by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Using Tik-Tok on a regular basis as an aspiring (male) novelist can make you rather self-conscious. Sometimes it seems that, by definition, young users of the service — especially the young women — think a male author sucks.
By definition.
Even more so should the do something as egregious as write from a female POV and — gasp — talk about that woman’s body. All this happened because I simply made some structural decisions about the type of novel I was going to write based on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Little did I know that since that novel was published the “woke cancel culture mob” would make it “problematic” for a man to write a novel that switched POVs within a chapter as well as had a male author write from a female POV in the third person intimate.
Lisbeth Salander
Anyway, I only bitch about this because I’m back into the swing of things writing again and I’m kind of forced to confront that this novel is going to be something of a passion project.
I have a scifi novel — or three — rolling around in my mind that I also want to throw myself into.
But I have to admit that its the mystery-thriller that I really am obsessed with. One of the key things I’ve had to work on is how to make this first novel have “a point.”
The first novel is about one woman’s obsession with owning a community newspaper. It lays out a world that I hope people will want to stick around in to read five more novels. That’s the dream, at least. I am well aware that that is VERY ambitious for various reasons, least of which is how fucking old I am.
Anyway. I hope to get a lot of writing done today. I hope.
