Video: Mulling The Petite Singularity

Video: Idle Rambling About The State Of The Third Draft Of My First Novel

Well, If Nothing Else, I Won’t Embarrass Myself With This Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are finally beginning to click with this novel. As I’m going through and rewriting many of the scenes of the third draft so I can produce something I can maybe get a manuscript consultant to read — if I can find the money — I’m finally, finally feeling confident that this novel won’t, if anything, embarrass me.

My dream is to write a novel as popular and as successful as Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

I can finally feel some peace about all the hard work I’ve done over the last few years with this project. A lot of why things are moving so fast now comes from how I have a stable outline. All I have to do is go through the outline and smooth out some of the rough edges while leaning into character.

I’m really beginning to use cause and effect on the scenes so they’re not just a series of scenes that move around constantly. There is some sense of a flow from scene to scene. This is why I really feel the Beta Release of the third draft will be good enough that it will feel like a professional novel.

My heroine as a sleeve tattoo similar to the one Megan Fox now sports, even though I thought of the idea first.

All systems are go for me to wrap this novel up around July 22 as I hope. When I finally do finish this novel, the real work begins. I’m at a total loss as to what I’m going to do when I start to query this novel. I’ve been developing and writing this novel in such a vacuum that I fear the transition into trying to sell this particular work could be extremely jarring.

But I’m prepared to fail — a lot. And I know the odds are against me big time. It will be like winning a creative lottery to get anywhere near my goal of being a published author anytime soon. Even if I stick the landing, I could be a lot closer to 60 than I am now by the time the book hits bookshelves and people can buy it

My heroine has the same phenotype as Corrie Yee.

And that doesn’t even begin to address the possibility of a political “Fourth Turning” happening or a technological “Petite Singularity.” But I have hope. I’m a peace one way or another.

I believe that when this process is over that I will have a finished novel that I can be proud of, regardless of any obstacles I may face to get it traditionally published.

I Finally Understand What My Novel Is About

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

For a long time, I thought this novel was a murder mystery like Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire. Because of this assumption, I spent months — years — spinning my wheels, struggling to figure out how to make the story work. It wasn’t until I realized that the first novel in this series is actually more foundational than that that things began to click.

My novel is about a part-time stripper who is obsessed with owning a community newspaper in rural Virginia.

This novel isn’t about a murder, it’s about one woman’s struggle to own a community newspaper. Throw in that the woman is a part-time stripper and a few people do die during the course of the story and you got yourself a pretty good shot at a novel that is interesting enough to actually get published the traditional way.

What’s more, this is meant to be part of a six or seven novel series that ends with a NEW series about a Lisbeth Salander-type woman. So, in a sense, my vision for these novels is you get to see how one Salander-type woman had such a fucked up youth that she would turn into someone you want to read a lot of books about.

Writing a novel as accessible and popular as Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is my dream.

That’s the thing about Salander, from my point of view, the reason she was the way she was is she had a really fucked up upbringing. Had she had the opportunity have a normal youth, she might not have gone bonkers the way she did.

So, now that I understand the nature of this first novel in the series, I find myself dwelling seriously about how successful I will be when it comes to querying this novel. At the moment, I honestly don’t know.

I’ve never queried a novel and it could be that despite all my hard work that over the years that, lulz, I’m still not good enough. But I know I’ve accomplished one thing — I’ve written a novel that at least won’t embarrass me.

At The Midpoint: Things Are About To Lurch Forward With The Alpha Release Of The Third Draft of My First Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Very soon — no later than tomorrow afternoon — I’m going to sit down and start to flesh out the second half of the alpha release of the third draft of my first novel. Things *should* move pretty fast now. I hope. I know this story really well now — it’s about a part-time stripper’s obsession with owning a small town community newspaper.

Corrie Yee is the basic phenotype of the heroine of my first novel.

Now, obviously, this is…an unusual concept for a novel. But, lulz, I’m weird, too, so fuck you. (wink.) I get the sense that it’s possible that all my very conspicuous talking about the status of this novel is generating a teeny-tiny amount of attention / buzz somewhere deep in the bowels of the infotainment-industrial complex.

Nothing serious, but someone in Greece — obviously someone on vacation — made a very pointed Google search that found some old copy of the novel that I posted here on this blog. Also, there was a picture of the phenotype of my heroine — Corrie Yee.

My heroine has a sleeve tattoo similar to this one that Megan Fox now sports, even though I came up with the idea first.

I have no idea what any of this means. It could be good — maybe some VIP finds my novel idea intriguing — and it could be bad — a movie producer is going to “steal” my concept and then next thing you know, A24 is coming out with a movie that is pretty much the same story as the one I’ve been working on for so long.

That latter idea is extremely paranoid on my part — I mean, lulz, no one cares about anything I have to say. And I don’t know, while I suppose it’s *possible* my idea is good enough to hang a screenplay on without all the fleshing out I’ve done for the novel….I don’t know. I just don’t know.

I hope to write a heroine as intriguing as Lisbeth Salander.

It could go either way.

All I know is I’m going to keep working on this fucking novel until something absolutely, on a concrete basis, blocks me so it’s impossible and I have to piviot to something else.

Even if someone was going to write a screenplay based on what little I’ve posted about the actual premise of this novel online, it would take them time to write and produce the movie. That would give me some wiggle room, I suppose. But I vacillate widely between thinking obviously I’m doomed and thinking there’s no downside to what’s going on.

Here is my angry rant about what happened to me in Seoul in staring in late 2006, which inspires a lot of the novel I’m writing.

So.

Having said all that, I hope to zoom through the second half of the novel in the coming days. Once I finish the alpha release of the third draft, I’m going to take a HUGE FUCKING BREATH and game out canon and character development. The beta release of the third draft will be the one that I either give to an editor or just using to start querying. (After I let some people read it, of course.)

But things should move really fast now. Really, really fast. So fast that there is still a pretty good chance that I might even finish a SECOND novel in the series this year.

Will The Looming Advent of AGI Make My Efforts To Write A Novel Moot?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh boy. It definitely seems as though at some point between now and sometime in 2025 we may develop Artificial General Intelligence which would be “a human mind in a box.” It would be able to do pretty much anything a human can do — and better.

One of the things it could give push-button access to is the ability to…write a novel.

As someone who has been struggling to write a novel for several years now, this gives me pause for thought. And, yet, I create for the sake of creation. As such, lulz, so what. I want to personal — human — satisfaction of finishing a novel and this going through the querying process, even if that, unto itself, is going to be a real bitter struggle.

But I’m really enjoying developing and writing this novel and would like to think that, in the end, we’ll give a lot more cultural value to stories created by the humans relative to those created by AGI.

I often compare the situation to what is found in the Blade Runner universe where “real” animals have a lot more value that synthetic ones. I think the same dynamic will happen when it comes to stories.

That’s my belief, at least.

Burn Hollywood Burn — Hollywood May Be About To Be Severely Disrupted By Sora

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems as though the Petite Singularity is careening towards a reality just about when I predicted — at some point in late 2024, early 2025, just as political Fourth Turning is also taking place.

So, it’s possible, we’ll have something akin to a Perfect Storm of disruption in which we kind of lurch forward with a Vibe Shift where we come out the other side in a totally new political and technological era.

Or not, who knows.

But it does seem as though after about 20 years of being in one era — the post 911 era — that we’re about to enter a new, unknown era. It could be that a lot sooner than any of us could have possibly predicted, the movie Her will just be our reality.

We will have AGI and instead of there being *any* humans involved in the production of *any* entertainment, it will all just be AI generated. As an aspiring novelist on the cusp of wrapping up my first novel in a few months….I don’t quite know what to make of that.

Will The Mythical ‘Woke Park Slope Moms’ Like My Novel?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now, let me be clear — I have always been making a joke about “woke Park Slope moms” whenever I mentioned them as an audience for this novel. And, the more I think about it, the more I realize I’ve failed even if I was being serious — this novel is shaping up to be a trashy, somewhat pulpy page turner with a lot of spicy scenes and a curious premise: a part-time stripper’s obsession with owning a community newspaper.

A building in the Park Slope area of NYC.

I think if this novel is popular among “woke Park Slope moms” it will be popular for the very reason why it’s not “woke” — it has a lot of spicy scenes. The downside, of course, is that I’m a smelly CIS white male writing those spicy scenes, sometimes from a female POV.

But these are wine moms we’re talking about, so it’s at least possible that the same dynamic that made 50 Shades of Gray a big hit might be in play when it comes to this novel. I really like what I’ve come up with. This novel is colorful, different and interesting — just like me.

A lot will depend on marketing of this novel once I somehow, magically, manage to get an agent and then sell it. I really want this novel to be an old brown shoe to people who read the Stieg Larsson novel’s 20 years ago. If I can tap into that same audience, then, well, we’re cooking with gas.

It will be interesting to see what happens, of course.

Once More Unto The Breach! — Things Are Moving Really Fast With The Third Draft Of My First Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m on the cusp of gaming out the third draft of my first novel to just about the midpoint any day now. Then, the hard work will be to well, write. The way I develop and write my novels can be so ad hoc, fluid and haphazard that it slows me a down a lot.

The heroine of my novel looks like Morena Baccarin.

In fact, most of the work I’ve been doing since I started developing what is now potentially a seven-novel project — if I don’t croak before it is wrapped up — is just improving my storytelling ability. There is A LOT about nuts-and-blots of structuring a novel-length story with multiple POVs that I know absolutely nothing about.

And now I’m worried that somehow, someway, screenwriters from Hollywood are going to read this blog and cherrypick the best bits of the novel and I’ll wake up to news that a character fitting my heroine is going to be in a movie soon. And, yet, you know, I’m such an extrovert that it’s not like I would be able to be quiet about such things.

I am who I am.

The point is to finish the first novel in the project as quickly as possible. I’m just a broke-ass kook living in the middle of nowhere with a great idea for a novel that I’m willing to put the effort in to finish.

My heroine sports a sleeve tattoo much like the one Megan Fox now has, even though I thought of the idea first!

As of right now, I hope to finish the first novel of this series at some point between now at around July 22, 2024 — the 20th anniversary of my first trek to South Korea.

I also have two other novels that I’m trying to develop. One is the sequel to this first novel, while the other a pandemic themed scifi novel. It’s really, really good. I’ve been fucking around with AI to develop it and it’s made me an “10X” writer….ha!

Yes, I know, in the end, AI will make all writers moot.

I’m At A Loss As To What I’m Going To Do About Querying My First Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m well on my way to finishing the third draft of my first novel. The novel will tell a coherent, cohesive story. It’s not the story I thought I was going to tell when I started this process a few years ago — but it tells a story. And, what’s more, it ques up a number of successor novels in the same universe that will be really compelling.

The heroine of my novel looks like Morena Baccarin.

At least, that’s what I believe.

I am soon going to wrap up the “actively delusional” part of this journey and enter the world of reality where I have to convince liberal white women who make up the majority of literary agents that I can tell a good story about a part-time sex worker who is trying to buy a community newspaper.

At least I can explain the story a lot easier than before. It used to be that the story was a lot more muddled and difficult to explain. Now, I understand what the story is about.

But there are A LOT of problems.

Like, what novel do I “comp” this novel to? What genre is this novel, since the murder doesn’t happen until well into the second half of the story. I just don’t know. And, when you add how bitter people seem to become whenever they enter into the land of querying, well, lulz, oh boy.

My heroine sports a sleeve tattoo similar to the one that Megan Fox now has, even though I came up with the idea first.

I’m going to have to shift gears bigtime once I finish the novel and start to query seriously. So much so, that I don’t even know if I can continue to write, even though I know I have to. Querying is a job and struggle unto itself, it seems.

But I do have a number of other stories I want to work on while I query the first novel. And I hope to have the second novel in the series I’m working on — one that is a traditional murder-mystery-thriller done pretty soon as well. It will have most of all of the same characters as the first novel and a few new ones.

It will definitely be interesting to see how things work out. I’m sure I’m going to make many, many, many, many mistakes and probably have already made a lot by just being me.