by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The very thing I was worried would happen, has happened — as I’ve entered the first half of the second act, things have begun to unravel. But, thankfully, not so much that I feel any sort of existential dread.
My dream title for my first novel. (Don’t think I’ll get permission to use it, though.)
It’s not like I’m going to have to re-write or re-think the entire novel’s structure like has happened before — repeatedly. I do think, however, that I’m going to have to use whatever slack I have in my timetable to just chill out for a day or so.
Instead of pressuring myself to write as fast as I can, I need to read, watch TV and movies and do a lot of “power thinking” involving staring up at the celling and contemplating life. We’re entering the part of the year where things zoom past, so if I’m not careful it will be august and I will STILL be at the very beginning of the novel.
I’ve vowed to myself not to let that happen.
So, my turn around is going to be pretty tight.
I’m not going to pause things for much more than a few days. But the story IS getting a lot better. And as it gets better, the number of scenes I have to either create new out of whole cloth or have to totally re-write grows. Which, of course, slow things down.
But I do think there is a good chance that I can still make my July 4th deadline. Once that happens, of course, things will be out of my hands. I will have to struggle to figure out how to get Beta Readers to actually…read. And THEN I have to see if I can save up for a manuscript editor…and THEN I have to start the querying process.
All of this will be happening in the context of a looming “perfect storm” of Petite Singularity and Fourth Turning happening together in late 2024, early 2025.
But dreaming is free. You have to have hope. You have to keep going.
