by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Months after I thought I was going to get this point, I believe I’ve finally — finally –come up with the beginning of the third draft of this novel that I like well enough to stop futzing with. I believe I can now zoom through the rest of the novel at a pretty fast clip.
There are a lot of known unknowns, however. A lot could go wrong that might force me to either pause my writing or at least dramatically change the context of it all. But until that happens, all systems are go.
I still am at a loss as to what people will think of some the new elements of the story. A number of times in this new version of the novel I flip the script on some of the dark things that happen in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I’m just not as dark as Stieg Larsson was in his writing and time and again I have found myself interjecting a bit of levity in unexpected ways.
My goal for what I’m writing now is simple — produce an “alpha release” of the third draft that I can use as the basis of a much stronger “beta release” which will be essentially the same version but with a lot of the inconsistencies ironed out and the characterizations improved.
As all of this is happening, I keep thinking up various other stories I want to explore. I think I’m going to at least *try* to work on a number of backup stories starting at some point in early 2024. Some of the scifi concepts I’ve come up with are really original and interesting.
Anyway, wish me luck. I continue to hope to query this novel in the fall of 2024, just as AI makes all my hard work moot and the Fourth Turning causes the end of the post WW2 liberal global order.
Good times!
