by Shelt Garner
@Sheltgarner
I’ve said before that writing a novel is like the scene in Ocean’s 11, where the rockie is told all these things and the very last thing, the most important thing….they aren’t told because the guy telling him is interrupted.
And that thing, the thing you don’t know, is the like what the whole process of writing a novel is like. So, here I am. I’m cruising through the first act of second draft of the first act of the novel, maybe writing something really good, and maybe writing crap.
I just don’t know.
The only way I will know, at this point, is finishing a second draft and handing that second draft over to Beta Readers. It really could go either way this point. It could be that my gut has been right all this time and it could be that what I’ve written sucks really, really bad.
Anyway, I’m hopeful. I believe that I’ve finally — finally — stumble across a really good story with really good characterizations and, most of all, stakes. Something that would draw readers in a way that they will be willing to spend enough time with the characters I’ve come up with to finish the Goddamn novel.
Regardless, I feel pretty good about what I’ve come up with. There are plenty — PLENTY — of things that could go wrong. To the point that I really need to start working on a second or third track that I can fall back on as necessary should the worst happen.
But as I keep saying, you have to work on what you do know, not on what you don’t know. If you worry exclusively on what you don’t know, then you spend all your time worried about this or that absolute worst case scenario and never get anything done.
So, you have to focus on your goal and go from there.
I hope to start writing again with full force on the novel at some point within the next 24 hours. All systems are go, if nothing else.
