by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I finally accept that while I may BE 50 when I sell my first novel, I won’t actually be a published author by the time I reach that milestone. As such, I’m pumping the breaks for a few days and allowing myself to decompress from getting really stressed out about the first novel in a projected six novel project.
As part of all of that, I’m going to read a number of “how-to” books about writing novels. The biggest issue, I think, is character. I really need to root around in the characters I’ve come up with so they aren’t just “moods” that I change as needed for expediency sake.
I have a few extra days, I hope to use them to develop as much as I can of different characters and their different versions that appear over the six novels. This is going to be an enormous amount of work, but as I keep saying, I like to be overwhelmed creatively. It keeps me happy and stops me from brooding about my own eventual demise.
I need something to think about outside of myself, and having six ~100,000 word novels to think about really, really helps. If Stieg Larsson can write three huge novels and sell them, then I think I can write six novels that are a little shorter and sell them, too. I just hope, as always, that I don’t endup dropping dead of a heart attack.
Ugh. Being old sucks.
Anyway, I also hope to do a lot of reading. I find reading from the small personal library that I have helps a lot to distract me, and, as such, recharge my creative batteries.
