by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Even though I have been in a VERY idyllic situation for writing my first novel, it’s still taken me far, far, far longer than it probably should have. I think some of it comes from I’m doing this in a vacuum and so all I have when it comes to how I want to write this novel is my own sense of storytelling a lot of arcane, arbitrary rules.
The ideal title for my first novel.
It would help a great deal if I had a wife or a girlfriend who could not only be my “reader” but who also might encourage me. As it stands, I have to self-motivated through a combination of anger at how no one takes me seriously and spite.
All of this is complicated by two things.
One, is, of course, my age. Even if I somehow stick the landing with this novel, I will probably be in my mid-50s before I see any sort of concrete success. If I wrote a break out hit novel that changed my life the way I feel I deserve, I will finally be in a position to settle down and have kids….just as all my peers are empty nesters with one eye on retirement.
The other complication is the fucking “Fourth Turning.” It definitely seems as though Something Bad is going to happen to the United States in late 2024, early 2025. What that “Something Bad” might be, I don’t know. But I’m working on the assumption that just as I’m ready to query my first novel in the fall of 2024, there is a good chance that there will be either a revolution or civil war in the United States that will make all of my hard work moot.
But there is also a chance that America will slip peacefully into a MAGA-themed autocracy, which would help me long term, given that the point of this projected six novel series on a macro, subtextual level is me ranting about how much I fucking hate extremism in a general and MAGA specfically.
I can’t predict the future. I have no idea what is going to happen. But I do need to wrap this first novel up soon rather than later.
