by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m at the point in this six novel writing project where I’m beginning to mentally transition from the first novel to dabbling in the other five novels. While the focus is still very much with the first novel, I find myself thinking a lot about the four novel in the series.
But my main focus is on the coming second draft of the first novel, which I hope to start working on a lot in spring 2023. If I’m going to do this properly, I really need to start reading — especially my competition.
I’m reading another series of books that is obviously meant to do the same thing that I want to do — write an American homage to Stieg Larsson’s original three novels — and they seem so much better than anything I’ve written so far. And YET, I think if I play my cards right, that the second draft of this first book is going to be significantly better.
I just have to not fall into the trap of throwing everything up in the air and essentially starting from scratch. I need to use the basic framework of the first draft as the infrastructure to flesh out characters and make people really engaged in what I’ve written.
So far, today, I’ve gotten a lot of work done on the first draft of the first novel and I’m very pleased. I managed not to drink SO much that I just fell asleep like I so often do, it seems, these days. In fact, I’ve just about gotten my second wind. I’m ready to rock n roll.
Anyway, all this hard work is why successfully selling a novel via the traditional method with gatekeepers who inevitable think you suck is such a big deal. Even though there’s never been a test I didn’t fail when it came to such type things, I still believe that it’s at least POSSIBLE I might, for once, prove the haters wrong.
I might actually pull a move on people who refuse to take me seriously because they think I’m a joke, a drunk crank that daydreams too much. Only time will tell, I suppose.
