by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
After a bit of self-doubt recently, I’m again working hard on the third draft of this novel. I have printed out the first half of the second act and I hope to get through it pretty quickly.
Believe.
I still have a fair deal of writing and rewriting to do, but I’m confident that I will get to the midpoint of the novel a lot quicker than I had thought. What really keeps me going is not only what an interesting story I’ve come up with, but how the novel tells a cogent, coherent story.
It’s not at all the story I had expected to tell when I started this journey several years ago, but it’s A Story, which is all that matters.
And I’m aware that the story is “racy” at times. And, yet, I don’t think there’s anything about the story I can’t finesse through editing. But just introducing the idea of my heroine owning a strip club introduces an element of “raciness” that I just can’t avoid.
My heroine has the same phenotype as Corrie Yee.
There’s not much point in introducing such a unique element to the story without leaning into it and exploring as many weird angles as possible. I am also very aware that if I magically manage to successfully pitch this novel that the “part-time sex worker” angle of things is all anyone will want to talk about, especially in marketing of the novel.
And that element of the novel might make the “woke cancel culture mob” very, very angry with me. Of course, if I was an undocumented trans woman, they would praise me for how I was showing women using their sexuality in an empowering manner. I just can’t win. I can’t help who I am and I try my best to be as empthetic as possible to the female experience.
But I’m a smelly CIS white male — and a middle aged one at that! — so I should just twiddle my thumbs in bed and stare at the ceiling until I drop dead.
Lulz.
Anyway. I hope to zoom through the first half of the second act and reach the midpoint of the novel pretty soon.
