As we grow closer to malignant ding-dong Trump being sworn in again, I realize my anger — which generates creativity — is growing. As such, I think once Trump is back in office I will be forced out of my creative neutral.
Four years ago, I made a strategic decision — I was going to tell the origin story of my heroine. Little did I know that this would cause what was going to be a trilogy into a six novel project.
But now that Trump is back, I really want to throw myself back into the novel I paused four years ago. And, yet, I also want to tell all those stories that lead up to the last two novels in the series.
Ugh.
As such, I think I’m probably going to throw myself into the whole thing. My fear is that if I don’t game out the entirety of the series from ground zero that inconsistencies will arise that I can’t overcome.
Anyway. I definitely feel my creative juices beginning to flow again out of my white hot anger over ding-dong Trump being president again.
It seems as though I’m going to continue to drift like always towards my goal of being a published author, but maybe in a little bit more aggressive manner. It seems as though I’m going to bounce around the six thriller novels I have planned so I can maybe have some sense of what’s been established in the universe as the novels progress.
Or something. Something like that.
And this doesn’t even begin to address how I have a scifi novel I’m also working on. Actually, it’s a few scifi novels.
I suppose, in a way, I’m trying to make the best of my tendency to not be very focused. But I’ll be happy as long as I am heading in the right direction of getting something, anything actually finished to the point that I can pitch it to a literary agent.
Of course, the issue of me just being too fucking weird could be a problem on that front. It’s enough to make me think about creating an whole identity out of whole cloth, like, I don’t know, a trans undocumented immigrant or something.
But, sadly?, I just don’t have the energy to do such a thing. Just accepted me — or not — for who I am. I just can’t continue to mope so aggressively as I have for months now.
I really want to write an homage to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series books. But there are some structural problems that I could never have known about when I originally began work on this idea a number of years ago.
Apparently, people want single-POV narrators who fit the gender of the author. And they definitely don’t want POVs that bounce around within a chapter. And they want short chapters.
Ugh. It’s so frustrating.
I guess what I will do is work on both the scifi novel I’ve begun and this thriller. The scifi novel will be very much written with an eye towards marketability, while the thriller will, as always, be a passion project.
But the key issue is moving forward creatively. I can’t just keep staring out into space for the rest of my life. And I need to really lay off the booze. It’s time to go as sober as possible and let energy drinks be my lone vice for the time being.
One reason why I’ve picked the fourth novel in the projected six novel project I’ve envisioned is I have already gamed the novel out some, especially the beginning. So, all I have to do is “just write.”
And, yet, I also need to, I think, go back to the drawing board about certain elements of writing. I need to reread some books on character and plotting so I nail down some elements of the story before I even begin.
Also, I’m going to try to lean into using AI to be something of a “literary consultant” in the sense that it can guide me towards what I want to do with the story.
But, as always, the key thing is I’m not going to live forever. I really need to hurry up and get something, anything done.
I was flipping through Tik-Tok today and saw a still from the Hollywood version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie. That got me to thinking — I still want to write a novel like that.
So, I sat down at my computer and did some quick thinking. I realize that there is a way for me to get what I want immediately — rather than going back to the novel that has left me so burnt out (for the time being) I can start work on the fourth novel in the series that allows me to dive directly into an American Girl With The Dragon Tattoo-type situation.
There is one problem — I still haven’t really nailed down what happened in the first three novels. But I think as long as I’m moving forward, then at least I’m being productive.
In my imagination, MY “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” looks a lot like Zendaya. Though by the time I actually fucking finish the damn novel and have it published, she may have been aged out of the role.
But they do say that “black don’t crack” and she continues to play really young characters so…lulz? Regardless, in general, my version, my American version of the “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” looks a lot like Zendaya in my imagination.
There are plenty of young women in Hollywood who look like Zendaya floating around, so if I somehow win the lottery and sell this novel –when I’m old as fuck — there will probably be any number of women able to play the role.
I wish I was 25 years younger — I would skip the middle step and just write a screenplay — after I moved to Hollywood, of course. 🙂
So. But for how my “readers” balked at the amount of sex in the third draft of the novel I’ve been working on, I would be about to query it. But, alas, I apparently was too much of a hornytoad and, so, here we are with me rewriting things AGAIN.
And, the more I work on this novel again, the more I realize there was some structural problems that I can address now. The novel has a darker tone now because I give my heroine a reason for doing some of the more….controversial…things she does: she’s an alcoholic.
I’ve come to believe that because of weird hangups so many people have about booze and sex that the only way to justify my heroine doing some of the things she does is to throw up my literary hands and say, “Ok, well she’s a drunk, ok!”
This is the general phenotype of the older heroine I have for a number of the novels before the heroine that will populate a new series is an adult.
And, I’m taking this opportunity to really rework and pair back some of the sexy time in the novel. I want this to be as mainstream a novel as possible. So, lulz, can’t have as much sex as I did before. It’s kind of annoying.
Of course, there is another element to this novel that makes it a vanity project — it’s about a woman’s obsession with owning a community newspaper. It’s kind of an origin story for two women who will be really important for six novels — at least.
The older heroine of many of the six novels I’m working on has a sleeve tattoo like Megan Fox sports here.
I’ve come up with a really interesting way to intertwine these two women’s lives over the course of 25 years. It’s just going to take a lot — A LOT — of work (and a number of years) to get it all worked out.
But the more I think about it, the more I realize how much I love all six of these novels and how much I am determined to write them all. You’d be surprised how snooty people with in the “writing community” can be when it comes to this dream — they think I’m nuts.
I’ll put a move on you…
They just can not, will not take a “long hair leaping gnome” like me seriously when it comes to such an ambitious project. This only causes me to dig in my heels more.
But, I will admit, I do have a few scifi novels that I want to work on, too. So, I think, in general, the point is — I need to use my time more wisely. I have to stop dicking around.
Now, let me be clear — all of this is just a dream. And I’m so old that it’s highly unlikely that what I want to have happen, will happen. As it’s going I’ll be very lucky to get *one* novel written and published before I croak, much less six novels that begin a series about an “American Lisbeth Salander.”
Lisbeth Salander.
It just takes a lot of time and six novels is a lot of work and words.
But the dream I have is — I want to show the audience why my “American Lisbeth Salander” is fucked up by showing in a series of books that depict about 25 years of her personal history the events that lead up to what would otherwise be the first two books in the series about her.
This happened in large part because Trump managed to lose in 2020. I had two novels (joined together by a cliffhanger) that I wanted to use as an allegory for the Trump era (Trumplandia, if you will) but he lost and so…I felt a bit forlorn.
Then I realized I had so much backstory about this character I loved that I might as well go backwards in time and show, exactly why she is so fucked up like Salander.
The heroine of many of the novels in the six novel series I plan is older than Lisbeth Salander and has a sleeve tattoo like Megan Fox does here.
I have a vague idea of making sure that my heroine is in the same universe as Lisbeth Salander so, I don’t know, maybe if things went great there might be a crossover at some point? That would be pretty sweet.
My heroine is, if I have the ages in my head right, a bit younger than Salander is supposed to be. But she’s a very, very, very different person other than how fucked up she is for reasons that the reader will be intimately acquainted with by the time she really appears and becomes front and center in the series.
I think, ultimately, my “American Lisbeth Salander” will kinda sorta look like Corrie Yee in my mind. Maybe. Not a perfect 1-to-1. But sorta.
I think what I need to do is start to work on the other novels in the series, too, so that might speed things up some. There is one book that if had any resoruces at all I would write but, alas, I just don’t think it’s going to be possible. So, I think it’s going to be six ~100,000 word novels in the same universe that I will have an open ending so we can expect more from my heroine.
It’s all a lot of fun.
And I would be about to query at this point, but for the fact that the third draft was a lot more “spicy” than it should have been and my readers balked flat out reading it after a point. So, back to the drawing board. Now, I think I won’t query this novel until the spring — that’s the goal, at least.
So. It seems like it’s time to look over the first three chapters of the thriller I’m working on yet again. I’ve decided to do a major rewrite of the novel that leaves much of last third in tact. So, things should move a lot quicker than they might otherwise.
The endgame of the series is a character like Lisbeth Salander that would go on adventures.
That, at least is the goal.
I hope to get a solid first three chapters done in a few days. Then, I should be able to zoom through the first act pretty quickly. Then, of course, I’m going to have to totally rework the first half of the second act.
It’s going to be a real pain.
But worth it.
Though, I have to admit, I continue to grow more and more uneasy about what the world will look like in late 2024, early 2025.
For much of the development of my first novel, I’ve dealt not in words as my metric, but scenes. So, here I am, just about to wrap up a solid third draft of the novel and I honestly have no idea how long it is — at least in terms of words.
In general, your scenes are supposed to be about 1,000 words on average. Just eyeballing the scenes and their length found with this novel I…dunno. My fear is that I’m going to pay a little too much of an homage to Stieg Larsson and the novel will be ~160,000 words.
The idea of it being that long makes me wince.
A first novel is SUPPOSED to be somewhere between ~80,000 and ~100,000 words. The second draft of this novel came in about just about 80,000 words. A few things led to the second draft potentially being longer.
One is, my beta readers said I crammed too much into the first act too quickly. So, that got me thinking about how I could stretch out the beginning of the novel so readers wouldn’t feel overwhelmed. What I didn’t expect was I would spend months and months spinning my wheels, trying to figure out the details of this new, extended first act.
Finally — FINALLY — it occurred to me that for the purposes of giving the novel a clearer point that I needed to split the novel into two. The first novel would be about my heroine’s quest to own a small town newspaper in Virginia and the second novel would be about her investigation into a murder that took place in the third act of the first novel.
This plan has worked out really, really well. My first novel now has a very clear purpose and objective for its heroine — owning a small town newspaper. Everything else hangs off of that goal in a really cohesive, coherent manner.
But.
The issue of how fucking long this novel is going to be continues to linger in my mind. I just don’t know. If it’s about 140,000 words, then I will be cool with that because the novel The Girl On The Train is about that long and was a success. Anything beyond 140,000 and…I dunno what to tell you.
I suppose what I can do is just accept that the novel is on a structural basis too long. While I will still query it, in the back of my mind, I will understand that my best shot at getting published will be the new scifi novel I’m working on that is built from the ground up to be as marketable as possible.
That’s the goal at least.
But it’s still sinking in that I’m on the cusp of finishing my first novel. It’s really deep! After all these years of drifting towards my goal, I’ve just about reached it.
I have been going through an iteration of the third draft of my first novel at a pretty nice clip. I will probably wrap up SOMETHING pretty soon. It may take a little bit longer than expected because the second half of the novel is not as polished as the first half, but, in general, I am on track to having a “finished” first novel no later than July 22, 2024.
I hope my first novel is as compelling and accessible as Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
The old adage is that all novels are never finished, only abandoned and I understand what it meant by this — this novel is never going to be perfect. There’s always going to be a scene that I feel could be better worded or structured.
But, in general, I’m really pleased with what I’ve come up with.
I have a lingering concern that the novel may be too “racy” for the woke cancel culture mob, but I have settled on a vision for this novel and, as such, my heroine is a part-time sex worker (stripper) during the course of the events of the novel.
I understand how that element of the novel could be…controversial…but it really helps to not only add an unexpected element to the novel, but to flesh things out in general. The sex worker element of the story adds conflict and tension that would otherwise not be there.
But the potential problems with this element of the story has prompted me to really plunge into the backup scifi novel concept I’ve been thinking about. In fact, all I have to do before I start writing the first draft of the novel is sit down and do some character studies.
It is very possible that I will begin the querying process for the main novel in a few months. I have to admit I’m at a loss as to what I’m going to do about that. And, of course, there’s a chance that just as I’m trying to query my first novel, all hell will break loose as The Fourth Turning / The Petite Singularity happen starting in late 2024, early 2025.
But who knows. I can’t predict the future. Anything might happen. And I have to accept that successfully querying my first novel will be like winning the creative lottery. And, yet, the whole point of writing a novel to begin with was to have something bigger than myself to think about.
It is becoming more and more clear to me that I could be nearly 60 years old before I become a published author — if that even ever happens. What’s more, it’s also clear that there is a pretty good chance that if the Petite Singularity doesn’t make all my hard work moot, that some sort of severe political crisis starting in late 2024, early 2025 might just do the trick.
My dream is that my “passion project” main novel is as accessible and popular as Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
And, yet, here I am determined to keep going with two different novels that I’m working on.
The key thing is that I manage my expectations. I’ve decided on an existential basis that I’m willing to use what little time I have left on this planet to at least TRY to become a published author, problems and obstacles be damned. I have a huge chip on my shoulder about my writing ability and I want to the validation of getting the approval of literary gatekeepers.
Having said all that, I am really working on my backup scifi novel. The main novel, the “passion project” has problems because its heroine is a part time stripper at club that she owns. I am WELL AWARE of how problematic this may be to younger people — especially women — but I really like how unique and unexpected this part of my heroine’s personality is and so, lulz, fuck it.
Meanwhile, the backup scifi novel is built from the ground up to be as marketable as possible. That’s the goal, at least.
In an ideal world, one of the two novels will sell and I could use the popularity of one novel to get the other novel published. But I have my doubts about if such a cross-pollination of success is possible, given that the two novels are of such different genres.
Anyway. I am pleased with what I’ve come up with and the goal is to wrap up a final third draft of the “passion project” novel no later that around July 22.
You must be logged in to post a comment.