by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Now that I’ve finally finished a solid outline and am really throwing myself into writing a great first draft…we’re no longer in Trumplandia. Ugh. One of the things that I’ve repeatedly said is I don’t plan to ever use Trump’s name in this novel, even though, in a sense, my rage against the era that fucker caused is the beating heart of the work.
Now that Trump is out of office — at least for the fucking time being — I wonder if I might at least be a bit more specific who “POTUS” in the novel is. And, yet, I really don’t want the whole thing to be dismissed as a liberal fever dream or screed. It’s just meant to be a fun, thought provoking novel in the tradition of Stieg Larsson’s work.
That’s it.
Nothing more complicated or deep than that.
But my rage against Trumplandia is so white hot, so totally consuming on a creative level — and I’ve gone through so many hoops to get here — that it does make me wonder if maybe it’s ok to go beyond simply a “Individual #1” level of description as to who the “POTUS” in question is.
One solution, of course, would be to cut the POTUS angle out of the story altogether. But that part of the story is existential. That’s the whole point of the story. I can’t help that it took me three years to get to the point where my novel raging about Trump won’t be finished until well into his successor’s term in office.
So, I think I’m going to continue to look at this as just a scenario. It’s not THE POTUS it’s just A POTUS. Who the POTUS at the time in question happened to be is pretty obvious, so that should be enough.
I like the idea of using proxies to rant about MAGA-Qanon-Patriot Party cocksucker fuckers. My goal is that simply by what I bring up in the novel, I will definitely give you some sense of what’s really going on. There shouldn’t be any need to be explicit about it.
You’ll know, if you’re not an idiot.
Or, put another way, the more I use subtext to explain how enraged I continue to be about Trumplandia, the better the story will be. It won’t be preachy and — hopefully — even center-right people can read and enjoy the novel as a novel and not some sort of Atlas Shrugged for liberal-progressives.
I just want to write a novel that’s not embarrassing.
