by Shelton Bumgarner
@sheltbumgarner
The more I think about it, the more I can see there is a lot of symbolism built in to the scifi novel I’m writing that could be construed as my personal critique of the Trump Era. I think it has more to do with how art is made than anything else. I’m learning that if you actually are serious about writing a novel, your era is part of the primordial goo from whence a novel is birthed.
In other words, you don’t produce a novel — or any work of art for that matter — in a vacuum. You produce it as a snapshot in time. This novel in particular, if I can pull it off, could really be an interesting take on the Trump Era for various reasons. The novel deals with some pretty basic, fundamental issues that we come back to time and again in the Trump Era. I don’t know how much of that is I’m just interested in those topics and how much of it is writing about that has come to the forefront of my mind as part of writing this novel at this point in time.
Anyway, writing a novel seriously is definitely an interesting experience for a multitude of reasons. It’s definitely like a romantic relationship given how long it takes. That’s why I’m a little annoyed by the whole “write a novel during the month of November” thing. Writing a novel seriously is a long term project and you usually don’t even show your first draft to anyone for no other reason than it’s pretty much just you, the author, trying to get the story down in your own mind before you come back to it and try to make it readable enough that someone else can read the second draft.
I am really enjoying the process of writing a novel, though it sure does take a long time to simply sit down and write a novel that I hope will be at least 100,000 words. But hopefully once the process is done, it will be something, someone will want to read. Really, at this point, if I can get one person I don’t know personally to read the finished product and they want to know what happens in the second book in the series, it will be a successful in my mind.
Wish me luck.
