Tag: Lady Bird

I Need To Study ‘Mare Of Easttown’ & ‘Ladybird’ As I Move Forward With This Thriller Series I’m Working On


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about this new first book in the thriller series I’m working on is while it’s firmly set in the existing universe I’ve come up with, the dynamic of the story is dramatically different.

As such, there are two stories I need to study — Mare of Easttown and Ladybird. The former because the nature of the novel I’m working on fits it and the latter because of when it’s set — the early-to-mid 90s.

The only reason why I feel I can pull this new, expanded universe off is the fictional events of the series hone so close to my own autobiography that really all I have to do is put the work in — the road map to success is right in front of me. It would help, of course, if I had, say, a wife or a girlfriend to egg me on, but lulz.

I have watched some of the first episode of Mare of Easttown and really like it — though I worry that portions of Pennsylvania are apparently some sort of dystopian hellscape. The (new) first book in this series I’m working on is a lot or more character driven than the final two books — which is a good thing. And, it may be a bit shorter than the other books, which is another good thing.

All of this has solved an existential issue with what I’m working on — I’d been working on the original two books in the series that I was feeling a bit worn down. Now, I can do something fresh and interesting while staying in-universe and building a really solid backstory infrastructure for the other three books in the series.

Anyway, I really need to stop writing about writing and start to read, develop and write.

‘The Lady Bird Gambit’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The novel has an existential problem, in a sense. And that problem is it’s meant to be a vaguely allegorical critique of the Trump Era and the Trump Era is, thankfully, over.

And, yet, I press on for two reasons. One is what I call “The Lady Bird Gambit.” This is the idea that if you really develop character and plot — and just make something a great experience for the audience — that they’ll forgive you if you’re also leaning into “instant nostalgia.”

Love this movie.

So much has happened, in a sense, since 2020 started that I think if I make it clear that’s when the novel is set, then when I go off on subtextual rants about how insane those days were, then people will give me a pass if the story they’re reading is otherwise just a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, the other issue is MAGA-GQP-Trumplandia ain’t going nowhere. In fact, if my fuzzy understanding of novel post-production is accurate, then just about when this novel would be published (IF I SELL IT) would be just about when we have to start worrying about the fucking MAGA cucksuckers again.

As such, in a sense, I keep working on this novel because I know in the long-term I’m putting my stick where the puck will be, no where it is right now. But, also, I just love this story and I’ve gotten so far into the process that I simply can’t in good conscience give up.

You can’t edit a blank page, as they say.

The ‘Lady Bird’ Solution To The Changing Context of My Novel


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The more I think about it, the more I realize the movie Lady Bird provides a solution to the conundrum I find myself in — how do I write a novel I can sell after the era that conceived it is over?

On the face of it, it’s a serious, existential problem.

The energy to get this far with the novel came directly from my white hot rage against the Trump Administration. And what’s wild is now that Trump is out of power, the Trumplandia era now seems surreal, but very much the past. I am acutely aware that novels, in general, need to be “timeless” so they have more shelf life.

But this novel I’ve been working on for about three years now was always meant to be very “of the moment” and of the zeitgeist. Now, of course, I’m going to try to sell it during the Biden Era and not Trumplandia. Yet the movie Lady Bird is set in a very specific moment — the early 90s — and it manages to pull that off in a timeless fashion.

As such, that’s how I’m going to fix this problem.

I’m going full speed ahead — unless something fucks those plans up — and just write the damn thing. But write in such a way that I lean into character development and entertainment — in short, write a great story — to such an extent that people will forgive me if I wallow in things that now seem completely moot.

And, let me be clear, when I saw “wallow,” all I mean is had Trumplandia at the forefront of my mind as I mapped out the structure of the novel. Hopefully, it will, unto itself, just be a great story and you can read it as that without realize being all that aware of how enraged I was by Trumplandia as I developing and writing it.

Really, the point now is to write something, anything. I hopefully can read a lot and write a lot starting in the next few days. But I have to admit that I might have to break down and do some character studies of my major characters so I have a “legend” to reference as I write.

We’ll see.

Talk To Me Internet: I Was Inspired By ‘Lady Bird’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I saw the movie “Lady Bird” last night and it has inspired me to tell my own story. It will be interesting to see what happens. I need to just let the story flow and not overthink it.