Tag: Woke Park Slope Moms

My Novel As Trumplandia Catharsis For ‘Woke Park Slope Moms’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

First, I know I’m being “oblivious and stupid” for even mentioning some silly idea of New York City ‘woke Park Slope moms.” It’s just a joke I tell myself to make me smile whenever I think about who the audience for this novel is.

But having said that, today was one of the first days when it really sank in that we’re no longer in the Trump Era but in the Biden Era and some basic assumptions about this novel that I made no longer apply. And, yet, the universe I’ve come up with is so Goddamn interesting — and there’s so much momentum behind it in my mind — that I’m going to keep going.

I’m not even going to hedge my bets by working on anything else. I learned a long time ago in this process writing a novel that any such talk is just a distraction. I made a pretty big break through tonight with the beginning of the novel and so I’m pushing ahead.

The biggest structural problem with the novel right now is because we’re in a new political era — one when the president isn’t deranged — it kinda feels weird talking about POTUS as a deranged person.

And, yet, I think if I made it absolutely clear when this novel is set — during Trumplandia — that readers will get it. I don’t intend to mention Trump’s name during this novel, but he definitely has an Individual #1 presence in it. I mean, who else would be president during the time this novel is set?

So, I’m hoping that a lot of people like me will want what I want — a plot that’s not-so-subtly influenced by the bonkers events of the last few years. I can’t help that it’s taken me this long to get to the point where I can actually probably finish this novel at a reasonably fast clip.

I’ve fallen in love with these characters and the least I can do is knock out one complete novel involving them. I keep struggling with some significant insecurity about how dated this novel will seem, and, yet, if I address Trumplandia in a way that, say, “woke Park Slope moms” find some catharsis, then maybe some of them will want to read it.

There is one option — simply slice the POTUS angle off the plot altogether. But, to date, I’ve not figured out how to do that. I want to root around in macro political issues using fiction. So, in a sense, this is my Atlas Shrugged, only it’s more such a novel for liberal-progressives astonished by how bad Trumplandia got before it was all over with.

Or, to put another way — I’m still angry enough about Trumplandia to keep going, damn what everyone thinks.

The Portrayal of Women In My Novel Continues To Weigh On My Mind


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I often talk about how I want this novel to be for “woke Park Slope moms.” Someone told me I was being both “delusional and stupid” to say this and, I guess, I am. But I find it funny.

I guess what I’m saying is with the phrase is I’m really aware of what women in the audience might expect from the novel. I also know that people at Vox, with their received Tik-Tok English wouldn’t even give me a chance.

But my default prediction right now is I’m going to finish this novel, query it, be rejected and then have to self-publish. From the very beginning, I just wanted to go through the process of developing and writing a novel and, as such, that’s exactly what I’m doing.

The Trump Era just gave me the energy, the fucking white hot raged, necessary to do get pass the astonishing learning curve and get this far in the process. I’ve now given myself a very short deadline, so I have to bali bali, as a Korean might say.

But anyway, back to chicks.

I’m trying my hardest to be as empathetic as possible with my female characters. I have no special insight into women, but I am, like, cognizant. I understand that women have needs and wants just like men and the trick is to get close enough to describing those needs wants without making female readers roll their eyes at my cluelessness.

We’ll see, I guess.

Novel Status Update: The Influence of SNL & Pitchfork On My Political Guilty Pleasure For Woke Park Slope Moms

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Today’s big concept is something very obvious and simple: “plot” is a verb. This has been a major problem of mine since I starting developing, then writing, the developing again, this novel. In the past, I’ve thought up scenes that were static. They presented information, but had zero action or connection to other scenes.

Now, as I have repeatedly said in the past, I have no friends and no one likes me. I didn’t have a wife or a girlfriend to point out some massive problems with the universe I’d thought up and so I’ve repeatedly wasted months of my time by not seeing the obvious, only to abruptly have to re-calibrate the entire novel. I am functioning in a complete vacuum, with only seeing the occasional movie being any outside source to help me with this obsession.

But things are slowly beginning to bounce back. I have vowed to myself not to start writing again until I have some semblance of a complete scene summary that I can use as a guide to write the next draft of the novel. There’s a lot — a whole lot — going on with this novel right now. While it has a lot of layers (if you know me well enough and know how I think) it also has ZERO literary aspirations.

I’m graze-reading an essential book — at least for me — on scene and structure that I need to snort if this novel is to be any semblance of a success. Knowing how to develop both a scene and the plot that it would be a part of is crucial.

Having said all that, two things are really beginning to influence this novel, which I jokingly within my mind call a “political guilty pleasure for woke Park Slope moms.” This is not at all a real description, for no other reason than my background, personality and political views are maybe not Ken Bone bad, but they at least don’t easily fit the narrative that Blue Check Liberals are so fond of on Twitter. In fact, on an emotional level, this novel is essentially me running around naked to see if anyone notices what’s going on.

Two things are really at the forefront of my mind as I struggle to finish a second draft scene summary as quickly as possible so I can get back to writing — SNL and Pitchfork. SNL is important because it’s an organization that has a storied history and legacy that people love, love, love to hear about. I’ve only encountered one place in my life that was as intense about something creative that a team did together — in a sense — and so I’m leaning into that as the heart of this novel. It’s the thing that connects the whole universe together, at least from my point of view as the “prime mover.” It has to do with music, so maybe that might catch someone’s eye at some point when such attention is needed.

Meanwhile, I’m also interested in using the music Website Pitchfork as a cheat sheet for the musical aspect of this novel’s plot. I haven’t done it yet, but given what’s going on in the novel and when it’s set, it would make sense if I started to study Pitchfork to get some sense of what people who read it would think is “good” modern music. If I don’t do that, I really risk being bit too conspicuous about what I’m REALLY doing with this novel and that might be off putting. If I can hide behind updating the musical reference, that might help a lot.

Again, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m operating in a complete vacuum. This novel’s problems are MY problems. It’s just I’ve gotten better as a storyteller and so I’m growing a little bit more confident that at a minimum I won’t embarrass myself. The great irony is I do have a few very, very, very tenious connections to showbiz…but none of these people take my seriously and think of me as just a dreamer loser. So if I have any type of success with this novel, these people might have a few eyepopping surprises down the road.

I’m being really delusional on that one as of right now, though.

It could be that at the end of this process I still suck and I have to self publish. At least I will have gone through the entire process and can say I’ve written a “real” novel on my own terms.

Maybe I’ll write a screenplay next if that happens.