by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Things are moving quickly now with the alpha release of the third draft of my first novel. As I move into the second act, I am taken aback by how…messy…my heroine’s love life is. It’s so messy that I could even see that being played up in the marketing should I sell this thing.
In my mind, my heroine looks a lot like Corrie Yee.
One issue I really struggle with is the same-sex relationship aspects of this story which have grown in the third draft. I struggle with it because the novel is set in late 1994, early 1995 and A LOT has changed since then when it comes to people’s perceptions of such things.
With that in mind, I think in the beta release of the third draft, I’m going to try to make the fact that my heroine is in a lingering romantic relationship with a young woman A Big Deal that people mention in a very 1990s way. That will add drama and conflict to the story while making it more realistic. A lot has changed in the last 30 odd years on that front and I can’t pretend that even the less-controversial lesbian relationship would be all rainbows and unicorns for those involved in it.
Anyway, things are going really well at the moment. I’m very pleased. But I still have a lot of work to do to get this third draft anywhere near being good enough to show to a paid manuscript consultant. And, given how fucking broke I am, I am beginning to fear that is an element of my trek towards querying that I just won’t be able to do.
We’ll see.
