I wrote a great deal this afternoon wasted as fuck. I realize that is not exactly the greatest writing philosophy, so I need to kind of chill out on that front. But this novel is getting really, really good.
I’m very pleased with what I’ve managed to come up with.
But there is one issue — I’ve kind of forked the novel AGAIN. The novel is getting a lot better, but now that it’s forked, I can’t just go through an edit things. I’m going to have to tinker and rewrite and restructure things, which will force me to slow down a great deal.
Which, of course, sucks.
I’m trying to speed through things as quickly as possible and all this fucking forking isn’t going to get me to my goal of finishing the third draft by April. I just don’t know what to tell you — I’m trying to make this novel as quickly as possible but it’s just one of those things.
I hate to admit it, but I’ve felt a lot more creative drunk.
Hollywood actresses are a curious bunch. While there’s no easy equation that explains all of their psychology, in general — especially as they get older — such actresses love to run around emotionally and psychologically naked using their roles.
You do you, baby.
This causes “good girls” like Natalie Portman to play a stripper in Closer. This leads some actresses who are probably bi-sexual to play many, many lesbian roles where they get to pretend to fuck another woman under the guise of “acting!”
In short, a lot of Hollywood actresses are freaks — in a good way. More power to them.
My heroine looks a lot like a younger version of Nicole Scherzinger.
Anyway, I only bring this up because my novel has a number of character in it that I could see actresses loving. My heroine is a really complex woman who would allow them to bounce back and forth between being a professional journalists / publisher and being the owner of a strip club / occasional stripper.
Have I got a role for you!
Meanwhile, I have the “comic relief” character who is wide open sexually and keeps causing trouble for the more “serious” characters by how unwilling she is to abide by the traditional gender power dynamic.
But I am really getting ahead of myself. Way, way ahead of myself. I have to finish the fucking novel first. I’m really, really pleased with how things are going, but I still have to stop fucking DRIFTING towards my goal and actually buckle down and get some work done sooner rather than later.
A lot could go wrong with this novel. I definitely fear someone will steal a creative march on me, if for no other reason, I’m just taking too long. But there’s not much I can do about it. Rome wasn’t built in a day and it’s just taking me a lot longer than I thought to get as far as I have.
But what’s interesting to me is the very thing that makes this novel a bit…edgy…could also be what makes it a success. I am WELL AWARE that because of marketing and human nature that this very interesting situation I’ve come up with will probably be boiled down to, “stripper solves a murder mystery.”
Ugh. That’s not at all what’s going on, but, lulz, what can you do.
But I do think that my heroine is beginning to approach Lisbeth Salander levels of interesting. She could very well be something of an icon if I play my cards right. And the thing that I keep being reminded about is how the interplay between my heroine’s “normal” life of owning an alternative weekly and her “alternative life” of owning a strip club / stripping to relax is something I need to lean into if I’m going to introduce the idea in the first place.
That’s what people — especially women willing to humor me by reading the damn novel in the first place — are going to want to see the most of.
The daydream issue of how Hollywood might address this novel occasionally gives me pause for thought. The obvious way to market the movie is something along the line of the old Pam Anderson movie “Barbwire.”
Double ugh.
The point of the story is not the T&A element of the story, but that by heroine is a woman who has sexual agency and self confidence enough that she is able to be a stripper to relax without giving it much thought.
It’s everyone else — especially horny men — who are the problem.
Anyway, I continue to work my way through the first act of the third draft AGAIN. Hopefully, this time, I will still have momentum enough to make my way through the second and third acts when the time comes.
I’m in full swing editing and rewriting the first act of this novel as I prepare to get into the second act and things are going surprisingly well. Thinking about what I know about this novel in my mind, the big takeaway is it’s just not scary or twisted enough to be directly compared to, say, Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” or Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With Dragon Tattoo.”
But, even I, who have EXTREMELY HIGH expectations for any story, have to admit that this is shaping up to be, if nothing else, a really entertaining yarn. It’s the kind of story that will suck the reader in pretty fast just because they will want to see how I have a part-time sex-worker solve a murder mystery, if nothing else.
And, yet, I am so blasé and matter-of-fact about that element of the story, that I’d like to think it will be a unique twist to what people will compare it to — the “hooker with a heart of gold” and “sexxy, slutty assassin” tropes.
But there’s one thing I know — you just can’t win. If you take any risks, you are BOUND to somehow, someway offend a small, vocal minority of the audience who will be mad specifically because a smelly CIS white male dared to do anything other than stare at the ceiling and twiddle their thumbs.
So, I press forward.
I still need to work on a backup novel or two. But it’s tough. It’s really tough.
There is a small — but vocal — group of the reading audience that simply can not, will not, validate the idea that I, as a smelly CIS white male, would, at times, write from a female POV in this novel.
And it’s only going to get worse the moment they learn my heroine is a part-time stripper.
And, yet, fuck it, we’ll do it live.
I am so matter-of-fact about the sex worker side of things that I think, within the context of the novel, that it won’t be seen as too terribly gratuitous. It’s just there’s a lot –a LOT — I can do with the whole stripper side of things to make the story really interesting and enjoyable so, lulz, why not.
And Barry — which dealt with an equally surreal professional life — was a success. But that was a comedy, so, I suppose it’s not a one-to-one.
And I am well aware that someone might steal a creative march on me, given how long it’s taking me to write this damn thing. As such, I really need to start to work on some backup stories.
I had a bit of a conundrum on my hands today about how I was going to proceed with the development of the third draft of this novel. I finally figured out what to do — I’m going to start from the very beginning of the second act.
Maybe I’ll write a break out hit novel and it’ll be adapted by Hollywood.
I’m going to go through and read everything and fill in those scenes that I have to fill in. This way, I have some sense of where the act is beginning and don’t have to risk getting waded down in the first act. I won’t waste a month trying to make the first act “just right” before working on the second act.
Anyway, I’m pleased with the plan I’ve come up with. I have to not think too much about the convergence of AI and XR technology that may make all my hard work on this novel….quaint and moot.
I think I have a pretty good chance of at least being able to query this novel before America either turns into an autocracy or has a civil war / revolution.
I usually make at least one person REALLY MAD randomly and by accident at least once a year. I’m overdue for someone to scream at me in a really personal way, as if they take personal offense to me being a listless daydreamer.
I assume whomever this person is, will be mad at me writing for years about a novel that I’m writing. That seems to be just the type of thing that some rando stranger who is paying attention to my life would get mad about.
And that doesn’t even begin to address what might happen if I magically somehow sell this novel I’m working on and I get even the barest amount of attention. There might be a LOT of people angry about my drunk ramblings. Or, maybe not.
Most of my drunk ramblings are center-Left in nature, so it’s probably going to be some drunk thing I did in Asia that ultimately destroys whatever success I might have because I wrote a novel that is as popular as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. (That’s a delusional dream at this point.)
And, yet, who knows.
Maybe, just maybe, it will all be a lulz and people will breeze past my colorful life in Asia.
While things feel like they’re doing pretty well, I honestly have no idea what I’m doing with this novel. But I continue to press forward. I also continue to think about how I need to give my life some structure.
Maybe my novel will be adapted into a movie one day.
I’m very grateful for this peculiar situation I find myself in that affords me the ability to — essentially — be a professional aspiring novelist, even if I have to live in poverty to do it. Of course this particular situation won’t last forever and any number of things that could happen that will, if nothing else, dramatically change the context of what’s going on in my life.
And I continue to grow unnerved with political events that are totally out of my control. Way too many people believe that if only we can defeat Trump at the polls that magically that will be enough to end the threat of MAGA.
My heroine looks a lot like this woman in my mind.
The events of January 6th, tend to make me believe that Trump could very well demand a National Divorce, and as such, prompt a civil war even if we defeat him at the polls fair and square.
As all of these thoughts fill my mind, I also worry about the possibility that AI will make all my hard work…moot…just as I’m preparing to query in late 2024, early 2025. But there would be something poetic if, rather than querying my novel, I’m dodging bullets from MAGA fascists.
But, who knows. It could go a lot of different ways. And, as such, I need to buckle down and work hard. Or, at least, a lot harder than I am at the moment.
Now that I’m in the second act of the third draft of this novel, I realize that I have to totally rework both the second and third acts. Pretty much, I have to throw everything up in the air.
This is obviously going to slow me down, but I know the general story of this novel so well that I think I can still — maybe –hit my deadline of roughly the April — June timeframe.
I hope.
But this week I’m going to switch gears and focus a lot more on development than writing so that by the end of the week I — should — be ready to write again. I also hope to give me life a lot more structure so I can work on some secondary stories, reading and watching.
I really, really, need to stop being so fixated on producing media and start to think about consuming other people’s content — especially if I ever hope to figure out what novels to “comp” my novel to when I query (hopefully) in late 2024, early 2025.
I’m just about to sprint forward with the “Fun & Games” part of this novel. I’ve been doing a lot of constructive daydreaming the last few days in an effort to figure out how to game the rest of the story out. It’s been really, really tough.
But I do think if I just let this process play out that I should get to writing full time again pretty soon. I was kind of sweating it there for a moment until I realized what the problem was. There really wasn’t so much a problem as I needed to go into aggressive daydreaming mode so once I left it, I could throw myself back into writing again.
As all of this is going on, of course, I realize I need to do a lot more reading and watching of TV — and develop other projects. I don’t want to be left holding the back if someone — God forbid — should somehow steal a march on me story wise and I have to fall back to some other project from scratch.
I don’t know when everything is going to sort itself out, but it should be pretty soon. That’s the plan, at least.
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