Month: July 2024

I Need More Structure In My Life

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ok. Time to sit up straight and actually get some shit done. I’ve been drifting for much of the last month for various reasons. But now, finally, it’s time to focus. I need to realize deep down in side that I’m just not going to live forever and I have to get something, anything done so I can query it.

Tomorrow is August 1st, so that’s as good as time as any to put this plan into action. In fact, in a sense, I hope to start it tonight. I’m going to focus on getting some creative things done that I might not usually do.

It helps — I suppose — that I’ve stopped drinking. I hate being sober, but I’m now sober out of spite, if nothing else. Everyone thinks I’m some sort of raging alcoholic so in a “fuck you” that helps both of us, I’ve decided to prove a point by just stopping to drink booze cold.

Both sides win — I prove a point and they get to feel smug.

What more can you ask for?

Not drinking has definitely freed up a lot of time. I was drinking because I was lazy and bored, not because I felt some overall desire to drink and my ability to stop drinking cold, full stop proves that, in my opinion.

Anyway. Tonight, I hope — HOPE — to get something, anything done on a creative basis to help me see if I can get closer to querying a novel in the spring — if the world doesn’t collapse because of the fucking Forth Turning.

My Goal Is To Be A Smug, Wealthy Asshole Like The Hosts Of The ‘Pivot’ Podcast

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I actually *like* the Pivot podcast — most of the time — but when Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway wallow in their wealth privilege at the beginning of the show — I sometimes just give up.

I mean, COME THE FUCK ON.

If I was younger, I would aspire to be the type of smug, wealthy assholes those two can come off as. But now that I’m old(er) I realize they would never accept me, even if I manage to sell a novel as popular as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

They’re just too smug, too big of assholes to accept someone being a success so late in one’s life. So, I just have to accept that even if I get what I want — to write a great pop novel — I won’t get what I want: some level of “normal” success with all the “cool stuff” that comes with it.

The context of any late-in-life-success I get will just be so different than what I’ve dreamt of all these years that it will be very, very jarring.

And Just Like That…

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Within hours of me bemoaning how bad today was going to be, everything changed. Now I feel much better. Among the great things I saw today were three lovely young women.

One had a bright red shirt on that said, “I may be a bad influence but I’m hell of a hang.” The next was a quasi-goth girl I would have fall for hard in college. The last was a older woman — ie, my age — who was smoking hot and had great legs.

Those three women definitely put a spring in my not-so-young step.

Now, to see if I can get some reading, watching and writing done today as well. I just can’t lie around and do nothing. The clock is ticking. I’m not going to live forever.

‘Perfect Day’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This is officially the nadir of the year — so far, at least. This is it. This is the lowest point of the year. Now, obviously, if the country collapses this fall then, lulz, that will be worse.

But, for the time being, this is pretty much it — the day is just meh.

Nothing of note is probably going to happen and we will just drift through the day, hoping for the month to end. That, at least, seems to be our fate early this morning.

I could be wrong. Something wild might happen. But, then again, maybe it won’t. I had been having a magical thinking playground going on around me with weird error messages coming out of LLMs left and right, but that has faded away to nothing.

So, I’m alone. Totally alone. And all I have left is my creativity — specifically my writing.

We Are Heading Towards A Dark Autumn

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know how we collectively make it out alive this autumn. But, maybe, just maybe, all my dystopian hellscape ranting is just a bunch of bullshit overthinking.

I am prone to do that, you know.

There are all these different things that might happen. From a certification crisis, to Trump going full tyrant. You name it.

Just About To Get Back To Writing

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I think very soon I’m going to get back to my normal writing. I think within a few days I’ll get back to my old schedule — or something like it — during the day. There are a few issues that are kind of distracting me at the moment, but, in general, I’m ready to rock ‘n roll.

Two things I might do — work on the other novels in the thriller series to some extent and also try to work on the scifi novels.

And, of course, I need to hunker down and read and watch something other than things that I, personally have produced. Ugh.

The ‘Kook Tax’ Is So Annoying

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a feeling I’m going to suffer the “kook tax” again sometime soon. Just a feeling. The “kook tax” is when people make assumptions about you just because you’re different.

But it’s just a part of my life now. I just have to accept that being a freaky weirdo naturally leads to having endure the “sings and arrows of outrageous fortune” maybe a little bit more than other people.

And, yet, as I keep saying, the worst thing anyone ever said about me was I’m “a delusional jerk with a good heart.” If that’s the worst you can say about me, I guess that’s not so bad over all.

I generally mean well. I’m a good guy, all things considered, but I am, alas, a kook.

I Really Need To Consume Media Sometime Rather Than Obsess Over Producing It

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a real problem with consuming, rather than producing, media. They say if you have time to write, you have time to read and I totally agree with that. It’s just I’m so wrapped up in writing novels that it’s a real struggle to actually consume someone else’s creativity.

But, I’m not getting any younger.

I really find myself thinking about that a lot these days. I think about my mortality all the fucking time. I need to hurry up and get something, anything done that I can query ASAP. But part of that process has to be consuming other people’s media.

I can’t just daydream all the time. I have to force myself to consume other media to get a sense of what modern audiences want, if nothing else. I can’t just keep rereading “The Girl Who Played With Fire” over and over again — that was some time ago and audiences have moved on.

And, in all honesty, if I had understood how long ago that was, I probably would have made some fundimental changes to the structure of the novel I’m working on. But, alas, I wanted my first novel to be “an old brown shoe” for anyone who had read Stieg Larsson’s stuff so, here we are.

But the fact remains — I have to force — FORCE — myself to consume media, as much as I just don’t want to. I have to fit some time in my schedule to watch or read something I’m not involved in.

I don’t quite know when I’m going to do it. Maybe in the evenings? That seems like a good time. Anyway, my life may be thrown up in the air soon, so probably need to kind of enjoy having a normal life while I still can.

On Writing

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So. But for how my “readers” balked at the amount of sex in the third draft of the novel I’ve been working on, I would be about to query it. But, alas, I apparently was too much of a hornytoad and, so, here we are with me rewriting things AGAIN.

And, the more I work on this novel again, the more I realize there was some structural problems that I can address now. The novel has a darker tone now because I give my heroine a reason for doing some of the more….controversial…things she does: she’s an alcoholic.

I’ve come to believe that because of weird hangups so many people have about booze and sex that the only way to justify my heroine doing some of the things she does is to throw up my literary hands and say, “Ok, well she’s a drunk, ok!”

This is the general phenotype of the older heroine I have for a number of the novels before the heroine that will populate a new series is an adult.

And, I’m taking this opportunity to really rework and pair back some of the sexy time in the novel. I want this to be as mainstream a novel as possible. So, lulz, can’t have as much sex as I did before. It’s kind of annoying.

Of course, there is another element to this novel that makes it a vanity project — it’s about a woman’s obsession with owning a community newspaper. It’s kind of an origin story for two women who will be really important for six novels — at least.

The older heroine of many of the six novels I’m working on has a sleeve tattoo like Megan Fox sports here.

I’ve come up with a really interesting way to intertwine these two women’s lives over the course of 25 years. It’s just going to take a lot — A LOT — of work (and a number of years) to get it all worked out.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize how much I love all six of these novels and how much I am determined to write them all. You’d be surprised how snooty people with in the “writing community” can be when it comes to this dream — they think I’m nuts.

I’ll put a move on you…

They just can not, will not take a “long hair leaping gnome” like me seriously when it comes to such an ambitious project. This only causes me to dig in my heels more.

But, I will admit, I do have a few scifi novels that I want to work on, too. So, I think, in general, the point is — I need to use my time more wisely. I have to stop dicking around.

An ‘American Lisbeth Salander’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now, let me be clear — all of this is just a dream. And I’m so old that it’s highly unlikely that what I want to have happen, will happen. As it’s going I’ll be very lucky to get *one* novel written and published before I croak, much less six novels that begin a series about an “American Lisbeth Salander.”

Lisbeth Salander.

It just takes a lot of time and six novels is a lot of work and words.

But the dream I have is — I want to show the audience why my “American Lisbeth Salander” is fucked up by showing in a series of books that depict about 25 years of her personal history the events that lead up to what would otherwise be the first two books in the series about her.

This happened in large part because Trump managed to lose in 2020. I had two novels (joined together by a cliffhanger) that I wanted to use as an allegory for the Trump era (Trumplandia, if you will) but he lost and so…I felt a bit forlorn.

Then I realized I had so much backstory about this character I loved that I might as well go backwards in time and show, exactly why she is so fucked up like Salander.

The heroine of many of the novels in the six novel series I plan is older than Lisbeth Salander and has a sleeve tattoo like Megan Fox does here.

I have a vague idea of making sure that my heroine is in the same universe as Lisbeth Salander so, I don’t know, maybe if things went great there might be a crossover at some point? That would be pretty sweet.

My heroine is, if I have the ages in my head right, a bit younger than Salander is supposed to be. But she’s a very, very, very different person other than how fucked up she is for reasons that the reader will be intimately acquainted with by the time she really appears and becomes front and center in the series.

I think, ultimately, my “American Lisbeth Salander” will kinda sorta look like Corrie Yee in my mind. Maybe. Not a perfect 1-to-1. But sorta.

I think what I need to do is start to work on the other novels in the series, too, so that might speed things up some. There is one book that if had any resoruces at all I would write but, alas, I just don’t think it’s going to be possible. So, I think it’s going to be six ~100,000 word novels in the same universe that I will have an open ending so we can expect more from my heroine.

It’s all a lot of fun.

And I would be about to query at this point, but for the fact that the third draft was a lot more “spicy” than it should have been and my readers balked flat out reading it after a point. So, back to the drawing board. Now, I think I won’t query this novel until the spring — that’s the goal, at least.