by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
It has begun to sink in — again — how massive writing four novels simultaneously is. But that’s what I wanted about three years ago when I started this process. I was originally going to write what gradually became a massive scifi series. Then I realized there was just too much I didn’t know about real world geopolitics and I pivoted to a story that I knew I wanted to use as a way to talk about how much I fucking hated MAGA.
Well, that has grown into four novels and the connection between my hatred of MAGA and the novels has grown very tenuous. But my hatred of MAGA is being fired up again by how fucking obvious that we really are living in Weimar America.
It’s very easy to imagine how future historians will depict this moment in American political history. America is running on fumes. Everyone is sitting around either oblivious to how obvious it is that Something Bad is going to happen around 2024 – 2025 or complicit to whatever the Bad Thing is. The people who should know better, who should be willing to fight to save democracy — conservative Traditionalists — are all-in with MAGA because of negative polarization and an extensive permission structure.
Anyway, every once in a while, it dawns on me the massive undertaking I’m doing right now. I have to write four novels about three times. Just the writing part takes time because it takes physical time to write unless you’re on, I dunno, crank like Philip K. Dick.
But I do have a broken ankle at the moment, so I have “all the time in the world” to just read, develop and write. Only time will tell if I use this time as wisely as I should. I do have a tendency to just get drunk and pass out. But I have been doing a good job avoiding that of late. I have managed to stay sober enough to be productive.
I love having four novels to work on at the same time because I can always switch things up and still stay in-universe. I find myself wondering what Stieg Larsson’s development process was. But, interestingly, the more self-confidence I get as writer in my own right, the less I find myself dwelling on Larsson.
Though, I do find myself flipping through some of the stuff he wrote just to get a sense of how far I still have to go.
Anyway, wish me luck.
