Month: November 2023

Contemplating A Return To Freelancing

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There was a moment, in the summer of 2001, when I lived entirely off of freelancing. I’m not saying I was very *good* at it, but I was able to eek out a living for a few months until 9/11 happened and everything collapsed — including my personal life.

As I’ve keep saying, I have been living a very idyllic life the last few years when it comes to working on a novel. You could not design a better life for an aspiring novelist. I’m very, very poor — I live in literal poverty — but for the most part the basics of my life have been provided for to my satisfaction.

But these days, I’m feeling a bit…nervous. I’m afraid this particular era of my life is about to end and I’m going to have to return to the working world in some capacity. Now, they say “chaos is a ladder” so it’s at least POSSIBLE that after a bit of a bumpy ride that things will sort themselves out and I will be better off.

And yet, that doesn’t stop me from being rather…unsettled.

I am well aware that due diligence on the part of any prospective employer would leave me lacking — they would take one look at my online content output and blanch.

But, I can’t help who the fuck I am.

I am who I am and I long ago gave up on having any sort of “normal” professional life. In real terms, all I want is just enough money to feed myself and maybe be able to save up some money for improvements to my novel.

And, it’s possible I’m just being paranoid.

It’s possible everything will sort itself out and the thing I’m afraid will happen, won’t happen and I will continue this idyllic creative situation for at least another year until the “perfect storm” of the Fourth Turning and a Petite Singularity cause my life — and the lives of everyone else in the fucking world — to be totally upended.

Good times!

Proof Tay-Tay Fucks? — ‘He Looks Up Grinning Like a Devil’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m neither a Swifty nor am I thinking up any new idea about “Cruel Summer” that I’m sure hasn’t already been discussed before. But it definitely SEEMS like Tay-Tay is talking about cunnilingus being performed on her from her POV when she sings, “He looks up grinning like a devil.”

As in, the guy is between her legs eating her out and he looks up from his cunnilingus to give her a big “devil” grin. For a long time, I thought maybe Tay-Tay was a virgin…but not more. As commented on a Tik-Tok done by a middle aged comic who went to an Era Tours show, it’s clear that Tay-Tay “fucks.”

You go, girl.

Anyway. No one cares. But it’s fun to smirk and think about Tay-Tay “writing blue” a little bit in a way that totally goes over the heads of the tweens who so often love her.

Some Of You Need To Touch Grass

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This is a totally value free observation — I mean, it doesn’t mean anything, in real terms — but a few of you read this tiny, obscure blog WAAAAYYYY too much. While the person in Queens has calmed down some, something really fucking weird is going on in China.

I can’t tell if someone is masking where they’re really from somehow so I THINK they’re in China, or if someone in China is really, really fucking obsessed with me for some reason. I suppose it’s flattering, in its one way, but when all you see in your Webstats is the same domain in China over and over and over and over and over again, it’s a bit alarming.

I can tell it’s a person, but their motives are a mystery. Sometimes, they even want to comment, but they think better of it because I have that feature of the site on virtual lock down. I honestly don’t care. They can look at the site all the want to.

My hope is that either they’re a big shot Hollywood producer who is REALLY interested in my novel, or there some kid I taught English to in South Korea who in a very Korean way is obsessed with keeping up to date with “Shelton Teacha.”

Anyway. I had to get that out of my system. Live long and prosper.

‘Failed Journalist’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are a few professions that if you involved with them ONCE in your life, that is how you’ll be referred to for the rest of your life. Stripper is one of them. If you strip for a little while in your life, then you’re a stripper for the rest of your life, no matter what else you might do.

Journalist is the same way, in large part because it gives OTHER journalists a hook to frame whatever it is your in the news for. As such, when Tyrant Trump snatches me off the street in early 2025 because of all the times I called him a “fucking cocksucker” on this blog, then the local Sinclair owned station will call me a “failed journalist” who got what was coming to him.

The great irony is, of course, that if I ever need to pivot back into actual professional journalism again, I would probably do a really good job. I only bring this up because I’m nervous about my future and I’m thinking about looking into freelancing again.

There is the problem, of course, of all the bizzaro posts I’ve made to social media over the years. No editor worth his or her snuff would poke me with a 10 foot poll because they would think I’m clearly bonkers. (And, sadly, maybe I am.)

Anyway, the biggest reason why I “failed” a journalist the first go round was, well, me. I’m 100% extroverted and all good journalists TEND to be introverts. I love to talk and socialize — I’m anything BUT one of those deranged guys that everyone says “was quiet and kept to himself.” I’m NOT quiet and I DON’T keep to myself.

In fact, if I somehow managed to sell this novel and it become any sort of success, I would probably make a name for myself for being quite the character. I would do rather well on the late night TV talk show circuit. But, who am I fooling –I’m old as dirt. And it would be extremely surreal if somehow my life righted itself after a lifetime of being a drunk weirdo.

But stranger things, and all that.

Bulls On Parade

By Ender

So. What are we going to do if ding-dong Trump goes full tyrant and starts to shut down the free press? The issue is *ANY* Republican who becomes president would do all the same shit that Trump wants to do, but they would be a lot more sly about it and stagger the throttling of our American birthright — democracy — over the course of a few years.

But Trump is sooooo dumb and lazy that he is going to thrash around in the first few days of his Second Term and scare the shit out of a lot of Traditionalists who are more than willing to give a huge amount of slack as long as brown children would put back in cages.

It’s because drunk cranks like me who are harmless might get thrown into a camp that Trump might, at last, lose some of the not-so-tacit support that he has with Traditionalists. But for how dumb and lazy Trump is, these Traditionalists would be more than willing to be “Good Americans” as life for every day Americans grew more and more autocratic.

It’s because of what a shocking, jarring — and conspicuous — counter revolution the first few days of a Trump second term would be that we’re potentially going to see some pretty fucking astonishing things happen. And, remember, of course, that it’s very possible that none of this will happen.

It’s POSSIBLE that either Trump loses and doesn’t manage to start a civil war through demands for a National Divorce, or he wins and because 1 million smug Twitter liberals flee the country the whole thing is a fucking luzl.

If Tyrant Trump fucks up, we may ALL be antifa starting in early 2025.
Who knows. We’re still a year out from when things will probably go haywire, so maybe….we’ll just punt our problems down the road another four years like we did in 2020?

Who knows. I’m not advocating anything! I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas. I hate guns. I hate violence. I just am growing more and more alarmed at what MIGHT happen starting Election Day 2024.

Canon

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that I have pretty much built the cornerstone of the third draft by having a stable first chapter, I can get down to business. There is the issue of a ‘canon.’ To date, I have kept canon up to date in my mind by simply reading and re-reading what I’ve already written.

Heroine of my first novel looks like Corrie Yee, phenotype wise.
But that has led me to grow very unhappy with what I’ve written and, as such, rewrite everything. This has obviously slowed me down a great deal. But I took a look at the new version of the first chapter today and realized my heart wasn’t in it. This is a good sign — I can now throw myself into finishing the rest of the first act.

And what SHOULD happen once I finish the first act is things go very, very fast. That would put me on track to finishing the third draft of the novel no later than, say, around April 1st. That’s the hope, at least.

President of Hollywood, are you out there in the aether, reading?
Then I would have all summer to figure out how to afford a professional manuscript consultant to look at the novel before I query in in the fall — just as my world — and everyone else’s — is thrown up in the air because of a potential “perfect storm” of the Fourth Turning and a some sort of Petite Singularity.

Or we might actually punt our problems down the road such that I can try to enter the querying process in peace and quiet. If I legitimately thought someone in some way connected to the Hollywood industrial complex was interested in this novel I MIGHT post the stable first chapter of the novel just to give them a taste of what I have.

But I am well aware that by saying that outloud that some asshole will use a proxy to make it SEEM like someone with Hollywood connections was lurking out there in the aether reading this blog.

So, lulz, not going to do that.

But the first chapter is shaping up to be really, really good. I rewrite a lot of it recently because I used AI to give a sense if it was any good and it told me “not enough tension.” So, I reworked it to make the things a bit more tense and give the thing a bit more of a flow.

I am well aware that many, many other people are doing the same damn thing I’m doing and they’re not drunk cranks. I know anyone doing due diligence on me would probably conclude I was too much of a freaky weirdo to give a old drunk crank like me a chance.

Oh well. Slings and arrows and all that.

S1-D13-_-Pang-_-mysterious-postcard-RCL-work-day-5Download

A Better Image Of What My Heroine Looks Like In My Mind As I Write This Novel

While she maybe doesn’t dress as provocatively as Corrie Yee does in this photo, Ms. Yee is pretty much what I imagine my heroine looking like as I write her.

S1-D13-_-Pang-_-mysterious-postcard-RCL-work-day-5Download

Idle Rambling

I Just Don’t Know, Folks

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The moment I think I have a stable first little bit of this third draft of the novel, everything collapses. So, I dunno. I guess I have a stable first chapter? Maybe? It’s possible? I really like what I’ve come up with, regardless.

Yes, President of Hollywood, I’m working as fast as I can.
I’ve reworked the first scene YET AGAIN, this time so it has more tension in it and is more focused. But the changes I’ve made in the story have now forced me to rewrite everything that comes after it. This. Happens. All. The. Time. I think that’s a sign that my storytelling ability is getting a lot — A LOT — better.

I hope.

Anyway, I continue to fall apart on a physical basis. I have some real concerns about the state of my teeth. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that in the near to middle term. I have a fear things are going to get really, really bumpy, only to sort themselves out in a way I can live with.

It’s just going to suck in the near term. Ugh!

I hope I can sprint between now and Christmas when my next de facto deadline is. Christmas is when some relatives will return who I will feel compelled to show at least the first scene to. They were quite pleased with the last version I showed them, then I asked ChatGPT about what I had written and it said, in effect, “This sucks — no tension.”

So I went back to the drawing board and gave the first scene more focus and more tension. I’ve learned a lot of my problems come from simply having too fucking much going on in a scene. Just by cutting long, meandering scenes into shorter, more focused scenes, I fix a lot of problems.

I have also realized I have to hurry up. I can’t keep screwing around. I have a limited amount of time — I’m NOT going to live forever. I’m already in my 50s and not only may AI make all my hard work moot, the prospect of a significant political crisis in the United States starting in late 2024, early 2025, is a “not great, Bob” type situation.

We Are Lulzing Ourselves Into Autocracy

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s clear we’ve given up on liberal democracy in the United States. At the moment, at least, it seems as though Trump will win a second term and I will end up in a camp — if I’m lucky. I dare not think what would happen to my sorry broke ass if I’m not lucky.

All of this is happening in broad daylight. Trump has made it clear that he wants to be an autocrat — specifically a military dictator. And yet the mainstream press can’t even trouble itself to frame the debate around Trump’s pending re-election in the right way.

Meanwhile, I find myself having arguments with conservative relatives about over how it’s a “free speech” issue when it comes to trying to not give Nazis a platform online.

It definitely seems as though our only shot is to hope enough chaos erupts in starting in 2025 that the country becomes so unstable that the military stands down and maybe even deposes Trump. (I AM NOT ADVOCATING ANYTHING.) If that happens, then maybe we could refound the republic and have a Third Republic take the place of the failed Second Republic.

Something, something like that.

But I have my doubts. I think this is it. It’s over. The US is just going to slide peacefully into a Russian-style autocracy and that’s it.