Month: April 2024

It’s Comical How Much I Move Scenes Around

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I move through the second act of this third draft of my first novel, I continue to move scenes around at a comical, alarming rate. And what makes this behavior even worse is there’s a chance all of it will be quite moot. I have, in general, used what Stieg Larsson did with his chapters as a guide.

This woman has the general phenotype of my heroine.

And, yet, it seems as though modern novels may have shorter chapters than he had. So, it’s possible that for all my futzing with chapters and the sequence of POVs within them…lulz?

I suppose I can console myself by with the thought that even if the first thing happens with the novel should I somehow, magically, sell this novel is everything changes with the scenes and chapters, at least I will have presented the best possible vision for this novel before I came to that point.

That, at least, is what I’m saying to myself to make myself feel better.

My heroine has a sleeve tattoo similar to the one that Megan Fox now sports, even though I thought of the idea first.

But I can’t help myself. I have some very, very strict, arbitrary rules about what “looks right” in the outline I have, even though I’m the only fucking person who will notice such shit — especially if I tell a great story. People will be so wrapped up with reading the story that they won’t give a shit about the exact sequence of POVs within a chapter.

It will be interesting to see how things work out. If nothing else, I’ve come up with a novel I can be proud of, no matter what the ultimate endgame of this particular journey might be.

Things Are Quiet

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are pretty quiet at the moment. We’ve had a nice few months of pretty much nothing of note going on. There have been a few blips, but nothing that really made us all sit up and take notice.

It make you wonder what is going to happen.

My fear is, of course, some major Black Swan event is going to happen to upend everything. That’s one of the big differences between, say, South Korea and the United States — while things change all the time in South Korea in the US they stay the same for a long time then everything changes suddenly overnight.

Usually, this happens because of a presidential election.

But, in a sense, we’re still stuck in the post 9/11 era. You might be able to make the case that the election of Trump ended that era and, yet, that change was may only superficial.

I do think that everything is going to change one way or another in late 2024, early 2025, probably because of a combination of so-called Fourth Turning with something akin to a Petite Singularity.

Things just can’t stay so meh forever. History abhors a vacuum, just like nature, and it definitely seems as though we’re all just kind of drifting at the moment.

Now In The Second Act Of A Third Draft Of The Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There is a chance that things may for go into overdrive with the third draft of this novel — at least for little while — because I’m now in the second act of the novel. I say this because instead writing all these scenes out of whole cloth like I did with the first act, there is now a stretch of scenes I have to rewrite instead.

I hope to write a heroine as interesting as Lisbeth Salander.

I don’t know if I will make my idea of having a hard April 19th deadline so I can physically hand it to people at an event I’m set to go to on that date, but I could get pretty close. In a way. I doubt I will have something strong enough I will want to hand to anyone, but I’m going to be well on my way to wrapping up SOMETHING by April 19th.

But I don’t want to overwork or stress myself out. I don’t want to burn out. I am, though, going to try to be a lot more focused from now on. I still am interested in the idea of finishing this year a third draft of the sequel to the novel I’m working on. That would be pretty cool.

I still need to read and watch other people’s content. That will really help me improve the copy of my novel. I keep saying that then never do it. Though I will admit that I’m really interested in seeing the moving Civil War. That should be pretty interesting to see.

The Curious Case Of AI Generated Novels

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I saw someone on Twitter demo a Claude 3 generated novel and the more I thought about it, the more it gave me headache. Here I am, slaving away at my first novel and there is a chance that the whole endeavor will become moot because of technology.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize just because a novel is created, doesn’t mean anyone is going to read it. Now, obviously, places like Amazon may soon be flooded with quickie AI-generated novels. Yet, for the time being, because of sheer momentum, if nothing else, there will continue to be a market for a good novel generated by the hand of Man.

So, I could see in the near term a lot of stories about how there is a growing market on Amazon for prompt-to-novel novels that are just pretty much taking up space. This will cause a great deal of angst within the writing community but when it becomes clear that very few of these “novels” are actually being bought and or read, things will calm down — at least for a little while.

But, in general, there is a trend now towards the black hole of AI consuming the entirety of human creativity. That is, of course, until there is something of a backlash and human generated art is given more cultural value because, well, humans collectively decide that they want art created by other humans.

The big question if, of course, how long it takes for that particular backlash to develop.

At Least I Will Have Proved My Point

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

My paternal grandmother started to paint later in life and she did a pretty good job. I think about her a lot as I grow closer and closer to finishing a novel that at least won’t embarrass me.

Given that I’m about 25 years too old to do anything but just sit in my room and stare up at the ceiling while twiddling my thumbs, I’m just going to have to console myself that when I finish the novel I will have prove the point I set out to prove when I began this project — my writing doesn’t suck and fuck you.

The novel I’m working on tells an interesting, coherent story that I — hope — leaves the reader wanting more. And, yet, I have to accept, no matter how hard it is, that even if I stick the landing and blow up with my novel money I simply won’t get what I want.

I want to be young and cute hanging out with my fellow 25 year olds in New York City running around the city making mistakes and memories. That is just not going to happen. No amount of success I might attain because of this novel will give me my youth back.

And if I became as big a success as I feel I could be, all anyone will want to talk about is how I became a success “late in life” and they’ll pester me with questions about what it feels like to be a “late bloomer.”

As such, I just have to be proud of creation for the sake of creation. Even if it takes me years to successfully query this novel I will have proven to the haters that I can, in fact, write a novel.

They Shoot Writers, Don’t They: Being A Broke Ass Aspiring Author Sucks

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am zooming through the newest version of the Third Draft of this novel and as I do, I find myself experiencing wave after wave of angst for various reasons. One reason for all the angst is what the fuck I’m going to do once I finish this third draft and need to piviot to the post-production issues of editing and querying.

If I wasn’t living in poverty, I would probably talk to someone about how to successfully query. And I definitely would look into talking to a manuscript consultant.

But, as it stands at least, both of those options just aren’t really applicable. I MAY be able to pay a manuscript consultant, but it’s going to take months of saving money and eating ramen to do it. It will be worth it, of course, but a real pain in the ass.

Because of how broke I am, I’m going into the querying process totally blind. I can read up on what to do, but, lulz, it sure would be nice to talk to an expert about what to do. I continue to be in denial about how fast the querying process is approaching me.

It is. It really am on track to wrap up a viable Third Draft of this novel no later than, say around July 22. I will note that I really need to not listen to the white noise about writing found on social media. Every writer’s journey is different and I can’t let where other people are on their journey screw with my head or cause me to lose sight of my goals.

We Risk Becoming An Autocracy Because People Care More About Inflation Than The Abstract Of Democracy

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have long said that the United States is currently an autocracy without an autocrat. The only thing stopping us from sliding peacefully into Hungary-like autocracy is, well, the fact that Democrats are in power.

Once that changes, that’s all she wrote. We become an autocracy.

This really hit home when I recently had one of my monthly political debates with a far more conservative relative — whom I love dearly. They’ve been completely radicalized because of the culture wars and a general sense of being put upon by the “woke cancel culture mob.”

They have an extensive permission structure built out in their minds for various reasons, but to put a fine point on it, they simply hate the vibes and are willing to vote for a fascist like Trump if that means white Christians can have some security in what they feel is a increasingly secular — and gay — America where not enough of those sweet, sweet white babies are being born.

I’m obviously joking and exaggerating, but that is, in a sense what is going on. White Christians don’t like the direction country is going so they latch on things like the price of groceries when what is really going on is they feel weirded out that some women aren’t ashamed of having abortions and gay people becoming more noticeable.

That’s the thing that is so interesting about what’s going on — I get the sense that a lot of white Christians don’t really have a problem with abortion or being gay, but they DO have a problem with having to talk about it. And, of course, they hate how they feel smug Twitter liberals look down on them.

All of this is the culmination of decades of macro trends all coming together at once — The Fourth Turning, if you will.

So here we are. Waiting around for autocracy to come to America. That’s the general trend at the moment — America is heading towards a white Christian ethnostate one way or another.

Of course, the great irony is that because Trump is the vessel for these macro trends that some pretty surreal, unprecended things MIGHT happen in late 2024, early 2025.

Maybe. I can’t predict the future. But the CONDITIONS are there for some pretty fucked up shit to happen. There is a non-zero chance that Trump gets elected and is so fucking bad at being the person responsible for transitioning us into autocracy that some sort of effort to depose him happens. And if that “Glorious Revolution” is successful, then the specter of a civil war is a real possibility because Red States will get mad and begin to leave the Union.

It’s sad that everything is so fucked up.

I’m Really Worried About The Fate Of Trans People Once Fucking MAGA Is Back In Power

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

MAGA is now full blown fascism. America is an autocracy without an autocrat. As such, the moment Republicans have power again, all hell will break loose. And the jury is still out as to How Bad Things Will Get.

The political canary in the coalmine is going to be trans people. I struggle to believe that if some future autocrat — Tyrant Trump or someone else — builds out the infrastructure necessary to round up millions of undocumented people that they won’t feel a great deal of temptation to round up trans people, too. And they won’t stop there — next thing you know, Jews will be in the camps, too.

Whenever you start fucking with the nature of citizenship, there is a natural inclination on the part of those doing the fucking to narrow the definition of who is a citizen down to whatever they can get away with.

Now, of course, it just sounds like hysterical doom shit to suggest that MAGA might start to round up trans people and put them in concentration camps along with other “undesirables,” but it’s very easy to imagine MAGA going septic and that very thing happening.

But, at the moment, I just don’t know. There are a lot of scenarios one could think up, I just happen to gravitate towards the most dystopian.

Angst Over How The ‘Woke Cancel Culture Mob’ Will React To My Heroine Being A Part-Time Sex Worker

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about the “woke cancel culture mob” is, you can never predict how they will react. Now, let me be clear, I use the term “woke cancel culture mob” in a very sardonic way. It’s all a big lulz to me — I know what I’m doing with this novel and fuck you (wink) — but the tender sensibilities of some in the modern reading audience is something I worry about.

It would all be different if I was an undocumented trans woman. THEN, the fact that my heroine was a part-time sex worker would be something to praise, not go crazy over. But, I can’t change who I am or how old I am.

I often find myself pondering if I’ve totally screw up my making my heroine a part-time stripper. She is so much more than that, but that’s the thing everyone will focus on. And that doesn’t even begin to address the issue of how this novel might be marketed if I should somehow win the lottery and actually sell it.

The curious thing about the Youngs who are so fucking “woke” is how much they distain any sex at all. It’s all very curious to me. Sex is a part of being an adult and, as such, it is something that you are inevitably going to broach if you want to tell a modern, adult yarn.

But, I get it. I really do — just the idea of a smelly middle aged CIS white male thinking up a heroine who is a part time stripper is enough to make women in their early twenties want to do a few Tik-Toks in protest.

I am generally pleased with how this novel is shaping up, come what may. If nothing else, having my heroine be a part-time stripper will evoke SOME sort of emotion from the reading audience, one way or another.

T & A: Struggling With How To Depict Female Characters In The Age Of The ‘Woke Cancel Culture Mob’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really enjoy developing and writing female characters because it’s so much more of a challenge than male characters. And YET, the whole notion of me, a smelly CIS white male, writing from a female point of view is fraught with potential problems.

Ugh. ‘Woke’ people.

There are so young women on Tik-Tok are quite strident in their belief that, by definition, I can not write from a female POV. And that is just the beginning of what the potential creative landmines I have to deal with when I do something as now-provocative as write from a female POV.

Again, as an aside, let me be clear — had I know what a potential pain in the ass doing any of this would be, I wouldn’t have done it. But I studied Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium series and HE wrote from a female POV all the time so when I started working on what could now be a seven novel project…I didn’t really give it much thought.

From what I can tell of the “woke cancel culture mob” Tik-Toks I get pushed on occasion, one big quibble that some “woke” readers have is the what they feel is the gratuitous tendency for male authors — like me — to talk about tits and ass.

As someone who actually writing a novel, I really struggle with the idea that this is some big deal. One of the thing that is so appealing about female as opposed to male characters is there is so much to work with. Because women are so much more judged on what they look like than men, the writer — that would be me — has a lot to work with.

This is the general phonotype of my heroine.

So, the issue of how big my female character’s breasts might be is actually pertinent — in my view — when it comes to describing her to the audience. Hell, Stieg Larsson spend a long-ish scene talking about how and why Lisbeth Salander got breast implants. This is especially important when should there be a need to give the reading audience some sense of the character’s self-perception.

All of this sturm and drang about how horrible it is that smelly CIS white males like me talking about tits and ass gives me a great deal of self-conscious stress. I just want to present my female characters as interesting and engaging as possible and sometimes I feel that I need to, in a matter-of-fact kind of way describe their bodies and their self-perception and interaction with them.

The ‘woke’ always have their eye on you. Wink.

It should not be that big a deal if I do it all in a non-salacious manner. I’m WELL AWARE that some ding-dong male authors use their female character as an opportunity to design characters they clearly want to fuck.

Ok, I get it.

While we’re on the subject of female characters, I must note that my one big quibble about Stieg Larsson’s work is how ALL of his female characters are good. It seems a disservice to both the story and the audience for there to be no female characters who are not on the side of good.

Now, obviously, I haven’t really read the post-Larsson novels published by his estate, so that issue may have been fixed.

Anyway. What do I know. I’m a smelly CIS white male. I should nothing at all but sit in my dark bedroom, twiddle my thumbs and stare at the ceiling.