by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I continue to allow myself to be as delusional as necessary to finish this first draft. That’s pretty delusional, all things considered. By the metric of any “normal” person I’m a fool wasting my time in a very conspicuous manner. But fuck those people. I have a vision and I’m going to see it to completion.
I keep mulling screenplays and pushing them aside. The thing I’ve realized about being serious about storytelling is the amount of research that’s involved. You really need to reach as much as possible if you want to give your characters some nuance.
Anyway, my goal, at least, is to use August to buckle down and write as quickly as possible. To date, I’ve finished about a chapter a week and that’s way too slow. I’m going to try to shoot for something closer to three chapters a week. It helps a lot that I know how *I* develop a novel now, so that speeds things up a great deal.
I guess the reason why I think this novel has a shot is I absolutely believe that when I finally get around to shopping it to agents, America is going to be seething with rage that Trump stole the 2020 election in a rather brazen fashion and and so people will be interested in reading something like an allegory of the Trump Era. I believe Trump is going to steal the election in such an absolute way, that I know the conditions will be there for people to want to read something like what I’ve come up with.
Though, even if somehow a literal miracle from Jesus Christ himself happens and Biden manages to actually, somehow become president, I still think people will be interested in such a novel because, well, people liked Apocalypse Now and THAT came out after the event it meant to described was finished.
Anyway. I hope to get far more work done on the novel than I have to date. I’m just going to read and write as much as I possibly can. This is a really strong concept and the only thing stopping me at this point is how much I’m willing to delude myself.
