by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I finally have pretty stable first act. I’m now going through what I have and am correcting things as necessary to make it a cohesive whole. The only problem is, of course, is this whole process continues to take a lot longer than necessary. It’s looking like if I’m lucky, that I’ll have something akin to a complete first act within about a week.
My only hope is that once I get into the rest of the novel that things might move a bit faster because I will have the foundation of the novel figured out. And, in general, the rest of the novel is a lot stronger already. I don’t think I’m going to have to rework things as much as I have had to in the first act.
That’s the hope, at least.
Anyway, I continue to need to be willing to force myself to go outside my comfort zone by working harder — even when I’m not really in the mood. I can’t keep just drifting towards my goal. I have to accept that if I’m going to get this done, I need to take it more seriously.
I still think I can pull this off. I still think I can finish the second draft by July 1st. That’s the dream, at least. One issue that is kind of rough is once I finish the second draft, things are going to kind of be out of my hands. I’m going to have to figure out a way to get someone, anyone, to be a beta reader for me, willing to read the whole thing so I can improve it.
And, at the same time, I’m going to hopefully be able to save up for some sort of professional editor to stress-test the story in some capacity. That’s the only way I’m going to make this story better.
I have to admit, of course, that as I find myself growing closer and closer to finishing this first novel in a projected six novel project, that I have a growing desire to start work on the next novel in the project. I pretty much know how this first novel goes to the point that I can start to work seriously on the next novel.
And, yet, what I should be working on, of course, is one of the scifi novels I have rolling around in my mind. But, who knows. Things are both getting more exciting and getting more scary because there will come a point soon enough when I can no longer be as completely delusional as I have been.
