by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
After much revision, I have nailed down my structural vision for the first act of the second draft of my first novel. The next step is to go through and revise and write what I’ve laid out.
The other option would be, of course, to plow ahead without looking back then at the end of the process go through and rework the entire completed draft so it’s worth reading. But, for the time being, I’ve decided to do it this way, which is to make sure the first draft is done and complete before moving into the second act.
As such, I have a lot of hard work ahead of me. I have a number of scenes I have to actually write still — I just have scene summaries for them as place holders at the moment. But my aim is to slowly and methodically go through what I have and make everything make sense. I want the first act to be “readable” for Beta Readers before I plunge into the first part of the second act.
I don’t know how long that will take me, but hopefully — hopefully — I will wrap things up on that front by, say, next weekend. If I can pull that off, then I’m still on track to finishing the second draft by July 1st.
THEN, of course, I have to start contemplating the Beta Reader process and saving up for an manuscript editor to look over what I’ve written. Once all THAT is done, THEN I can start the querying process. I believe I will be at that point by early next year.
Of course, that would put me in line to be trying to get an agent just as the potential “Fourth Turning” is careening towards America in late 2024, early 2025 at an alarming rate. It’s going to be pretty ironic if I spend all this time working on a really good novel, only to have the United States to buckle and collapse into civil war and potentially revolution.
If we just slide peacefully into a MAGA-themed autocracy — which what I believe will happen — then the latter novels in this project will be very, very timely. So much so, I might get arrested.
