by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
A shit ton of things could go wrong between now and the fall of 2023 when I believe I will finally — finally — be in a position to query my first novel to literary agents. Of course, it could be that I’m just too bonkers for literary types and all of this is a fool’s errand, but this six novel project has become existential to me and so, lulz.
I can’t help who I am. I can’t help how old I am. I can’t my background. I can’t help a lot of things. But I have come up with a really good canon for this projected six novel project.
One thing that I really worry about is things I just can’t control. I can’t control how difficult it will be to properly query. I can’t help that it could take months or even years for any agent to take me on. And I can’t help that there is a serious post-production lag time from the moment I sell the novel until it actually hits bookshelves.
And what’s worse, there is the looming possibility of autocracy or civil war in the United States in late 2024, early 2025 and there’s a real possibly that historical events might make my efforts at becoming a successful novelist very, very moot.
All I have control over it the story I’m working on and making it a good as possible. That’s the reason why it’s taken me so long to get to this point. I have very high standards for myself and this project. So repeatedly during the years I’ve spend on it I’ve simply lost faith in what I was working on and forced myself to start from scratch.
Even though this has caused me to spend far more many years on the project than I could ever have imagined, at least the end result is also far better than it might have been otherwise.
At least I’m less likely to embarrass myself than you might think otherwise.
