by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I have a lot to say about the Trump Era. So much, in fact, that I’m allowing a novel I’m developing and writing that gives me about 165,000 words to vent to completely consume my life.
The thing about this novel is I feel compelled to keep working on it despite the massive amount of thinking I have to do because every day sees another enraging fascist act on the part of the Trump Administration. So every time I feel a bit discouraged at how much work I have ahead of me still, I simply look a Twitter for a few minutes and am, again, enraged.
I feel very powerless about the United States being a fascist state. I honestly can’t do much about it for various reasons. But I can tell a good story and love, love, love to write, so here I am. I have a number of decent stories I may piviot to once I finish the two books associated with this story I’ve come up with. But I have way too much invested in this specific project to look elsewhere just yet.
There are at least a half a dozen scenes that I really want to write sprinkled throughout the two novels I have planned and so I keep going. Add to this the huge fucking chip on my shoulder I have about people telling me how much I suck in general and, well, ain’t no stopping me now.
One thing I will point out is I will about once a week take a little bit of a breather from the novel to think . I’m very grateful for the opportunity I have at the moment to be able to do this. This special moment in time won’t last forever and so I need to stop dilly-dallying and start getting to work again as soon as possible whenever such a pause happens.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting back to actually writing the first draft again. I really need to make this thing darker, because right now it’s pretty much just The World According to Garp with guns.
There’s so much that can go wrong with this project, but as my dad says, “No one ever got anywhere in this world with taking a risk.”
