Month: January 2023

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So. I was pretty sure everything was working with the first chapter of the second draft of the novel when…it all fell apart. The reason is a matter of structure. I realized there was a way to to squeeze things down to the point that I could have an inciting incident around the middle of the second chapter.

But to do that, I am going to rework much of what I’ve already done. So, in a sense, I’m back to ground zero. Sort of. I definitely know what I’m going to but it’s going to take some work, some elbow grease, to get back to exactly where I was just a little bit ago.

It’s just a serious pain in the butt because I start thinking that maybe I’m being a perfectionist and I’m kind of spinning my wheels as a result. Or, at least, I feel I am. It’s all very frustrating.

But I feel if I just suck it up and stop overthinking things, I will be able to produce a second draft that is so good that I might be able to get Beta Readers who are actually willing to read the entire thing at a quick clip instead of getting all excited at first then….gradually going quiet.

I’m need to stop overthinking thing. I need to just plow through this and get something done as soon as possible — I need to keep my eyes on the prize and wrap up this second draft ASAP. I can’t keep spinning my wheels forever.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that it’s 2023 and I’m just about to turn 50, I feel like I’m in a new era in my life. I don’t know exactly what this means just yet, but I do feel that I definitely have a different approach to life. I simply can’t continue to drift through life the way I have been for way too long now.

In a sense, of course, it’s too late. When you’re 24, people will give you a chance. When you’re 50, people want to know what you have — or haven’t — done with your life and if haven’t done much with your life for a long time…why? There just no way to change how old you are. So, in a sense, age is an even stricter social construct than gender.

It’s not like you can have an operation to change your age. Even if there was, that wouldn’t change the memories you have rolling around in your mind. Part of youth’s excitement is learning new things and not knowing what you don’t know. Being an Old is about hard won wisdom and grappling with regret — sometimes a lot of it.

So, as I keep saying, I could write a break out first novel, it be a success…and still not get what I want. What I want is to be 24 years old, running around New York City doing all kind of fun cool kid shit with young people my age who are all learning about life for the first time.

That, sadly, is never going to happen to me again. I had something like that in my mid-30s when I was in Seoul….but that era of my life is over forever. I’m an adult now and no matter what success I might ultimately obtain at this late date in my life….I’m still old and jaded.

And if I were to hang out with young people — say, people in their early 20s — it would be extremely, extremely fucking creepy. My best bet at this point is if I become some sort of huge success is I find a hot woman around 40 who can still have kids and somehow, magically, get married to her before she hits menopause.

At this point, I just want to live up to my potential before I’m so old that I don’t even realize what’s happened. So, the clock is ticking. I need to knock out a novel of some sort ASAP. It could still be a few years — even if I stick the landing — before I get any sort of success. It’s all very sad.

Though, given my skillset, I sometimes idly muse that if some sort of Fourth Turning did happen around late 2024, early 2025….that maybe something rather astonishing and unexpected could happen to me then. But that’s really stretching it. I have to start sitting up straight and actually put in some hard work to get this first novel done as soon as fucking possible.

I’m not going to live forever.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Since I started working on these six novels, I’m kind of gotten into something of a rut. I just kind of drift towards my goal, not really having any sort of focus or structure.

Well, as I enter my 50th year, I need to put on my big boy pants and summon up the energy to change all that. I need to start consuming media, not just struggle to produce it. I need to read and watch TV shows and movies in an effort to stir up some creativity.

The first novel in this series is going really well. I wish I could call it “Happiness is a Warm Gun” after The Beatles song, but, alas, I have my doubts that a nobody like me could get a publisher to get permission to use it from Apple Records. I know technically you can’t copyright a title of a creative work, but that wouldn’t stop Apple from suing me or my publisher if they felt slighted.

I only keep mentioning that possible title because, I don’t know, maybe I hope I can use The Secret to make it happen. And telling you what the ideal title of the first novel is gives you, gentle reader, some oblique insight into what’s going on with the novel.

I have another working title in mind for the first novel, but “Happiness is a Warm Gun” is perfect, just like “Glass Onion” was perfect for the most recent Knives Out movie. I have to note that I saw someone really upset on Twitter recently about how they had to throw out the plot of two novels because their plots were used in TV show.

Now, I’m very paranoid about someone stealing a march on me with these six novels — extremely so — and, yet, these novels are, in a way, so specific and personal to me that it would be very difficult for an identical plot to be used. Something similar, yes, but not identical.

Of course, I am really paranoid that the old fleshed out outline I sent someone is now bouncing around Hollywood to be cherrypicked for a script. But you have to make decisions on what you do know, not on what you don’t know.

I need to shut up and write. But I can’t help myself. I’m going to blog about whatever is on my mind at any particular moment and right now, I have writing a novel a the very forefront of my mind most of the time.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While I’m reasonably content with where things stand with this second draft of the novel, there is one thing that I really need to work harder on: character. I need to mull on ways to flesh out each of the major characters so they’re not just moods that change as necessary to further the plot.

The plot should flow around character, not cause fundimental elements of characters be created out of whole cloth as necessary to keep things going. So, I’m continuing to try to push myself outside of my comfort zone by doing as much reading as possible to flesh out characters.

But, like I said, I am pretty pleased with how things are going. It’s a huge amount of work, however. It’s just sometimes difficult to focus on doing much of anything. Sometimes, I just want to stare out into space and just think. But I have to — have to — stop doing that if I hope to ever finish this first novel in a planned six novel project.

I’m really pleased with the macro arc of this six novel project. It’s all very, very ambitious. To the point that should I do my job right, people will grow really attached to the heroine of the first three novels and want more of her in the second set of three novels when the focus of the story shifts to someone else.

Anyway. Absolutely no one cares about anything I do right now. I could pretty much just walk off the edge of the earth and it would be a few weeks before anyone would notice. But I hope to change that. I want, as they say in the movies, to be “bonafide.”

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I need to hurry up, big time, with the writing of this second draft. Things are going well, just really slow. But the hope is that once I get out of the first chapter, things will move a lot faster.

And, yet, I’m such a perfectionist on a structural basis that I sometimes get really mad at how bad things are — at least in my own mind — and throw everything up in the air and start from scratch: even when it’s not necessary.

No one cares about any of this. No one. And, if they do care, I’m sure they’re just monitoring this blog so they can somehow steal my concept. Ugh. Everything is horrible and meh. But, you have to have hope.

I love being creative for the sake of being creative, so the key thing is just to press forward. To keep believing and to keep trying to see how far I can get with this endeavor. The thing I’ve noticed about a lot of successful people in the publishing industry is how bitter they are.

I guess I just want MY opportunity to be bitter because…I’m a success? Just being a mid-tier novelist at this point in my life would be one of the greatest events of my life. At the moment, I just have one alpha reader who finds the first draft of the novel “intriguing.”

Anyway. I have a lot — A LOT — of reading to do. Life is very short, very precious and if you don’t try to do the things you need to do you could very well just be dead before you accomplish anything and then where are you.