Oh boy. I’m something of a kook and it’s going to be…interesting…to see literary agents poke around this blog when they do due diligence on me once I start to query. I just can’t help who I am. I’m a little bit bonkers and I just am not prepared at the moment to do what it necessary to properly hide how kooky I am.
So, come what may, here I am, accept me for who I am or not.
It will be interesting to see what happens. It really will be.
If I was younger, I think literary agents — who are mostly liberal white women as best I can tell — would probably be cool with my kookiness because I would be young and edgy.
But…as a middle aged man, I worry that literary agents simply will not be able to accept what a kook I am.
The hope is, that once I finish this draft of this novel I’ve been working on for some time now that the NEXT time I go through it will be a breeze. I will just lightly edit it here and there to make absolutely sure that it’s in my own voice and people can’t accuse me “having AI write it.”
My fear, of course, is that I’ll read it the next time and see all these opportunities to make it better and that will slow me down significantly.
But as of right now, I’m feeling pretty good about this novel.
Though, it is of note that absolutely no on but me believes in any of this. I had an alarming conversation with a relative about the movie Ex Machina and….they pretty much said anyone who thought such things up must be some sort of twisted sicko.
I tried to tell her that, “Well….” but it did not register. Which makes me wonder what this person will say once this novel is finished and I MIGHT want her to read it. I find that doubtful now, though. No point.
I’m really going to struggle to find people to serve as Beta Readers I fear. And I’m growing really nervous about what kind of reception I should expect from the mostly liberal white women who make up literary agents. I’m kind of a kook and when they do due diligence on me…they might not like what they find.
And that doesn’t event begin to address the woke cancel culture mob generally not liking any sort of sex written by a smelly male, especially a smelly middle-aged male like me.
Anyway.
Right now, my biggest problem is I have too much information for the characters to process. Too many big events have happened in quick succession and I need to figure out a way to slow things down, to process information over the course of a few scenes, not just one.
Too Much AI I am very self-conscious about there being any AI used to actually write anything in this novel. My hope is, through the editing process, I can eliminate any “AI speak” that may have slipped through the development process. I have worked so hard on this novel, I would be devastated if it was unpublishable because I had used AI too much to actually write it. (Which I haven’t.)
It’s Too Spicy There is a lot of sex in this novel. And I’m worried that the very nature, the very premise, of the novel will be seen as “too trashy” for the liberal white women I imagine make up most literary agents. But who knows. The novel is shaping up to be pretty good, all things considered.
I’m Too Big A Kook I’m really worried that whenever I get into the querying process and literary agents are doing “due diligence” on me that they will read this blog, or my social media presence and be extremely spooked that I’m just too big of a weirdo to sell a novel. But we’ll see, I guess. Stranger things and all that.
Well, I’ve finished A Draft of this scifi dramedy novel I’ve been working on. And now, I don’t quite know what to do.
I guess what I will do is go through and read the entire draft to get some sense of what happens next. I worry there are some structural issues that would cause me to have to do plot “open heart surgery” on the novel, but I just don’t know.
Maybe that won’t happen.
What you’re SUPPOSED to do at this point is take a month-long break and then start work on the next draft. But this draft is unique because it’s really a mixture of vomit draft and second draft.
As such, I think, as I mentioned, I’m going to go through and read the entire novel updating the outline as I do.
Now, one issue is the time frame for when I am going to query the final production of this novel. I still think it’s going to be Sept 1st for various post-production reasons.
Anyway, I am, in general pleased with where things stand. I just can’t continue to drift towards my goal. I need to buckle down and get things done with this thing. As I keep saying, I continue to worry that my kooky nature will — and age — will prevent me from selling this novel, no matter how good it may be.
I’m officially in the last chapter of this draft of the novel. I have just a few more scenes before I finish this draft and can piviot to editing it on a macro basis by going through and reading it all the way through.
You’re SUPPOSED to pause for a month when doing such things, but I just don’t have the time. My life is on the cusp of being pretty turbulent for a variety of reasons out of my control and as such, lulz, I need to hurry up.
And so, I am going to hopefully wrap this draft up then get down to work to reading the entire novel. I don’t quite know what I will do once I finish that. I guess I will do some structural work before I go through and edit each individual scene.
In the past, I’ve had some trouble reading scene of the novel without breezing through them. But I do need to actually sit down and read the scenes carefully to understand how to make them better.
I continue to worry about what is going to happen on the due diligence front when I actually start to query. I’m such a kook — and always have been — that I’m nervous that that, in itself, will doom any chances I have to ever get published.
But I can’t think like that. I need to have hope in myself.
The movie that is the closest “comp” to my novel is the horror-thriller movie Companion. But I continue to be intrigued about how there hasn’t been a direct competitor to my novel that deals with the practical elements of actual romance with an android.
Everyone is so busy thinking of the absolute worst case scenario that no one — but me so far — has wondered about a more nuanced romantic scenario.
Anyway, I continue to edge closer and closer to wrapping this draft of the novel up. I’m, at the moment at least, breezing through the third act. Then, I’m going to take a deep, deep breath and do “open heart surgery” on some of the structure of the novel. And THEN, I’m going to going to “color correct” the novel’s content on a more nuance basis.
I still am weighing leaning into having AI being my editor and having it “gently” the novel to give it some consistency as well as query-level content. My only fear, of course, is because everyone is hateful that they will just roll their eyes and say “AI wrote the novel,” when that will not be the case at all.
Anyway. I’m growing more and more uneasy about what happens when I get to the querying process. I’m really nervous about due diligence on the part of mostly liberal white women who make up literary agents (in my imagination.) I’m a kook and always have been and I’m afraid they will “cancel” me even before given me any sort of chance with the novel.
I have three books about querying I should be reading, but just can’t bring myself to do it. But there will come a point when I absolutely have to.
Things are going pretty well with the scifi dramedy novel I’m working on. Even though at least one of the AIs I’m using balks at the term “dramedy” for the novel. But that is the general goal of the work — I want it to be very much in the same vein as “Her.” Though, admittedly, the Megan Fox vehicle “Subservience” is, in a way, a better comp movie. But my novel is more like if Subservience met The Enteral Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (in my dreams.)
I’m currently in the third act and hope to wrap up this draft in a few weeks if I can stop drifting towards my goal and get my ass in gear. I have something pretty special in play here and it’s just a matter of doing it.
Once I get this draft of the novel finished, I’m going to take a VERY DEEP BREATH and do some structural open heart surgery on it. It’s going to be a serious fucking pain, but it has to be done.
I keep getting nagged by the AIs that I use that my hero is too “passive.” And there are some other issues that simply have to be addressed.
I am a bit annoyed that in the second half of this draft my scenes just are too short. That, too, is going to be something I’m going to really give a lot of thought to. Your scenes are supposed to be, in general, on average 1,000 words.
Though, I will note, that that’s just a rule of thumb. I feel a little uneasy that my scenes in general seem shorter than what they should be. But I think my style on a structural basis is closer to Stieg Larsson than anything else.
Anyway, today I hope to knock out a few scenes and wrap up an complete chapter. That’s the goal, at least. I keep worrying about what literary agents will think of me as a person when they do due diligence on me.
Are they going to think I’m too nuts to take on as a client? I really worry about that. I’m the first to admit that I have some pretty gaping character flaws, but, in general, I mean well.
Or, as the late Annie Shapiro would say, I’m a “delusional jerk with a good heart.”
This novel is very cinematic, if nothing else. Too bad I would be nearly 60 if the absolute best happened and I sold this novel, it became a success and then was adapted into a movie.
At the moment, I about as big a nobody as it is possible for someone to be on this lovely green planet of ours. This may change at some point, but that’s my lot in life at the moment. So, when someone goes out of their way to hide behind the Internet Archive to look at this blog, it makes me sit up and take notice.
Now, the obvious answer could be noting all that interesting, but rather a close relative with enough Internet acumen to use the service. But I have a hyper-aggressive personality, so the first thing I think when I see that in my Webstats is someone famous or powerful is curious about me.
Whenever someone is obviously doing due diligence on me, I struggle to understand how to process such a thing. My life is so meaningless at the moment that the idea that someone wouldn’t want me to know they were looking at me is interesting enough make may day.
So I’m both flattered that someone would take the trouble to hide who they were and unnerved that someone would take the trouble to hide who they were. It’s probably nothing all that interesting. It’s probably, like I said, a relative who came to see me for Thanksgiving poking around to get a better sense of their weird relative.
I really am of that little interest to the outside world at the moment. There have been a few interesting national reporters who have poked around this blog over the years — or at, least, I suspected, but they all eventually ghosted me once they saw what a kook I am.
You must be logged in to post a comment.