By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
I have been working on a novel off an on for about six years now.
I have struggled to figure out what I wanted to write about and how I wanted to do it. I know I want to tell the story of the late Annie Shapiro and me in Seoul in 2006-2008, but I’m not a good enough writer to tell it literally. So, after a lot of distractions and bouncing around, I’ve settled on telling a proxy story set in Southside Virginia.
The story wouldn’t be so much about Annie and me as it would be about the theoretical consequences of her secretly having a child with me and me not knowing about it for decades. It would be all very hazy and fictionalized. I tried to write a literal rome a clef about what happend in Seoul but it was a complete disaster in large part because it was more about me venting about something I was still angry about as opposed to telling a great story.
So, today I think I’m going to work on the novel again. The #FOTUS thing seems to have petered out. No one is interested and nothing is going on. I need to look for a job today as well. I just feel so meh. Nothing really excites me other than writing and photography.
I wish something fun-interesting would happen. Something where nobody got hurt and we all felt good about the news for once. Maybe Trump and his possible talks with the DPRK are it in a surreal, bonkers way.
Who knows.
