Month: June 2020

Things May Be Moving Fast Now With The #Novel



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s possible that, in a sense, things are going to move VERY FAST now. I still haven’t finished the outline, but I am working on the scene summary (with a lot of help from the book Scene and Structure.)

My goal is to have “Part 1” sketched out pretty soon then start writing on it soon afterwards. I’m hoping that simply by stabilizing Part 1 that building out from that going forward will be pretty easy (or at least easier.) The story itself is really strong. The problem has always been my storytelling ability hasn’t been up to making a fairly complex situation implemented in a simple enough fashion that an audience could understand it.

There are some really, really great easy-to-film scenes (or at least scenes audiences would LIKE to SEE on the big screen) in this story and that’s one of the things get keeps me going. I keep putting all this work into this project because I really, really, REALLY want to write a few scenes.

Anyway, I hope to throw myself into development this evening. It will be interesting to see what happens.

The Damage Is Done — Trump As Tyrant & Traitor



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s now rather obvious that someone like Trump was going to appear in the 2016 – 2024 time frame, it was just a matter of whom. But it’s also clear that the damage is done.

America is no longer a Republic, it is a Russian-style “managed democracy” and there’s no going back, at least for the next 20 to 40 years when the Graying of America crosses the Browning of America.

Trump is just really, really, really bad at being an autocrat, so it’s not as obvious what’s going on. But once Tom Cotton (or whomever) succeeds Trump, the entire state will be used to destroy liberal democracy in the United States.

I don’t have any solution. This is it. The end of America. The bad guys have won. Even if Biden wins — and somehow actually is legally sworn in — it will be just a death rattle.

The most current outrage over Trump knowing about Russian bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan is already blowing over because Trump is simply going to say he was criminally incompetent, which his base can accept, not a traitor, which his base likely can’t.

Get out while you still can.

Trump Is A Traitor (Now What?)



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m beginning to think Trump could confess all his criminality and STILL nothing would happen. I say this because right now, we have a confirmed report that Trump knew that the Russians put a bounty on American soldiers in Afghanistan and lulz it. Actually, he didn’t lulz it. He hugged the slithery Putin even fucking tighter by trying to get him back into the G7 (G8.)

So, unless something different happens soon, this will be just another one of those OH MY GOD Trump scandals that riles people like me up, but generally doesn’t get any traction beyond the Twitter liberal echo chamber.

The reason for this is, we’re so close to the election that there’s just no political will do anything about it. What’s more, the very thing that Trump did — doing some pretty unsavory things with the Russians — is exactly the type of thing he would need to do to get himself re-elected by stealing the election.

Thus, the future looks extremely, extremely dark.

Trump will steal the election and one way or another someone like Tom Cotton becomes president. Goodnight and good luck.

Did Trump Kill Snark?



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m reading the book “The Fourth Turning” for the novel I’m developing and I can see why people like Steve Bannon like it so much. But it has got me thinking just now about other cycles in culture, outside of the political.

We are definitely in something of a funk when it comes to edgy, provocative writing and art. It happened in the 2006-2008 era for some reason. We really haven’t had good snark (or pop rock) sense then. We don’t have any popular, yet edgy pop culture to consume these days. And the case could be made that the Trump administration’s lack of shame and self-awareness has killed irony and snark for all times.

I kept expecting some punk Millennial to pick up a guitar and start writing punk songs, but that has yet to happen. I now have to hope that “Zoomers” are going to do it — that they managed to punk Trump’s asshole campaign manager Brad Pascarle is a promising sign of a possible future.

And, yet, I almost think the very ideas of “irony” and “snark” no longer are applicable in this hyper connected world. Maybe there will be no Fourth Turning. Maybe it won’t come roaring back.

Maybe irony is dead. Maybe Trump killed it.

Fragment: The Big Shrug

by Shelt Garner

“Can I be in it?” Dipshit Mike asked as he opened the door of the anonymous bar. I was leaned over the bar working on my novel — and he knew it, hence the question. Why someone — anyone — would ask such an idiotic question never failed to amaze me.

For a moment, I wished I had a gun on me to make it clear he could not be in the novel I was working on. Dipshit Mike was a college student at Ohio State University and the “partner” of my old girlfriend Angie Gregory who was also at the door with him.

Dipshit Mike always had a shit-eating grin on his face. He was always moving around in a twichy fashion. What Angie saw in him I didn’t know. I just saw him as fucking annoying.

I talked to both of them frequently via the streaming service Periscope and Dipshit Mike reminded me of myself at that age, or at least, all the most irritating aspects of me at that age. He did not listen. He asked cloy, saccharine questions meant to provoke. He made me want to pull a gun on him simply to shut him up.

I pushed these thoughts aside for the moment and gave my ex Angie a kiss on the cheek. We were all back home for a series of funerals associated with the COVID19 pandemic. “Have you changed his dipers today,” I asked Angie about Dipshit. “Your infant seems a little bit more cranky than usual.”

“Do you hate me?” Dipshit Mike said, conspicuously holding Angie’s hand.

I again wished I had a gun, something to make it clear how annoying I found him. What’s a little pistil whipping between friends if it makes a point? Then I remembered Angie was looking at us and sighed deeply.

“No, you fucking dipshit, I don’t hate you,” I said. “I simply find you extremely fucking annoying and get angry at all your idiotic, oblivious questions that could easily be avoided if you just listened.”

We got a table and started to talk about the upcoming funerals. The peer group I shared with Angie had been ravaged by COVID19. I looked at her briefly. She noticed me studying her and she flipped back her wavy black hair nervously. We had sex every time she was in town — Dipshit Mike be damned — but maybe not this time. We were all too sad.

No less than 3 people that Angie and I knew were dead from COVID19, struck down, to use the cliche, in the prime of life. And now a group of us were about to have a weekend-long wake for the fallen before the funerals began.

God help us all.

Outline Struggles #AmWriting



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh boy.

It’s taken about two years, but I finally come up with method of development that works for me — I have an outline that I obsessively update as my July 4th weekend deadline approaches.

The main thing is balance character, plot and, like, uhhh, an investigation? If I can have those three things in equal measure, I’m going to be ok. I have no idea what I’m doing with the police procedural aspect of the story, but I can learn. I can, read, after all.

I talked to an FBI PR guy recently and he helped a huge amount. I’m probably going to give him a shoutout in the Author’s Note. He didn’t like it much when I asked about The Company, though. But that’s a crucial (in a sense) aspect of the story I’m developing. I like flipping the script and it seems it would be fun if, in a James Bond kind of way, The Company and its affiliate spooky eyes were “the Good Guys,” given how much fucking Trump rants about them.

Anyway.

I can feel myself itching to get back to writing. But I have some slack still in my development timeline, so I can hopefully with a rather clear head go through the outline and get myself where I need to be before my deadline.

I’m Obsessed With The Outline To The Novel I’m Developing



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Every day, I look at the outline the novel I’m developing and throw huge chunks of it in the trash. But it’s definitely getting better. I think, however, that I need to think outside the box more.

I need to start reading weirder things or something, something, anything to provoke more creativity. I have the general story of the novel so well down pat in my mind that I have something of a rut going on. If I took drugs (which I don’t) I would drop some acid or something.

But all I got is books and some booze.

Anyway, I’ll try again tomorrow morning. At least I know some of the Big Issues I have to fix with the novel. I really, honestly, have no idea what I’m doing so it seems as though I’m determined to make every mistake you can possibly make as part of developing this novel.

But the over all story is getting much, much better as my storytelling ability improves gradually and significantly.

Wait, What? My Webstats, The Unredacted Mueller Report & Trump’s Taxes



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something weird is happening in my Webstats. When weird things happen there, I have absolutely no context. All I know that it’s happening. So, here’s the weird thing: twice in the last week or so, someone has randomly looked at some of my writing leading up to the Mueller Report.

I’ve given it some thought, and there are three options:

  1. Someone knows something about the unredacted report, given that a judge is looking at it right now
  2. Someone agrees with me that Mueller and Barr may have had a “gentlemen’s agreement” to wrap it up as quickly as possible for “the sake of the country.”
  3. Their interest in what I wrote isn’t about the Mueller Report, but Trump’s taxes.

My reasoning for the last one is this: if SCOTUS rules against Trump, it’s at least POSSIBLE that we could be in for a severe political crisis, so severe some pretty fucking surreal things could happen just a few months before the election.

I guess there’s a fourth possibility — someone knows something and they know that any crisis about the unredacted Mueller Report would be the first of Trump’s ill-gotten second term.

‘Wind Of Change’ & The Novel I’m Developing



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really liked Crooked Media’s podcast “Wind of Change.” But I must confess, I didn’t listen to the last episode because I was so engaged by the mystery that I didn’t want to be let down by finding out a downer truth. (If it was a downer.)

But listening to that podcast has, however influenced the novel I’m developing in the sense that it confirmed my general belief that spooky stuff is a far more human endeavor than you might think. The surreal scenario I’ve come up with for why spooks might be interested in my Heroine isn’t all that surreal, afterall.

Or, put another way, I’m within shouting distance of there being little, if any suspension of disbelief about what happened and why. I first came up with the spooky angle to this concept out of laziness — I had a problem I couldn’t solve without some high tech gadgets.

The rest took care of itself because it helped with the over-arching motive of my heroine.

But I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m doing.

I’m just trying my best, working in a vacuum and seeing how things work out.

Jennifer Lawrence & The Quandary Of My Novel’s Female Romantic Lead



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m operating completely in a vacuum with this novel. I have no idea what I’m doing. But I do have a very specific vision. Part of that vision is I want my female romantic lead (the person closest to the hero and the person he talks to the most) to be inspired by Alexa Chung.

But there’s a little bit of a problem, given how fucked up the world it these days.

Chung doesn’t look “Asian,” despite her surname. Now, in the novel it’s really easy to explain how this happened to my female romantic lead, just like it happened to Alexa Chung. Her dad was three-fourth’s Asian and, as such, she doesn’t have traditional Asian apperence.

But I’m ambitious.

I want this novel to be a pulpy, fast read like Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium series. My novel is meant to be an American answer to his work, but it’s also meant to be something of a guilty pleasure for educated liberal women in the sense that it’s also an allegory for the Trump Era. (Let me be clear, this is all in my head — any actual person with any knowledge of said market would probably laugh at me.)

As such, my dream is for this novel to be adapted into a movie. The perfect person to play the female romantic lead is Phoebe Waller-Bridge. She’s the right age and appearance, everything. But another person who could play the role is Jennifer Lawrence.

One thing to remember is, this is a novel, not a screenplay. I do all this talking about Hollywood stars despite this for no other reason than I need SOME SORT of reference point in constructing characters. Jennifer Lawrence’s is such a huge star and such a great actress that if I win the lottery and my dreams of writing a break out novel come true, the idea that people would bitch about her “not looking Asian” in any move adaptation is really annoying.

Or, you could just say I think too much.

I should be developing, not mentally masturbating about such an unlikely thing.