Giving Myself The Right To Be Delusional With This #Novel



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


I’m completely delusional about this novel, at least relative to the metrics that a “normal” person would use. A “normal” person would look at what’s going on and say I’m wasting my time for a number of reasons and I should just “write a short story” to see if I can get anything published.

Those people can suck it.

Sometimes, being an eccentric is an advantage. I know I’ve come up with a really engaging, interesting conceit and I have the writing ability to pull it off. But I also have a very brutal internal editor and that slows things down a great deal because I have very exacting — if rather arbitrary — demands on how this novel is, among other things, structured.

The key thing I have to remind myself is this is a marathon, not a sprint and if I take an occasionally little break of a few days, it’s not the end of the world. I have an outline that I keep struggling with and the whole thing is very, very draining because I’m operating in a vacuum and continue to be extremely paranoid that either someone is going to “steal” my idea or someone else is going to independent of me “steal a march” on me.

But I keep going.

If I had not invested so much already in this novel and didn’t have the momentum I have, I would probably just give up and turn to a different concept. But I really like the characters, plot and canon I’ve come up with this novel and so unless some outside event occurs that proves to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that this specific creative project is moot, I’m pushing forward bit by bit like I have been for about two years.

Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

Leave a Reply