Tag: writing

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Some thoughts.

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

This is about the point where I usually quit when it comes to writing a novel, but I’ve taken the idea of “know when to rest, not quit” to heart and so I’m hoping to use the time I’ve taken off writing to recharge my batteries. I think that’s the key issue to writing a novel — you have to appreciate that it’s marathon, not a sprint. There will be times when you maybe don’t go as fast as you have been going.

Part of the reason I’ve slowed down the last few days is not only is summer over and I realize I have some serious life-issues to address, but I’ve come to a point in the novel where it really has hit me that there will be people who poo-poo the entire conceit of the novel because of where it’s set. If was set somewhere sexy like LA or NYC, then a lot of the media elite would get off on seeing the infrastructural of places they actually knew being used for something dramatically different. And, yet, once you get into the universe I’ve built, it doesn’t make any sense that places like that would be used. There’s a very specific point to where I’ve set the vast majority of the novel, not just in its own way its my own personal historic geography that I know really well.

Meanwhile, I keep thinking up all these other great novel concepts that would distract me but for the reason that I can’t think of a plot for them. So, my attention comes back to what I’ve been working on the last few months. The story has changed so dramatically from what I thought it was going to be originally that it’s quite something. But the point is to just keep going. I have a really strong concept and a plot for once, so I need to buckle down and keep going.

Only time will tell, I guess.

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m writing a scifi novel and while I’m trying my best to be as middle of the road as possible, it’s quickly becoming apparent as a first time novelist that it’d difficult to ignore the political environment of my times. While this novel as always been something of a liberal’s fever dream of First Contact, I time and again I find myself drawing upon the surreal political events seemingly happening with rapid abandon around me as I write.

It goes without saying that today’s political environment produces surreal events at an alarming rate. As a would-be professional daydreamer dealing with the fantastical, you sometimes find it hard to compete. The novel I’m writing is meant to be my personal Stranger In A Stranger Land or, if you really want to push things Atlas Shrugged. The first of a proposed trilogy, it is extremely political in a way that I could say turning off a lot of conservatives if it’s not handled properly.

As such, I’ve done everything in my power to make at least one character — the female romantic lead — a sympathetic conservative figure. My goal is for her to be a mixture of Andrew Sullivan and Alexa Chung. I wanted at least one character to be “famous” at the beginning of the story and that’s what I managed to come up with.

My fear is if I’m not conscious of how my how my personal politics might come off in the context of the novel that the entire endeavor risks being written off as something of a liberal Turner Diaries. As you may recall, the Turner Diaries was, I think, written in the early 90s and it was influential in extreme Right wing circles because it was something of a Right wing political screed against the centrist politics of the day.

Regardless, my novel has nothing in come with that Turner Diaries other than it definitely expressions my personal political worldview. It takes so long to write a novel, and there’s so much work involved, that you as the author find yourself struggling with issues you never thought you’d have to face. Making sure you get a concrete political worldview in the novel without turning off 48% of your readership is tough.

But, like I said, I’m trying my best. While I’m going to try to get this novel published in the traditional manner, I’m fully prepared to self-publish if need be. I really believe in the concept and this is, by far, the farthest I’ve gotten in writing a novel to date.

Today I hope — hope — I can spend all day writing and reading. The muse is quite fickle with me and I tell myself in a really conspicuous manner I’m going to do all this writing and then turn around and do next to nothing other than listen to music and stare out into space.

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The last few days I haven’t gotten much writing done because I was thinking about what was going to happen next in the novel. But I think I at least now know the problems I have to fix for the story to progress. I have been toying with some other novel concepts, but I really like this one and I have invested so much time in it, it doesn’t make any sense to just quit without at least trying to move the story forward.

I have to work today, so I’m going to have about six hours to think about these problems.

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Some thoughts.

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Some thoughts.

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The more I get into writing this novel, the more I realize it’s going to appear to be a critique of the Trump Era, so I might as well play into it some. I keep finding different little digs I can take at Trump and his era, so away we go.

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I have one solid chapter at this point in the process and trying to build out from it. The more I think about this novel, the more it appears to be a hybrid of several different other works of pop literature and art. Among the other stories greatly influencing what I’m writing are The Martian, Dome, The Girl Who Played With Fire, Mission: Impossible — Fallout, Arrival, Contact and what little I know of the story-line of Annihilation.

In its own way, the story is also meant to be a critique of Trump’s America. It novel names names in a direct political fashion that might make it divisive. My fear is it would be viewed by those in the extreme Right as some sort of bizarre Leftist Turner Diaries. That’s not my goal at all. My goal is write a rip-roaring yarn that makes some pretty specific political points along the way. I want this to be a summer beach read that is so easy-breeze you can read it over the course of a long weekend and recommend to your spouse mid-way through.

But on a more basic level, if I can write a novel that is good enough for one (1!) person who I don’t know will read, enjoy and ask me when the next book is coming out, I will have succeeded. That’s because generally people think my writing sucks.

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Some thoughts.

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Some thoughts.