After a lot more months than I expected, I am finally at the midpoint of the third draft of my first novel. I hope to zoom through the rest of the novel to the point that I can go through and add some uniformity to the novel in some form of Third Draft, Beta Release.
Nathalie Emmanuel in this photo looks exactly like the heroine of my novel.
THEN, after THAT is done, I will try to find an editor of some sort. I don’t know how am I’m going to afford that, however. In fact, if it takes too long, I may just start querying without worrying about an editor.
My heroine sports a sleeve tattoo similar to the one Megan Fox has now.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that two things will probably only happen if something really weird happens that I can’t predict — a find an editor and I get an agent. That’s because the odds are against me when it comes to either one of those goals.
So, if I somehow manage to get either one of those things, something really unexpected and weird will have happened.
Jesus Christ. I’m really beginning to fear that because I’m a kook and broke that finding someone to edit my novel is going to be a real fucking struggle. It’s going to be a lot more of a struggle than I could have possibly imagined going into this project a number of years ago.
But, here I am.
The same fears I have about liberal white women literary agents being non plussed about my kooky behavior on social media are there when it comes to how I’m going to find an editor.
Add to things how fucking broke I am and….oh boy.
But, if nothing else, I’m well on my way to wrap this novel up in a few months then I can piviot from the delusional dream land I’ve been in for the last few years into the bitter, cruel world of editing and querying.
Nathalie Emmanuel pretty much looks literally like my heroine in this picture.So much so I’m worried someone is going to steal a march on me creatively!
And, yet, as I keep saying, I would rather just never be published than self-published. I would rather fail in a monumental, catastrophic way than do the co-out of self-publishing. I totally validate self-publishing, it’s just not my scene and not my vision for any novel I may write.
Anyway, I’m just a few scenes away from reaching the midpoint of the alpha release of the third draft of my first novel. This novel is a lot — A LOT — more spicy (and funny!) than Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium series of books. And while I just am not as good as he is when it comes to structure and POVs, I do think that, in general, the story flows a faster clip than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Nathalie Emmanuel pretty much looks literally like my heroine in this picture.So much so I’m worried someone is going to steal a march on me creatively!
And, in a sense, I do feel that I’ve finally, FINALLY, developed and written a novel that has the same vibe as The Girl Who Played With Fire. It’s not fan fiction — it’s its own thing — but the influence that novel has on my work is pretty obvious in the sense that if you pick up my novel after having read the original Millennium series of books you’ll think, “Oh, I get it, this is like a Stieg Larsson novel set in America.”
That is the general goal of things in my mind.
But, in real terms, my novel is creatively its own thing other than a few stylistic choices and a few Form Follows Function things I was kind of forced into doing because of the genre.
My heroine has a sleeve tattoo like Megan Fox sports now, even though I thought of the idea first!
In fact, the biggest difference between my work and Stieg Larsson’s is something pretty basic — our personalities. He seems like he was way more serious than I am and had a far more twisted creative sense than I do. I love to laugh and socialize and it’s a real struggle for me to stay serious — or think about dark things — for too long.
Now, let me put the following in context — the Millennium novels not written by Stieg Larsson after his tragic death continue to be published and I can only assume are doing reasonably well. So any quibbles I have with them can easily be seen as just my usual crackpot delusional rantings.
My dream is to write a heroine as compelling as Lisbeth Salander.
But having said all that, I will give you my first impressions of the latest novel featuring Lisbeth Salander, “The Girl In The Eagle’s Talons.”
I’ve only just begun reading and I’m taken aback by how the novel doesn’t feel like a Stieg Larsson novel. The chapters are a lot shorter. The author doesn’t use surnames to refer to people. The novel just feels like it’s…there. It’s just like any other novel you might pick up, at least so far.
At the moment, I have potentially seven(!) novels that I want to write set in the same place populated by pretty much the same characters. I want my novel to feel like a Stieg Larsson novel the moment you pick it up. There are some obvious caveats.
I’m not nearly as good on the structural backend as Larsson was, for one thing. But I have studied one of his novels, The Girl Who Played With Fire, a lot and I believe I have a sense of how to make my first novel an old brown shoe to anyone who knows the original Millennium novels.
Nathalie Emmanuel pretty much looks literally like my heroine in this picture.So much so I’m worried someone is going to steal a march on me creatively!
When you pick up my novel, I want you to glance at the first page and “get” that this is meant to be an homage to the original Millennium novels, even if it’s totally and completely different outside of a few elements of style and some form follows function elements.
Anyway, I’m being very, very delusional. I’ve not even begun to query yet and it’s very possible because of the following issues that I will never succeed in becoming a published author:
My Crazy Drunk Behavior in Asia I was kind of a wild animal in South Korea back in the day. And it’s not like I’ve hidden how bonkers I was. It’s just not in my nature to do such a thing. So any liberal woman women literary agent worth her wine is going to smoke out how bonkers and crazy I was back in the day. And that, unto itself, may be enough to steer them clear of me, no matter how much I’ve changed since then.
My Not Doing Anything For About 20 years This is another tough issue for me to have to address during the querying process. I have not done _anything_ of note since late 2011. That’s….a long time. But, here I am, wanting to bootstrap myself out of this particular situation by writing a break out hit novel. Yet I suppose it’s possible that, by definition, could be the thing that prevents me from getting published. I could write the fucking Bible and because I’m a nobody, I just won’t be taken seriously as an aspiring novelist — and never will be.
My Being Bonkers I’m kind of a kook. And the more due diligence is done on me by the typically liberal white women who are literary agents the more they’re going to think, “Uh, no.” There remains a lot of a taboo about having mental health issues, despite what everyone wants you to think when you’re bonkers, so…I dunno. Though I SUPPOSE it’s possible that could be used in some sort of marketing campaign for the novel, “bonkers author makes good,” that sort of thing.
The Nature of The Novel Offending Liberal White Women I got nothing against liberal white women, it’s just I worry that the nature of my novel — that of a part-time sex worker who wants to own a community newspaper — may be a little too much for them to stomach in the context of being my literary agent. If I was a transgendered, undocumented woman, rather than a smelly CIS white male, it would be different, but I “don’t have a lot going for me demographically” as one woman recently mentioned when I wanted her to look at the first chapter of my novel.
I first arrived in South Korea around July 22, 2004. So, if I can return to South Korea for a few weeks in honor of that event, I can at least be content that I’ve finished the third draft of my novel. I hope to finish the third draft of my mystery-thriller a lot sooner than that, but lulz, I want some slack in the chronology in case things don’t work out.
Me in 2004 with my students.
So, July 22, it is.
That will give me some time to find the money to pay a manuscript consultant to look over the draft and then start querying in either late 2024, or early 2025. Then, of course, I could find my self languishing for y e a r s in the querying process. If that is the case, I’m going to piviot to working on another novel while all that is going on.
Of course, AI could make all my hard work over the years moot as could the fucking Fourth Turning. But, who knows. I just have to believe, you know. I have a really good story and I just have to focus and trying to finish the damn thing before I either die like Stieg Larsson or World War 3 happens. (Or AI simply makes humans writing novels comically quaint.)
My heroine looks like Nathalie Emmanuel as I write her.
Megan Fox is something of a sex kitten bomb shell. She came out with what I suspect is a faux sleeve tattoo recently. Now, usually, this would generate nothing more than a meh from me, but the heroine of my novel has a similar tattoo so now I’m stressing out a little bit.
Megan Fox with a (probably) faux sleeve tattoo similar to the one the heroine of my mystery-thriller novel has.
My fear is that either sleeve tattoos will suddenly have “a moment” in pop culture and people will think I’m being a hack, or everyone wills say, “Oh, so just like Megan Fox.”
Ugh. This won’t at all be the case — I came up with this character element for my heroine totally independent and well before what is going on with sleeve tattoos at the moment.
My heroine looks like Nathalie Emmanuel as I write her.
Anyway, I’m probably way overthinking things. But all of this does remind me that I need to hurry up! I need to get this novel done ASAP. I’ve been drifting towards my goal for way too long. It’s crunch time and I need to get this thing done so I can maybe get a paid editor to look at it — ha, I’m too broke — and then begin to query it seriously in late 2024, early 2025.
Of course, even if I stick the landing, it could be five years before I’m a published author. I hate being old.
All systems are go with this third draft, but for one thing — the first half of the novel may just be too long. If you just count scenes, it’s possible that I will be coming in at about 160,000 total words for the entire story and that’s just way, way, too long — that’s a Stieg Larsson length novel.
Stieg Larsson novels, like The Girl With Dragon Tattoo are known to be a bit long.
This will be my first novel and I’m shooting for about, at most 140,000 words. And, really, it should be 100,000 words. I just don’t know what I’m going to do. I have been working on this novel for way, way, way too long and it’s time to wrap things up.
I have three major fears going forward with this novel — someone will steal a creative march on me, AI will render all human art moot and The Fourth Turning will cause the collapse of civilization. Those possibilities are making me feel rather nervous and prompting me to move forward as fast as possible.
But, in a sense, because all of those fear are out of my control, all I can do is just sprint. For personal reasons, I’m going to put a little bit of a pause on writing until this Saturday afternoon and I hope to use the free time to think a lot and to cool down creatively — I was running hot a little bit.
My heroine looks like Nathalie Emmanuel as I write her.
I think once this little pause is over that I will move a lot faster. I do, however, have to accept that I probably need a backup plan. I need a back up novel that I can develop and write in case something out of my control happens and makes the main novel moot.
Now that things are beginning to click as to how to tell this mystery-thriller story the way I want to, I have to address a significant problem facing me — I have to totally rework the third act of the novel.
Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander showing off her dragon tattoo.
My vision is this — there’s an element of what seems to be New Age spirituality in the novel that turns out to have a very practical — if scifi — solution. I love scifi and as such I just can’t help myself. I like the idea that I kind of fuck with the audiences’ mind a little bit until there’s an “ah-ha!” moment in the third act.
I think what I’m going to do is just think of something, anything to finish the third draft of the novel then take a deep breath and weigh what the final third act of the novel will be when I tinker with things for the fourth — and final — draft.
My heroine looks like Nathalie Emmanuel as I write her.
The fourth draft is going to be the same as the third draft, only edited for clarity of consistency. (Outside of what changes I might make in the third act.) There is also a chance that in the fourth draft I could either cut the story into to (if it’s too long) or simply shave off a 10,000 or 20,000 words if absolutely necessary to get it published.
But I’ve already added 20,000+ words to the beginning to give the audience A LOT more context and character development — and a lot more sex. So much more sex that I’ve taken out some of the sex from the first part of the second act.
I still have a sex scene in the second half of the second act that one beta reader called “gratuitous.” Making it so it’s NOT “gratuitous” is going to be something that is going to require a lot of thought. But I believe in myself. I can do it.
I have a huge amount of re-writing to do, but, in general, I understand the general path of the plot of the first act now. As such, I’ve printed out the first six chapters and I’m going to read through them now, trying to get a sense of the ebb and flow of the draft and figuring out which scenes need to be totally rewritten.
My heroine looks like Nathalie Emmanuel as I write her.
Given how much I’ve changed the beginning, I suspect there are going to be A LOT of scenes that will have to be scrapped to accommodate all the changes, er, improvements, I’ve come up with.
I’ve REALLY changed a lot of the story between the second and third drafts. That’s been the thing that has really slowed me down — things have changed so much that I have to think, in abstract terms, how to game out all these changes before I sit down and start rewriting.
It takes time to do that.
But, lulz, at least I know what my heroine looks like in my mind.
I’ve finally found who I’m thinking of in my mind as I write my heroine and her adventures in my first novel — Nathalie Emmanuel.
Nathalie Emmanuel
My hope is, of course, that I will write a heroine who is as interesting as Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander. It will be interesting to see how things ultimately work out. A lot of writing a successful novel is just dumb luck. So, lulz, I could write The Bible and because I’m a smelly CIS white male writing from a female POV at times….the woke cancel culture mob will pillory me.
The dream is to write a character as interesting as Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander.
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