by Shelt Garner
@Sheltgarner
While I know to everyone who is not me, it seems like I’m spending all my time writing and talking about the novel I’m working on and not actually, well, working on the novel, this is not, in fact, true. It’s just that am doing all of this in a vacuum and, well, sometimes I need to collect my thoughts in a public fashion.
But things are, in fact, moving towards the next stage of development — the one where I actually start writing the novel. I’ve improved so much as a storyteller recently because of how much reading I’m doing. That, in itself, is one of the reasons why my march towards writing again is slowed so much. I just keep realizing how bad my previous concepts of writing a novel were and how much I need to continue to improve my storytelling ability.
I just don’t want to embarrass myself. I want to write a really good first novel that I can use to write even better fiction in the future. My dream is to write a breakout novel like Stieg Larsson’s Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. But my personality is so dramatically different than what I believe Larsson’s was, that I can draft all I want to off of him, my story is going to be significantly different.
It would be now that I would usually head to NYC and vegge out for a few days to process life and art before pushing forward. But because of fucking COVID19, I simply can’t do that. I’m probably going to do some traveling soon, like this weekend, but I’m going to drive south, not take the bus north. (No matter how much it pains me that I have to do this.)
Anyway, I continue to read as well as develop. That is really helping me with this novel.
