. That's not as much as I had hoped to accomplish by now, but I might finish the chapter before Wiscon anyway -- if I actually write on the flight and don't get distracted by the in-flight magazine or involved in a conversation with my neighbor. Wish me luck.

Posted 05/25/2004 22:18 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 73014 | Since last entry: 137 | This month: 6392

Hey, a few hundred words is better than nothing.

Posted 05/20/2004 22:56 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 72877 | Since last entry: 937 | This month: 6255

I haven't been as much of a slug as my lack of posting here would indicate. I have written a time or two since the last entry, I just didn't write enough each individual time to justify saying anything about it.

I've got the first scene and a half of Chapter 7 done, in which Clarity and the other Taurans realize just what the epixenic is and how it can be prevented... but some of them are having trouble dealing with the consequences. I'm afraid I may be getting a little heavy-handed on the AIDS parallel; I might tone that down a bit later.

Apart from the novel writing, I have been terribly busy -- a major deadline at work this week, shopping for tile and granite for the kitchen, line edits on the zeppelin story. I did not make it into the finals for the Lupton contest; I got my package back with a generic encouraging note. But... I now have a complete novel package ready to go! In fact, on the same day I got the bad news from the Lupton contest I put the first 4 chapters and outline in the mail to one of the agents I talked with at the Nebulas. If it hadn't been for the Lupton contest I probably wouldn't have had the outline yet.

Onward.

Posted 05/19/2004 23:18 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 71940 | Since last entry: 718 | This month: 5318

The rewritten chapters A and B were critiqued on Saturday, and the new Jason is definitely on the right track. But though the group liked the new chapters, there were still some good suggestions about how they could be improved -- as well as a few difficult questions. For now, I hope I can get away with some of those problem areas with readers who haven't read the rest of the book yet.

As usual, I got somewhat derailed by success, which is why I haven't posted here for several days after finishing the previous chapter. I also spent a good chunk of this weekend doing various things related to the kitchen remodel -- looking at tile and granite, thinking about sinks, etc. -- instead of writing. I did write a couple hundred words while sitting in the lobby before Sunday's symphony concert, but didn't post about it here at the time. Yesterday I was just fried when I came home from work, and though I did sit down to write, my eyes kept closing as I was reading over the last chapter and I didn't put down one new word. But tonight, though I should really have gone to bed at 10:00, I instead sat down to write at that time -- just a hundred words and I'll be happy, I thought. But, again as usual, once I got started I didn't stop until I had over 500 new words. (If only I could do that starting at 9:00 instead!)

Looking to the future: If I keep up the pace of a chapter every 3 weeks -- including those crit group meetings when I'm out of town, which I haven't managed so far -- I will be finished in late October. I would really rather finish the first draft before Worldcon (September 1). This means writing more than one chapter for each crit group meeting. Will I be able to do it? Well, I certainly won't if I don't try.

So I have a new yellow stickie posted above my writing calendar: "I don't care if you 'don't feel like writing.' WRITE ANYWAY!"

Posted 05/11/2004 23:25 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 71222 | Since last entry: 933 | This month: 4600

Took the train to work today, and wrote the whole way both ways.

On the way home, I arrived at 5599 words in the chapter, 1006 words for the day, the moment after the Big Revelation when Jason sits down hard and says "Jesus", and my stop, all at the same time.

Kismet.

I resisted Fate at first, thinking that I still had to write at least a few paragraphs of anticlimax to get Jason out of the building. But it seemed such a good place to stop. And not only that, but when I checked my outline for the next chapter it starts with him still in the building. So what the hell -- there it stands. Chapter done with two days to spare.

Of course, once I deleted a paragraph of notes from the end of the chapter the word count went down to just under 1000. But I'm still giving myself a red star for the day, and a green star for finishing the chapter.

We have theatre tickets tomorrow, so I might not write again until Saturday. But I really want to write every day this month, to make up for my appalling performance in April. Maybe just a little, to keep up the streak.

Posted 05/06/2004 22:17 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 70289 | Since last entry: 621 | This month: 3667

Jason finally fulfilled his self-imposed mission, and I passed 70,000 words. Jason's happy now, but in just a few hundred words comes the moment that brings everything he thought he knew about what he was doing crashing down around his ears -- and ties the two plot threads together for even the most inattentive reader.

I'm not yet sure how much more of this chapter there is after that point. I'm prepared to play it by ear.

I also went back and added a couple of sentences to address an issue my crit grop has had with one of the characters in past chapters. I never anticipated the reading they have of the character, but since at least two of them had the same idea I have to assume that some of the readers will as well. So I put that idea in one character's mouth so another character could pooh-pooh it. It probably needs to be dealt with more thoroughly in rewrite, but for now I've at least acknowledged the problem.

It strikes me that writing is a lot like software user interface design (my day job) -- you have to anticipate the user's reactions and direct them to do or think the next appropriate thing from where they are. Sometimes you get it wrong, which is why we have usability tests and critique, to spot those cases and give you a chance to correct the problem before the product/novel ships.

On the other hand, in user interface design the eventual goal is not just to create an idea in the user's mind, but to have them take action and accomplish tasks based on that idea. That's both easier (a novel is an exercise in pure imagination, with no need to build any real-world functionality) and harder (there's no interaction -- the novel doesn't know, and can't take appropriate action, if the reader is off on the wrong track). Imagine a dialog box: "Are you absolutely sure you want to keep thinking it would be a good idea for Genevieve to go out with Leon? [OK] [Cancel]"

I might take the train again tomorrow. It worked so well on Tuesday.

Posted 05/05/2004 22:52 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 69668 | Since last entry: 858 | This month: 3046

Took the train to work today, to be a good planetary citizen and to write during time that would otherwise be spent driving. (I can't do it most days -- usually I have errands to run, or tight schedules, that require the car.)

Got Jason out of the box and moved him into position for the climactic moment. Lots of description of his situation -- not as much tension as the previous scene, but necessary set-up.

Posted 05/04/2004 23:33 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 68810 | Since last entry: 581 | This month: 2188

Jason's still locked in an airtight box, which is being smuggled into the UN for the big climactic thingie. He can't see anything, can't hear much, and is relying on only motion cues and a few muffled sounds to determine whether or not the lid is about to fly open, leaving him staring into the rifles of a whole platoon of UN guards. In between moments of sheer terror he gets to wonder how the hell he got himself into this situation.

Hey, it could be worse. I let him remember to go to the bathroom beforehand.

Although it lacks any actual action or dialogue, I think this is one of the scenes of greatest tension in the book so far. I might have to trim it a bit -- the chapter is already over 3000 words long and they aren't really inside the UN yet -- but I'm happy with the way it's going.

By the way, I don't buy into the whole Hero's Journey thing -- too easy to get formulaic -- but I am alluding here to the myth of the hero who dies and is reborn. In this case Jason is, figuratively, shut into a coffin and buried alive. And by the time this chapter is over, his world is going to be turned completely upside-down.

I feel deliciously evil.

Posted 05/03/2004 22:40 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 68229 | Since last entry: 1607 | This month: 1607

Okay, I might as well admit it: April was pathetic. But I'm making a new commitment to write every day in May.

I got off to a good start by working on the novel on the plane both ways for my recent trip to Palm Springs. The bad news is that I have locked Jason in a tiny, dark box with nothing to do but think for two hours. This might not be the best strategy for a chapter that is supposed to be the action-filled climactic moment of his story arc...

Posted 05/02/2004 22:24 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 66622 | Since last entry: 541 | This month: 1853

Sometimes success is worse than failure. It seems that whenever I have a major writing milestone or achievement, I stop writing for anything from a week to a month. I think it's a combination of basking in the good feeling and fear that I'll never be able to top that previous achievement.

The last time I slacked off this long was, I think, after I finished the three-chapters-and-outline for the Wiscon writers' workshop last year. In this case it was finishing the Lupton contest entry, plus the Hugo and Campbell nominations and the Zeppelin story sale. And I was sick for a week or so, and I've been to Minicon and the Nebulas (where I talked with a couple of agents -- one asked to see sample chapters now, the other wanted to see them when it's done) and I edited an old story and submitted it... and received an immediate rejection, and submitted it again. But during that time I have not done any novel writing, so I haven't posted anything here.

In the last couple of days I've been doing what's known as "cat vacuuming" -- just about any kind of chore or errand other than writing. The good news is that I got some things done that needed to get done. But I finally realized tonight what I was doing, and I made myself put my butt in the chair and write. Huzzah.

I continued a scene I started some weeks ago, where Jason argues with Sienna about what they should do in Flea's absence. That argument's just about finished now, and the real action of the chapter starts next.

Two weeks to finish the chapter. I should be able to do that. Of course, I think we're going to be home for dinner only one night this week...

Posted 04/25/2004 22:17 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 66081 | Since last entry: 151 | This month: 1312

I've completely fallen off track on the novel.

For one thing, I went to Minicon and -- despite the usual best intentions to write on the plane -- I did no writing at all during the weekend. The only time I turned on my computer was for my reading, at which only one person showed up. But she enjoyed it.

For another thing, I've been sick since returning from the convention.

I've also got a deadline at work on Wednesday, which kept me late yesterday and will probably keep me late tomorrow.

The 151 words noted above are revisions on a story called "The Last McDonald's" that I first wrote a couple of years ago, had critiqued, but never got around to revising until just now. The prompt in this case was an invitation to submit to a major market that is in an unusual situation (that's all I can say, sorry). Having revised the story to my satisfaction, I sent a query to the editor; I hope the story will go in the e-mail tomorrow.

But the most interesting reason I haven't written a thing on the novel in the past week is this: I'M ON THE HUGO BALLOT! TWICE!! My story "Tale of the Golden Eagle" was nominated for the Hugo for Best Short Story, and I'm up for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (my second and final year of eligibility). So I spent most of yesterday evening updating my web page with the news and responding to the many emails of congratulation that poured in.

On the same day I learned of my Hugo nominations, I also received word that my Zeppelin story sold to All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories.

So, though I'm blowing my nose every five minutes and I don't have any novel progress to report, it's been a darn good week.

Posted 04/13/2004 22:49 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 66081 | Since last entry: 357 | This month: 1161

Started in on Chapter F tonight. This is the big climactic chapter that Jason's whole plotline has been leading up to, the place where Clarity's plotline started, the place where even the most unobservant reader can no longer possibly fail to notice how the two plotlines are connected. I hope to have this chapter ready for critique before the Nebulas.

You may note that the "word count" above has taken a big jump -- much bigger than the 357 words I actually wrote tonight. This is because I moved the new/revised chapters I wrote for the Lupton contest into the novel itself. The new chapters are about 2000 words longer than the ones they replaced. But, though those words do legitimately join the novel, so the "word count" goes up, I have rejiggered my word-counting algorithm to subtract them from the "since last entry" and "this month" figures because I already counted them last month.

But I am now nearly 2/3rds done with the planned 100,000 word novel. Jeez.

In other news, today I received my author copies of the June 2004 Realms of Fantasy, including my story "Charlie the Purple Giraffe was Acting Strangely," with a neat color illustration. Now I need to whomp up a page about the story for my website.

Also, yesterday I picked up copies of Science Fiction: The Best of 2003 with my story "Tale of the Golden Eagle." There are some really good stories in there!

Posted 04/05/2004 23:22 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 63736 | Since last entry: 444 | This month: 804

I had planned to finish up the proposal, proofread it, print it out, and get it in the mail this weekend. I finished it up and printed a draft-quality copy to proof, but when I went to print out the entry form for the contest I discovered the deadline has been extended to May 5.

I could take this opportunity to seek more feedback, do more editing, and just generally obsess about it some more. Instead, I will let it rest for a day or two, then proof it, print it, and mail it this week anyway.

Thus I defy the Fates. Ha!

Next: back to drafting!

Posted 04/04/2004 23:07 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 63736 | Since last entry: 360 | This month: 360

Sat down and wrote the query letter this evening. It came out very tidily to one page. Everything I've read says that query letters are supposed to be hard. I didn't find it to be so, particularly. On the other hand, I have the whole novel in my head -- I know a lot of authors who don't know what's coming next and are unable to summarize their novels. So maybe I'm special. Or maybe I'm just incapable of seeing how bad it is.

Four days to go. All I have left to do on the proposal is write a few sections which are basically expanded versions of things I just wrote in the cover letter. Should be able to polish it off by Saturday, depending on how much fiddling and noodling I let myself do.

I find the whole writing business requires me to constantly reassure myself that I am, indeed, among the best -- the top 5% or 10% that actually get published instead of languishing in slush piles -- while simultaneously lowering my own expectations, to prevent my soul from being crushed by rejection.

So, yes, I am wonderful. But it's not going to win anyway.

Is this a crazy business, or what?

Posted 04/01/2004 21:58 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 63736 | Since last entry: 4 | This month: 10172

I'm laughing out loud at the word count, having worked for about 3 hours to produce a net change of 4 words. This resulted from a fleshing-out of the outline and an edit of the synopsis that apparently subtracted exactly the same number of words. I also spent a great deal of time experimenting with alternate layouts for the outline, to clarify the rather tangled timelines of the two plot threads (which my critiquers, sharp people all, are having trouble with). In the end I decided to use alternating long and short indents for the chapter titles:

Chapter 1........September 2051
Chapter A..........................April 2051
Chapter 2........October 2051
Chapter B..........................July 2051
Chapter 3........November 2051
Chapter C..........................September 2051
etc.

God, I hope this works.

I think I'm done with the outline and synopsis, anyway. What's left: Author Bio, Book Audience, Similar Successful Books, and Book To Film Potential.

I can do this. I can do this.

Posted 03/31/2004 22:09 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 63736 | Since last entry: 256 | This month: 10168

Went out with Kate and some friends for her birthday dinner, but got in a little work afterwards. I'm working on fleshing out the outline of the chapters I haven't written yet. They have to sound just like the outlines of the existing chapters, especially in terms of suggesting details left out. This is made harder by the fact that I don't know exactly what happens in some of those later chapters (though -- gulp! -- they aren't all that far away now!).

The good news is that I don't have to stick to this outline going forward. It just has to sound plausible.

Posted 03/30/2004 22:11 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 63736 | Since last entry: -4 | This month: 9912

The word count above is completely bogus, but I have no idea what the correct count should be. I have been working on the Book Proposal for most of the last 3 days and it now totals almost 14,000 words of tagline, synopsis, outline, author bio, sample chapters, and other stuff. (I wasted over two hours on Sunday fighting with Microsoft Word's worthless "master documents" feature, and wound up doing what I've done every other time I've tried to use that: pasting the sample chapters right into the main document.) That's a lot of words, and a lot of them are new, but a lot of them are rewritten or synopsized versions of previously existing words. How to count that?

And the effort-per-word rate is completely different from drafting; I spent over 2 hours working on my 18-word tagline. (Currently it is: "What is killing the aliens? A computer hacker and his alien ex-lover are more involved than they know." It's a little flat, but it was the best I could do in under 20 words.)

So, though my automatic word count doesn't include the Proposal.doc file and shows a net change of only -4 words since the last entry, I'm giving myself a red star for the day on pure effort.

Going to sleep now.

Posted 03/29/2004 22:47 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 63736 | Since last entry: -45 | This month: 9916

Found a few spare minutes today at work to finish revising the last scene of Chapter A (now Chapter B). Also moved part of the end of the next-to-the-last scene to the end to give the chapter a stronger finish. It's not exactly a "wow" finish, but I think it's more interesting than it would have been otherwise. I'm not 100% happy with the very last line, though. But by finishing it up at work I was able to do my copying today rather than having to stand in line at the copy shop tomorrow. Huzzah!

So I'll be sending the two revised Jason chapters to critique tomorrow. Still to do by April 5 for the Lupton contest: write query letter, revise chapter 1, prepare synopsis, come up with a snappy tagline, write outline, write other proposal sections (author bio, audience, similar books, movie potential, etc.), edit it all down to 30 pages, put it in the mail. Aiee.

Do I really want to be putting in all this effort, knowing that it'll be going into the contest as a first draft? And it's going to cost $25 plus postage? Answer: yes, if I can. Because then I'll have it, and when the MS is finished I'll only have to revise it. And I might win $10,000!

Posted 03/26/2004 22:11 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 63736 | Since last entry: 236 | This month: 9961

Finished up Jason and Sienna's second scene. The process of inserting new speeches, and moving existing speeches around, within a scene is kind of interesting in itself -- it's like a jigsaw puzzle, where you have to match the emotional tone of the new or moved piece to its surroundings (but I can also "repaint" the "edges" of a piece to make it fit in better). The tough part was showing that Jason could walk away, late enough in the negotiations that Sienna would take it as a very serious threat, but not so late that he's already backing out on his commitments. I think I have succeeded in reshaping the power relationship between them as I desired.

One more scene, fairly short, to revise and I'll be done with this chapter for now. The biggest remaining problem is that I no longer have a wow finish for this chapter, since I moved the original finish of this chapter to the new Chapter Zero. Maybe this chapter doesn't get a wow finish (but it's the third chapter of a three-chapters-and-outline package, so it really should have one). I'll sleep on it.

I'm going to try to get these two chapters and a query letter ready in time for Saturday's critique. Then I'll work on the outline next week, give a quick brush-up to chapter 1, and put it all in the mail to the Lupton contest by Saturday April 3 (the deadline is April 5, by postmark). I realize I should really have had the whole package critiqued before sending it to the contest, but... well, time flies when you're having fun.

To bed early (well, earlier than I've managed lately) tonight.

Posted 03/24/2004 21:21 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 63736 | Since last entry: 471 | This month: 9725

Some writing of notes, some editing of existing dialog, and much new dialog in Jason and Sienna's first two scenes together. I started out by writing a short list of "what do they want out of this meeting", "what do and don't they know", "what have they done to prepare for the meeting", and "what are they prepared to offer" -- kind of a meeting agenda for each of them. The point is to change the power relationship between them, make Jason more of an actor and less of a reactor.

As it stands right now, Sienna still takes the lead and keeps Jason off-balance for much of their time together (which is as it should be, really, considering that she's an experienced terrorist and he's just a computer programmer with an attitude). But I added some bits, especially at the beginning of the first scene and end of the second, that show how much he has to offer her and how badly she wants what he has. It's kind of info-dumpy, it needs more smoothing and tweaking, but it's getting there.

Posted 03/23/2004 22:45 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 63736 | Since last entry: 351 | This month: 9254

After two days of no writing, spent the entire afternoon writing about 2600 words of notes to myself about Jason's motivations.

The reason I did this is that on Thursday I came to the point in Chapter A where Jason explains to Sienna -- and the reader -- why he's so dedicated to kicking the aliens off the planet. Jason's lack of motivation and personal stake in this area are the novel's single biggest problem, but if I can nail it here I can make it work in the whole rest of the book. So in this rewrite Sienna won't accept a facile "the aliens killed my parents, boo hoo" -- he needs to explain his deep motivations.

The new Chapter Zero makes it quite clear (I hope) that Jason is pissed at the aliens for what they've done to his world -- their superior attitude (personified by Honesty, who is now a right bastard who always thought Jason wasn't good enough for Clarity), their cultural imperialism, and the impact they've had on humanity -- and the Cedar Point disaster was just the last straw. But now that I come to put that into words, I'm faced with the fact that Jason's motivations don't make any sense.

See, Jason has to have been comfortable with the aliens or he would never have taken up with Clarity in the first place. So if you look at his behavior and attitudes over the course of the years 2050-2051, he has to go from 1) falling in love with an alien to 2) willing to risk his life to kick the aliens off his planet, to 3) willing to risk his life to save the aliens from the plague he started, if only because that's the only way to keep the world from being blown up by the alien bad guy. That's not a character arc the reader is likely to accept, no matter how well written. One 180-degree reversal would be hard enough to swallow, but two is impossible. (This might even be three reversals, if he started off with a negative attitude toward the aliens before he took up with Clarity.)

So I needed to come up with a powerful motivation that would support this behavior. Yes, this is changing the character to match the plot, which is a big problem of mine, but I've got too much time invested in this plot to want to do it over. Pout.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and consideration of many alternate Jasons (such as the "I hate the aliens, I hate myself for loving this alien, I think I'll lash out at the aliens because I can't accept my own feelings" Jason -- who reminds me too much of Roy Cohn for me to want him spending the next six months or so in my head), I wound up with pretty much the same Jason I started with, except that he starts out more self-centered (thinking of Clarity only as a sex-buddy) and goes through a character arc where he moves from shallowness and resentment to understanding the interwoven destiny of humans and Taurans -- perhaps in the end he does come to love Clarity, especially when he realizes that Cedar Point was not the aliens' fault. Perhaps this love is what motivates him to make the ultimate sacrifice at the climax (though I don't yet know what it is), saving both species.

But what is it that he wants more than anything else? I decided that Jason, at heart, is a puzzle-solver. His strength and his weakness is that he's very, very good at it, and a really meaty puzzle can grab him by the nose and lead him into some very stupid places in search of a solution. At the beginning of the novel he sets himself the puzzle of breaking the aliens' hold on his planet, and by solving that puzzle he builds himself and his planet an even harder one.

Is "solve any puzzle" really a novel-protagonist-level motivation? Maybe, if the personal stakes are high enough. So I need to find a way to put Jason into a position where he must take action -- where he can reasonably forsee serious, personal consequences if he does not act or if he attempts and fails. Cedar Point is just the tipping-point... it has to be the thing that convinces him that the aliens (who have been on the planet his whole life) are going to destroy humanity-as-he-knows-it if he doesn't take action.

I think I may be able to do that, by making him even more (justifiably!) angry at the aliens and the effect they have had on Earth, and on him personally. This runs the risk of making the aliens less sympathetic, but I do have Clarity's PoV to show their side of the story, and in the end most of what Jason is angry about is not their fault anyway.

This involved a few changes in Chapter Zero, not many, and guided me through the rewrite of the first scene in Chapter A (Jason meets Sienna). The second scene (Jason investigates the audio monitors) is exactly the same as it was. I'll tackle the third scene (Jason and Sienna again) tomorrow.

Jason hasn't really changed that much for all this angst, but at least I've thought things through and firmed up his backstory.

Posted 03/21/2004 23:20 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 63704 | Since last entry: -68 | This month: 8903

I had a couple of killer days at work, leaving me with little energy for anything else, and then we had taxes to prepare (we use an accountant, but it still takes a whole evening or more to pull the papers together) and plane reservations to make for this summer's trip to France. So no writing Tuesday or Wednesday.

Tonight I started to tear Chapter A apart and reassemble it in a way that fits with the new Jason introduced in the new Chapter Zero. This involves changes in backstory, timeline, and motivation as well as attitude, though not a lot of changes in the actual incidents and actions of the chapter. As long as I was revising the chapter, I cut several paragraphs on principle, so the word count is actually going down at the moment. I'm going to count each anti-word double for purposes of my star chart (-50 = silver, -250 = gold, -500 = red), because cutting is harder than drafting, so I get a silver star for tonight's -68 words. (This doesn't address the question of how to handle a good solid revision session that happens to wind up with the same word count, but I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.)

At the moment the chapter is spread out on the workshop floor. I anticipate it will take a couple of days to get it degreased and reassembled; then I'll haul out my notes from critique and see if anything else needs to be revised. Then I'll do the same for Chapter 1 -- though I'm not going to attempt to make Clarity more alien at this time, that's too big a job for now -- and do the outline and cover letter. I have a little more than a week until crit group, about two weeks until the Lupton deadline. It's going to be tight.

Posted 03/18/2004 21:39 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 63704 | Since last entry: 217 | This month: 8971

Added a couple of paragraphs briefly introducing Chris, and edited the chapter to improve flow. Some of the parts that incorporated text from the original Prologue just felt like a loose pile of paragraphs; I killed a few darlings and mangled a few others beyond recognition, and I think it's better now. Will look at it again tomorrow, but I think it's done for sure this time.

I have moved Chapter Zero and a few other files that will be used in the proposal (three-chapters-and-outline) to a separate directory, so the total word count has gone down (and will stay where it is until I get back to drafting new chapters). But the "This month" word count still includes the proposal stuff.

It's after midnight, I should have been asleep an hour ago...

Posted 03/15/2004 23:03 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 65801 | Since last entry: 605 | This month: 8754

...where I did no writing whatsoever. But I am not going to let this brief hiatus prevent me from writing every day for the rest of the month.

Tonight I moved Jason behind a locked door and presented him with the object he had been seeking. I could write him out of the space as well, but I don't think it's necesssary. At about 2000 words I think the new Chapter Zero might be complete.

I've gone back and added so much to it that I'm afraid it's too densely packed with information... it's much less of a "hook" than the old Prologue. On the other hand, it answers a lot of questions that people had about the first drafts of the early chapters. And it does end with a hook, and it does leave some questions unanswered. But there's still some other stuff I'd like to put in, such as a brief note about Chris. I'll sleep on it and maybe revise a bit tomorrow.

After that I'll need to substantially revise Chapter A to go with the new Chapter Zero. Chapters 1 and B might need a bit of revision as well. Then I need to complete the outline (which means fleshing out the whole second half of the book), edit it for length, and write a cover letter. Still plenty of work to do for an April 5 deadline.

Posted 03/14/2004 21:03 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 65196 | Since last entry: 141 | This month: 8149

Tonight we visited a kitchen designer and wrote a large check for a retainer. Looks like we are defintely going to have the kitchen re-done this summer. We spent a long time at the showroom, looking at floor plans and cabinets and countertops. Then, after we got home, I put a couple of recently-rejected short stories back in the mail, and packed for tomorrow's trip to Seattle. But I promised myself I would write something every day, and so I sat down and did: largely editing, amping up Jason's reaction to the aliens and their impact on his world. But it would really have been smarter to go to sleep, because I have an early meeting tomorrow morning and a long drive right after work.

I won't be posting anything here for a few days, but I will try to write something every day anyway. Good night.

Posted 03/11/2004 22:27 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 65055 | Since last entry: 335 | This month: 8008

Put Jason on the ferry to the Platform, where he can observe the aliens and the impact they have had on human culture (and be disgustipated at the whole spectacle). This is part of my original concept for the book, but didn't come out at all in the first draft of the early chapters.

Realized today that at some point, if I'm being honest, I'll have to drop either the original Prologue or the new Chapter Zero from the total word count, which will result in a decrease in word count. Waah! My lovely word count!

But it's way late and I'm not going to do it now. So there.

Posted 03/10/2004 22:50 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 64720 | Since last entry: 463 | This month: 7673

Chopped back a couple of paragraphs from yesterday and wrote forward for a while, continuing to try to put in exposition necessary for the first chapter without going into too much detail. I still think I'm stating too much that should be implied, or left until later. I'm also wobbling on a tightrope of Jason's emotions -- the Cedar Point disaster was the day before yesterday, he hasn't slept since, he has just broken up with his alien lover, and he has gone all the way over to hating the aliens and wanting them off his planet. I know that a broken love can turn to a terrible hate -- I've experienced it myself, though only on the receiving end -- but writing that moment convincingly is hard.

Posted 03/09/2004 22:16 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 64257 | Since last entry: 278 | This month: 7210

I'm finding it much harder to write the first chapter the second time around. The first time, the whole thing was as new to me as it was to the readers. I had a general idea of the world, but I was creating many of the details as I wrote about them for the first time.

But now I know too much, and I remember all the critiques I've received in which it's clear that (some) readers don't understand (some aspects of) the world I'm trying to create. So I find myself cramming in every missing detail, where in the first draft I was able to create a great atmosphere of mystery and raise a lot of questions.

So I didn't write much today, and I think I may scrap it all tomorrow.

But, as the mouse said to the elephant, I've been sick. With luck I'll be better soon. Maybe then I can write more effectively.

Posted 03/08/2004 21:29 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 63979 | Since last entry: 278 | This month: 6932

After considerable wailing and gnashing of teeth, I've decided the next thing I will write is a new first chapter. Currently titled Chapter Zero, it will become the new Chapter A and all the other lettered chapters will move one down the alphabet. It replaces the Prologue (since writing the original Prologue, I have learned that some readers skip Prologues and some editors don't like them), uses some of the same text, and serves many of the same purposes: to introduce the aliens, the Platforms, and the rest of this future world. The major difference is that the new Chapter Zero is focused on Jason rather than Sienna, and Jason is engaging in dangerous, self-directed physical action at the beginning of the book rather than passively taking direction from Sienna.

In the new chapter, Jason takes the ferry to the Seattle Platform on the day after Cedar Point. He's just broken up with Clarity (the continuation of the scene shown in flashback, from Clarity's PoV, in chapter 5) and is setting out to do some damage. At this point he doesn't know exactly what he's going to do, but he's going to break some rules and do some things he never would have done before (and by "before" I mean both "before this point in his life" and "in the previous draft"). He's grieving and angry in equal measure, looking to hurt the Taurans as badly as they've hurt him. However, I'm not completely sure what he's going to do either -- I have some ideas, but I need to sleep on them.

I hope this will make him a better character for the whole rest of the book. If nothing else, it gives me an opportunity to work in some physical description of the Taurans (and Jason's emotional reaction to them), which is lacking from the current early chapters.

Not a productive day at all -- less than 300 words and most of them rewritten rather than new -- but I kept my resolution to write something every day. More tomorrow.

Posted 03/07/2004 22:14 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 63701 | Since last entry: 2223 | This month: 6654

Finished chapter 6, in a marathon morning of writing that ran right down to the wire: I finished typing just 30 minutes before crit group. Whew! Despite the speed with which I finished the chapter, I feel pretty good about it. I even remembered to spell-check it this time.

Wrote three scenes today: Honor and Raptor arguing about whether or not to take extreme measures with the humans (showing the depths of rancor between Wind Mountain and Green Hills clans), Clarity dealing with a ship that's refusing to land but insists on being refueled for an immediate trip home (setting up an important revelation), and a brief nasty cliffhanger ending.

Then I got my critique of chapter E (despite the fact it said chapter D, with the wrong date, at the top of the first page -- oops!). People generally agreed that it was a travelogue chapter in which not much happened, but on the other hand it was engagingly written and conveyed some necessary information. Sara had some good hints about how to improve some of the character relationships. Everyone thought Commander Smith was unconvincing; he seemed too eccentric to have risen to the top of the organization. Since the chapter may be too long for its weight anyway, I might just drop him -- I don't think he'll be figuring in the story again. But you never can tell!

I failed to note yesterday that I passed 60,000 words. Quite a milestone.

Even though I have finished my chapter, I will NOT NOT NOT allow myself to slack off now. I am going to write something tomorrow, because my goal for the month is still to write every day. It might be the next chapter, or it might be a new prologue, heading toward a revised three-chapters-and-outline for the John T. Lupton "New Voices In Literature" contest (deadline 4/5, with a $12,500 prize for fiction and another for non-fiction). If I write 500 words every day for the next 3 weeks, that's 10,500 words -- enough for both a new prologue and a new chapter!

But tonight I am going to bed early.

Posted 03/06/2004 20:33 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 61478 | Since last entry: 1493 | This month: 4431

Good progress tonight: wrote a scene in which Clarity faces death, but talks herself out of it. Cheated a bit by having her refer to common history that didn't exist until I made it up. I may have to go back and put in a few references to it in a previous chapter. Or maybe it can stand on its own -- it's in keeping with her character.

Lots more chapter to go, though. Early start tomorrow!

Posted 03/05/2004 22:56 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 59985 | Since last entry: 501 | This month: 2938

I must confess I cheated a little tonight. I had to undelete one sentence to get the count of new words over 500, for a gold star for the day. I'll delete that sentence again tomorrow.

Tonight, with Garrett's help, Clarity and Chris have a discussion about Jason and what happened between when he broke up with her and when Chris broke up with him. Chris doesn't know much, really, but he gives Clarity one name: "Miguel." At this point no one in this plot thread knows what that name means. Mwah hah hah.

Tomorrow, things turn violent. What fun.

Posted 03/04/2004 22:14 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 59484 | Since last entry: 604 | This month: 2437

A good evening's writing, the first scene in the novel where Clarity is together with Jason's ex-boyfriend Chris. It's shaping up into a surprisingly awkward situation; although both of them sign, Chris only knows ASL and Clarity only knows trade sign. This made it hard to write about as well as awkward for them. Fortunately, I had an idea to fix the problem, by bringing back Clarity's personal translator Garrett, who hasn't been seen since chapter 1 -- a character I was considering bringing back later in this chapter for other reasons anyway.

James D. Macdonald has said that writing a novel is like a game of chess: in the early game you move pieces into positions of power, and in the middle game they start using that power. He recommended that even if you don't know what's going to happen in the middle of your novel, you should try to move the characters around at the beginning... they may find themselves in positions of power unconsciously (either because you know at some level that it is such a position, or because you realize later how to use them from the positions they are in). I think I may have just seen an example of that. When I left Garrett stranded at an airfield in rural Washington at the end of chapter 1, I didn't think we'd be seeing him again at all...

Posted 03/03/2004 22:20 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 58880 | Since last entry: 424 | This month: 1833

I have decided to try to write at least something every day this month. I had hoped to make a thousand words tonight, but a little is better than nothing.

Tonight's writing was a real slog. I spent nearly an hour on one paragraph, trying to describe Clarity's relationship with Chris while they were both going out with Jason -- hard enough by itself, but I was also trying to avoid using the word "relationship" more than once. I finally gave up and used it twice, and "share" twice as well.

Those 400 words were almost all interior monologue, as Clarity flies her father's aircraft to Seattle and broods about what she'll find there. I'm worried about lack of action, but I have an action scene planned for when she arrives...

For now, to bed.

Posted 03/02/2004 21:56 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 58456 | Since last entry: 1409 | This month: 1409

...is paved with my good intentions to write for the past week. But I got back in the saddle tonight, with firm intentions (there's that word again) to write at least a little every day this month.

Part of the reason I didn't write at all in the last week was a surprise business trip to Texas. I did have a computer with me, and I spent a couple hours doing a detailed and revised outline for the current chapter and the next one in the same plot thread, but wrote no new prose. This is some of that "staring out windows" that makes the actual writing go more easily (not that you could tell, since I was sweating rocks this evening, but I'm sure I sweated fewer rocks than I would have without the detailed outline). But between critiques for Potlatch and conversation with my seat-mate I got no writing done on either flight. And then came Potlatch, which was swell but not exactly condusive to writing. I also ate like a pig on both trips, and I'm feeling guilty about that too.

All die. Oh the embarrassment. Must do better in next life!

Posted 03/01/2004 22:18 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 57047 | Since last entry: 1202 | This month: 6780

Okay, so I haven't written in almost a week. Some nights there was a movie or a lecture or something, and though I always intended to do at least a little writing when I got home it just got too late. Other nights I worked late or worked on the OryCon web page or some other form of cat vacuuming. Yesterday some friends took me out for a birthday dinner. But today (my actual birthday) I decided I would spend the day writing. And I did.

So how the heck did it take the entire day to write one lousy scene?

Well, for one thing it turned out to be a substantial scene, more than twice as long as I thought it would be. The chapter as a whole came out to be the second-longest in the book so far. I'm not quite sure how this happened, given that the chapter has only one point in the original outline. Perhaps that's exactly how it happened -- it's easy to write lots of words when there's nothing to say. I suspect some of it will come out in revision.

But that still doesn't explain why it took me all day to write 1200 words. Let's see... I started late and took a lot of breaks, but I finished the chapter by 2:00. Then, since I wasn't rushing out the door for crit group, I took the time to read over the chapter and polish it a bit. Then I updated the "What Has Gone Before" to include the previous chapter. I had to go back and add a little to an earlier chapter too, as long as I was in there, because I'd missed a major plot point before. Then when I went to print the chapter I found I needed a new print cartridge. I had the cartridge already, but I still had to re-align the print heads. So when I took the printed chapter to the local cheap copy shop... it had already closed for the day. Damn. I came home and made up envelopes for my critique group, put on the stamps, got appalled at the amount of postage I had just used, and decided to drive to work and make the copies there rather than pay Kinko's prices for the copying. That took half an hour each way. Finally I took the envelopes to the main post office (it now being too late for pick-up before Monday afternoon at most other locations), and on the way home I bought a new print cartridge.

And that's how it takes a whole day to write 1200 words.

All the more reason to finish the next chapter before the next crit group meeting, to avoid all that postage and envelopes and post office and stuff. I hope to get started writing tomorrow, because I now have only two weeks until the next meeting. But the way things have been going so far this week, I'm not betting on it.

Happy birthday to me, anyway. Hah!

Posted 02/21/2004 18:23 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 55845 | Since last entry: 704 | This month: 5578

Wrote most of the drive from New Jersey into New York City today, with Jason's Seattlite perspective on the city and a few hints of how it has changed under the influence of the Taurans (but not more than hints yet, because he's in a moving car). Didn't quite finish the chapter yet -- there's still one more twist to go -- but since I blew my Saturday deadline another day or two won't make that much difference.

Rather depressed about Saturday's critique. Despite the nice things people have said, I know that a main character who is insufficiently engaging can kill a book. Yes, it's a learning experience, and I'll do better next time. But I don't want to have spent over a year of my spare time on an unsold novel. I just have to hope I can fix it in revision. Unfortunately, I know that I tried to address the Wiscon critiques of Jason and his world ("the world is not nasty enough to justify his actions") before sending those chapters to my local critique group, and they had the exact same comments. These problems may be structural, to the novel and to me. What to do?

In the meantime, I will just continue writing. Finish the damn first draft and see what we've got then.

Posted 02/16/2004 21:58 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 55141 | Since last entry: 1910 | This month: 4874

I tried, writing all morning, and came very close, but didn't quite finish the chapter. I found myself still in my chair, typing furiously away, at 1:50 for a 2:00 group meeting, and with one scene still to go: the entrance to New York (which is under alien control). This is a big scene and deserved more than ten minutes' work (it's 10-15 minutes just to get to the place we meet, anyway) so I decided to give in and buy them a beer. But I arrived late, after everyone had already bought their own drinks, so I didn't even do that.

I should be able to finish the chapter tomorrow, and put it in the mail to the gang on Tuesday. Not Monday, that's a holiday.

I got chapter D critiqued today. Jason's still a wimp and the aliens still aren't alien enough. I honestly don't know what I can do about the latter problem; how alien can I make them and still have them be sympathetic? For the former problem, I have some ideas but I don't know if I'll be able to overcome the forces (plot factors and aspects of my own personality) that made Jason who he is now. Changing his name and giving him a different backstory might help. A weaker strain of the same problem affects Clarity. Sigh. But despite these critiques, people still insist they are enjoying the book.

Some of the folks in the group are speculating about what is happening behind the scenes, who is responsible, and where the plot is going to go from here. Some of the guesses are scarily accurate; some are completely off base (and I need to determine if this is due to bad writing or just a bad guess); some are not what I had thought, but they fit the evidence presented so far and are more interesting than what I had in mind. The scariest of all is one where the reader has guessed exactly what is happening, then rejected it because it seemed too obvious. That worries me.

Now I have to decide whether I want to change my mind about what happens next. Some of the most interesting suggestions would, unfortunately, result in a substantial rewrite (e.g. the suggestion to add a third viewpoint character to show the interaction between humans and aliens, which Jason's human-only environment and Clarity's alien-only environment fail to) or would change the story into something completely different (e.g. the suggestion that the plague spread to the alien homeworld, which would require a faster-than-light drive, which would completely change the human/alien dynamic and require a different ending to boot), neither of which I am willing to do. But some of them are entirely plausible and better than what I had planned, so I'm likely to do them. I always feel strange about incorporating another writer's suggestions, but a) that's why we have critique groups, and b) what I do with the idea is almost always going to be different than what the suggester had in mind.

Posted 02/14/2004 21:56 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 53231 | Since last entry: 265 | This month: 2964

Opening night of the Portland International Film Festival, but I decided to write just a little after the movie (Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things) to keep my hand in. A few hundred words a day is better than a thousand-word binge once a week.

But now it's definitely bedtime.

Posted 02/13/2004 22:27 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 52966 | Since last entry: 673 | This month: 2699

I hoped to get at least a thousand words tonight while Kate was at the opera. It didn't happen.

I also hoped to make it onto the final Nebula ballot. That also didn't happen. (Rats. But it's an honor to be... well, nearly nominated.)

I'm probably not going to finish this chapter by Saturday.

Feh.

But at least I did sit down and write something. Something is better than nothing. And 673 words is enough for a gold star. I also went back and tightened some of what I wrote on Tuesday.

Introduced new character Commander Smith (no relation to Doctor Smith, Cordwainer Smith, or E. E. "Doc" Smith), while bringing Jason into the belly of the FFL. He's realizing that these people he has already gotten thoroughly into bed with are Not Like Him, and it's only going to get worse as the chapter progresses. I'm not yet sure how he and they are going to react to each other, but he's definitely gotten off on the wrong foot with the Commander. Considering that everyone around Jason is willing to kill or die at the Commander's word, this might be a bad situation.

Posted 02/12/2004 22:27 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 52293 | Since last entry: 623 | This month: 2026

I've been pretty busy the last couple of days, but I decided to turn off the radio for my commute (45 minutes to an hour each way) and spend the time thinking about the novel. It's a lot like meditation, in that the intention to think about a given thing (or not think about anything) can very easily -- almost unnoticeably -- slip away into thinking about something else. Anything else. Monkey mind at work. But as soon as I notice myself thinking about work, or chores, or the dentist, I pull my mind back on track.

I'm concentrating on what is one of the novel's major problems: Jason, the main human character, is a wimp. He is more reactive than active. So I'm trying to come up with situations in this chapter in which he can make decisions and take actions for reasons of his own. I also hope to use these decisions and actions to set up some later things he has to do. So even though not much happens in this chapter in terms of advancing the plot, I hope it will still be a dramatic and valuable one.

After all that thinking I found the actual writing went pretty quickly, though I only had an hour tonight so I only wrote about 600 words. Now I am frustrated that I can't write faster, rather than frustrated by not having anything to write about. Even so, the chapter is nearly half done. I might even finish it by Saturday, but it's going to be a close thing.

In other news... the Hell story sold! I was getting a little worried about it, since I'd heard back from Gateways so quickly. So that's two sales so far this year... a very good start. Also, after a good discussion on the Speculations message board about when to trunk stories vs. sending them to "lesser" markets, I mean to put some of my older stories that haven't gone out in a while back in the mail soon.

Posted 02/10/2004 21:56 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 51670 | Since last entry: 842 | This month: 1403

Despite the best of intentions, I did very little writing this week. There was always something else that seemed more pressing or interesting. I think it's due to the lack of definition of this chapter.

This implies I should take some time to flesh out the outlines of other chapters that have as little as this one.

In the meantime, I'm just going to have to keep struggling through. Many writers of my acquaintance get to talking about "that damn novel" after a while, and I can really see where that comes from. I do hope to get back into the swing eventually...

Posted 02/08/2004 21:12 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50828 | Since last entry: 561 | This month: 561

I am such a slug. Far from getting right back to work on the novel after putting the Gateways and zeppelin stories in the mail, I slacked off for over a week. But I finally did put my butt in the chair tonight, and wrote 500 words for a gold star. It's a start.

One reason I had so much trouble getting going is that this is a transitional chapter -- only one point in the outline, which is basically "move this set of characters from here to there." And yet somehow I need to keep the reader's attention for 4000+ words. I've been mulling it over in the back of my head for the last week, and I think I have a set of incidents to occur on the trip that will reveal needed information, develop the characters' relationships to each other, build the world, and increase dramatic tension.

I hope.

I am encouraged by my success with the zeppelin story, which was written in one shot without an outline. We'll see how it goes. I have ten days.

Despite not writing very much on the novel in January, I think it was a very good writing month. I wrote almost 14,000 words (the most in one month since I've started tracking, including both the PseuDoNaNoWriMo and the NoReNaNoWriMo), including revising one story, writing two stories from scratch, and putting all three of the new stories in the mail. And the Gateways story has already sold! Just to keep my head from getting too big, I also got five rejections.

February is not going to be as productive, I suspect, with Potlatch and the International Film Festival and several Fahrenheit 451 events (it's the county library's annual "Everybody Reads" program, with discussion groups and plays and movies and readings all focused on one selected book). Not to mention I can't expect an ice storm to keep me home and writing for three solid days. But Kate's going to be out of town for most of one week, which could be an opportunity to get a lot of writing done. Or maybe to melt down into complete slugdom. Again, we'll see.

Posted 02/04/2004 21:02 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 21 | This month: 13965

The 21 words shown above is the net result of edits on the Gateways and zeppelin stories. I put both of those in the mail tonight, as well as a resubmission of "Where is the Line". Also sent off a couple of queries on stories that have been at their markets for a loooong time.

Final word count on the Gateways story: 6684. But I e-queried the editor and he said "Don't worry about the extra 600 words -- if you're happy with it, send it on over to me." Tonight's edits were mostly tweaks suggested by my crit group -- I tightened up the first few paragraphs, eliminated a red herring or two, fixed a couple of technical and grammatical errors, and brought the bad guy on stage at the last so he could see he'd been defeated. In general, the crit group liked it. I think it's a pretty good story.

Why does the simple act of mailing a story take so much time? It's not like I sweat over the cover letter (every one is the same except for the address, title, and wordcount). Maybe it has something to do with the reading over and over of my deathless prose. Handwriting the two envelopes is also kind of time-consuming, but it takes less time and stress than computer-printing them when the printer gags on the envelope two or three times, as it did more often than not before I gave up on it.

Tomorrow I will write at least 100 words on the novel! Promise!!

Posted 01/26/2004 21:51 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 4475 | This month: 13944

Just back from the Colonyhouse, a fun weekend of writing, talking, and eating. Had a full house of eight people this time, despite blustery weather (hard rain, occasional hail, and serious winds at the coast, with the threat of snow in the mountains) and personal crises for some of the attendees.

Although I started this Colonyhouse weekend thing as a way to get in more words on the novel, I wound up starting a story for All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories instead. I blame Edd Vick, who was also working on a zeppelin story. The good news is that I also finished the zeppelin story, so I now have three solid weeks (with no more short story deadlines!) to write my next novel chapter.

This story was unusual for me. It started as just a vignette: 400 or so words written for an Exquisite Corpse (a writing game in which each writer adds a short section to an ongoing story) started by Jay Lake. I whomped it off in an hour. But I was so intrigued by the setting -- a kind of China Mieville magic/technology hybrid universe -- that I decided to expand the vignette into a story. It already had zeppelins in it, and zombie goats to boot. I changed the zombie goats to human zombies, because I thought the goats were both implausible and just too much of an in-joke, but apart from that it was a straightforward extrapolation from that bizarre little vignette.

Starting from that situation, I just wrote and wrote, introducing characters and relationships as needed. I was never sure as I wrote each paragraph just what was going to happen next. And then I wrote a sentence, and I stopped and thought "gee, what happens now?" -- and I realized I had just ended the story. Boom, a whole 4500-word story in one day.

I'm still not sure that's really the end of the story. It's a lot like the end of The Italian Job (the 1969 original, I haven't seen the 2003 remake). At first, I thought it was terribly ambiguous. But I got a couple of the people who were there at the Colonyhouse to read the story, and they said the ending wasn't ambiguous and it was satisfying. And, indeed, when I read it again I found it was not ambiguous -- there's really only one more thing that could happen after that point, so there's no need to show it. It's a bit of a downer ending, but it's appropriate for the rather dark setting. (Though, as Kate points out, it's nowhere near as dark as New Crobuzon.) I did go back and tweak one scene in the middle to make the ending work better -- but I only added two letters, changing "I love you" to "I loved you" in two places.

I have some worries about this story. Am I being derivative, channeling China Mieville as I channeled Cordwainer Smith (and some have called "Nucleon" Bradburyesque)? Am I in a rut, with a man in love with a zeppelin as I had a man in love with a spaceship in "Eagle"? And, still, does the ending work? But all in all I'm happy with it. If nothing else, it's a great atmospheric piece.

The really weird thing is that, even though I wrote it straight through in one sitting without knowing what was going to happen next, it hangs together surprisingly well. For example, in the first scene there is a little biotech cleaner that snuffles up some crumbs, then flies off to the corner to feed its young. It doesn't have any relevance to the plot, it's just there for atmosphere. But, upon reflection, it serves to show on the very first page that this is a world in which there are engineered creatures that perform services for humans but have their own lives and their own agendas. And they fly. Just like the intelligent zeppelin with whom the main character is later revealed to be in love.

Since I finished up the zeppelin story on Saturday (and got to bed by 10:30, unlike Friday night when I stayed up talking until 1:30 AM), I took Sunday morning to do some edits on the Gateways story. Based on the two critiques I have already received, I decided to keep the demon alive until almost the end of the story, and I think it's much stronger for that. I also used one of the new demon scenes to introduce the armorer at the middle of the story, so he doesn't just appear from nowhere when he's needed at the end. It's like making pie crust -- you have to cut the flour and shortening together, then roll it out so it's a smooth dough with a uniform consistency (but without working it so much it turns into mush). Now I have to roll out some other ideas in the same way, to properly lead up to the ending and otherwise make the batter smoother, and do some word- and sentence-level editing to tighten the story and reduce the word count as much as possible. I'll probably be able to put both these stories in the mail on Monday or Tuesday.

And so, after a productive weekend, I'm going to take this evening off.

Posted 01/25/2004 18:09 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: -519 | This month: 9469

Trimmed the story down to 6600 words, just 10% over the stated limit, and sent it for a quick email critique. (I gave myself a gold star for the 500 anti-words.) Maybe my crit group will suggest some more trims. Even if not, I think I can probably get away with this length.

I like this story a lot. It's not quite up there with "Eagle," I think -- it didn't make me cry -- but it's a good solid story with fear and danger and magic and sense of place, a really evil bad guy, and a couple of good guys who learn and grow.

We'll see how the critique goes.

Posted 01/21/2004 22:47 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 1110 | This month: 9988

Finished the Gateways story! 7100 words. Tomorrow, I edit.

Posted 01/20/2004 22:24 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 737 | This month: 8878

Didn't get any writing done at Rustycon this weekend, but had a good time nonetheless. Con report will be posted soon in the usual places.

Tonight I wrote the scene in which all hope is lost, but the main character finds an idea for a solution in a tiny handful of snow. Now she has to find a way to implement it. Great sacrifices will be required, but in the end a traditional square dance move saves the day. I know exactly how it needs to go, I just need to write it.

The story is currently exactly 6006 words. I think I can finish it up in less than 1000 words, which I might be able to tighten back up to 6000 words with judicious editing and the slaying of a few darlings. Must finish it first. But for now... sleep.

Posted 01/19/2004 22:26 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 1129 | This month: 8141

Wrote the preparations for the siege, the overwhelming attack, the falling-back to the last redoubt, and the bad guy's final offer. One of the biggest problems I had was how to describe the action of a fork-cart. This is an ancient Chinese siege weapon that works like a catapult, but instead of throwing a rock it just smashes its arm directly into the wall (with a big fork on the end, which is why it's called a fork-cart). It was difficult to describe it from the perspective of my protagonist, who has no more experience with catapults than she does with fork-carts, but I think I managed it.

Left off with the good guys trapped with their backs against the wall and no hope of victory or escape. Probably another 1000-2000 words to go. Unfortunately, the story is already 5200 words and the maximum for this market is 6000. This could be tough. Maybe I will ask the editor if I can have an exception to the length limit...

Posted 01/14/2004 22:25 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 923 | This month: 7012

Still plenty of snow on the ground, but I did get to work on Friday and got out and ran a lot of errands yesterday and today. Also saw Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times.

Not quite a thousand words increase in word count today, but I'm going to give myself a red star anyway, because I wrote just over 1000 new words while deleting a couple of paragraphs. Anyway, the story is set in China :-).

Wrote two scenes, in which Yao the evil general smashes his cooking pots and Chang the good general despairs. The scene with Chang turned out to be much more of a character moment for both him and the protagonist than I'd expected. This story is turning out really well. The only problem is that it's 4000 words going on 8000 for a 6000-word-max market. Well, we'll just have to see how it goes. There's really only two more scenes to write, but they're biggies: the siege of the town, and the protagonist's big revelation and climactic task. (Maybe that last is two scenes.) Plus a short epilogue.

Thanks to those who have written in with suggestions on Chinese mythology. I still don't know what the demons are called in Chinese, but since I am using the English names for everything except places and people I guess I can get away with calling them "demons". But the Ten Kings of Hell are making a cameo appearance.

Posted 01/11/2004 21:50 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 1329 | This month: 6089

David's Very Secret Diary, day four. If Legolas keeps nancing about on top of the snow, may have to hit him with my staff.

It's been four days now and I'm going rather stir-crazy. The good news is that I've been getting lots of writing done. The story is now 3200 words and just slopping over with action and dramatic tension.

A frustrating thing: at the Portland Art Museum's exhibit of Chinese art last year, I saw a large sculpture with three demons (having human bodies and evil fanged faces) holding up a globe. I want to know what they are called in Chinese. But many Google searches on "Chinese demon", "Chinese devil", "Chinese mythology", etc. yield no joy. In the story I am calling them "black demons" but I would like to be more specific than that.

The weather report promises thawing tomorrow, but it's been saying the same thing since last weekend. I plan to attempt to dig the car out, at least.

Still not King.

Posted 01/08/2004 21:44 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 1888 | This month: 4760

Stuck at home due to snow for another day, and tomorrow isn't looking much better.

As long as I wasn't doing anything else, I did more background reading on the Gateways story, then wrote up some brief character and situation sketches, which turned into a 1600-word prose outline. The 1888-word total above reflects the current contents of the file Gateway.doc, which is about 1300 words of story and 500 words of outline. I think the research is really paying off in atmosphere, detail, and character. At least, I can see and smell every scene in my mind's eye... we'll see what the readers think.

The story may be moving too slowly to finish in less than 6000 words. On the other hand, it does take a while to set up the situation. If it's too long, I can always chop it down after finishing the first draft.

I have chosen to use names that are reminiscent of the actual Chinese names in my research without being exactly the same (examples: my god Kuan Shih Yin = the actual goddess Quan Yin; my general Chang Hua of the state of Li = Liu Pang of Qi; my Yao Ming of Tung = Hsiang Yu of Chu [a really nasty fellow]). This should give a story that sounds and feels authentic without getting me in too much trouble with real Sinologists.

Posted 01/07/2004 21:21 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Word count: 50267 | Since last entry: 0 | This month: 2872

Stayed home today due to the massive snow storm, freezing rain, plague of locusts, etc. Didn't do any writing, but did do a lot of research for the Gateways story. Also watched both Jaws 2 and Deep Blue Sea, in both of which a shark takes down a helicopter. Who knew?

Posted 01/06/2004 21:54 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

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.

Posted 01/04/2004 21:40 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

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!

Posted 01/03/2004 23:34 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

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.

Posted 01/01/2004 20:50 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

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