by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
As is my wont, I keep vacillating back and forth between cutting the number of novels in this project and saying, fuck it, let’s rock. The reason is — it’s really difficult for me to justify cutting novels if I have a really strong conceit for each of the six novels.
So, I look at the barebones, vague concepts I have for several of these novels and think about scrapping them, only to think, “But I know what happens in general terms…” As such, I decide I have to throw myself into fleshing out all six novels.
What’s more, the last two books in the novel — which are the first two novels I worked on with this project — are so well thought out and developed that they’re something of a gimmie. Now that I have the first book of the series figured out — it’s foundation — I can pretty easily rework the last two books to fit into the revised vision of the universe and overarching, macro plot.
There is a specific macro plot point that I want to use that at least one person has said is “disappointing.” But if you look at the overarching plot of the series, it’s the only way to go and it ultimately has the biggest pay off. So, I feel very Steve Jobs like in saying, “I know what I want and I’m going to do it, even if the rubes don’t at first understand or don’t like what is going on.”
Wink.
A lot is going on at the moment when it comes to this novel project. I’m transitioning into a new era of it all where I don’t have total control over things. I’m going to have to beg people to not only be beta readers of the first novel, but to finish the thing in the first place. I’m prepared to give people as much as three months, then it’s fish or cut bait.
I hope to save up the money for a professional editor of some sort in the fall so I can turn around and start to query early next year. Which, come to think of, I need to start to read up on how to do soon. But I want to finish the second draft — or at least the public beta — before I do that. I don’t want to read something about the querying process that I feel forces me to rewrite the entire first novel to accommodate it.
I want a finished public beta in my hands before I start to work towards querying.
Anyway, wish me luck.
