by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Today was extremely productive when it came to the first novel in this projected five novel project. I’m going to spend the next few days going though editing what I’ve done so things are back to what they used to be — my heroine for the first novel is now a middle aged AmeriAsian woman.
Now, I know because of “woke cancel culture” I’m kind of playing with fire being a CIS white male writing from the POV of someone who is neither white nor male. But, YOLO. I’m here for a good time not a long time. If I have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune by having the temerity to -gasp — write from the POV of something other than that which I’m directly knowledge of, then so be it.
Anyway, I have to go through the process of beveling off the edges of a series of scenes that I wrote for different versions of this story. Once I do that, I can really get into the second act (again.) I’m really pleased with the symmetry of the plot.
I hope to wrap up this version of the first novel pretty soon. I just can’t keep spinning my wheels. I’m not going to live forever and I have five strong novels to work with and the issue now is to flesh them out. I believe in myself. I can do this. But I have to admit that I’m going to have to do a lot more reading. I really need to know like the back of my hand the structure of how to write a twisty novel with enough thrills and excitement to keep people reading.
Maybe my angst over this situation will give me some sense of an actual deadline and, as such, I will actually fucking finish something instead of spending way too much time writing about writing.
But, to my credit, my storytelling ability continues to improve on a near daily basis. I continue to worry that someone is going to come out with a story of some sort that steals a march on me. But that’s out of my control. I just have to keep working on what I believe in and see what happens.
