by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
So. I really went through a lot through much of 2024. It probably was one of the worst years I’ve had in 15 years. But, somehow, somehow, I managed to survive.
There came a point when I was totally locked up when it came to writing fiction. I just did not, could not, focus my mind in such a way that I could possibly produce anything of note.
That has gradually changed in the last little bit. It all started to change when I came up with about five short story ideas. Of course, being the ambitious person that I am, I soon realized that, fuck it, why not turn them into novels.
The main one I’m working on at the moment started off as something of a tech Shiva Baby in the sense it was focused around the events of one moment in time. Rather than a Shiva, this story was set around a long Thanksgiving weekend at some point in the “near future.”
And yet, with the aid of several chatbots, I’ve started to figure out ways to flesh this particular scifi story so it now stretches from Thanksgiving to early January.
I’ve tried to make the stakes of the story as high as possible and I’m really taking a different approach with this novel. Rather than getting bogged down with making the first draft a “perfect” as possible, I’m just generally outlining it then just writing.
I’m hoping that if I can produce a pretty good “vomit draft” that will speed up the process of actually getting this baby to the point where I can pitch it to a literary agent.
