I have been stuck in neutral for sometime now creatively because I just didn’t know what I should do next. But I’m slowly beginning to get the urge to be creative again.
And, yet, I have to seriously reconsider one element of this — querying. I have begun to get more feedback from readers about the novel and it’s clear I need an editor that I simply can’t afford.
As such, I think I may, in an attempt not to make a fool out of myself, put a pause on the querying front while also plunging forward on the writing-a-new-novel front. The new novel has a lot of promise. But I’m really going to have to lean on AI for developmental backend of things.
Most professional novelists use spreadsheets in some respect to develop their novels and I just don’t think like that. But I can get a chatbot to help me, I suppose.
Anyway. I hope to throw myself into writing a new novel ASAP.
Verse 1 Clock on the wall keeps tickin’ slow Every door I didn’t open, I’ll never know I count the years like dollars in my hand Trying to build a life I didn’t plan
Pre-Chorus No dress rehearsal, no do-over line Just this one shot, and it’s already mine
Chorus You’re one person, you get one life One heart beating through the dark and the light No copies, no clones, no second try You’re one person — so make it count before you say goodbye
Verse 2 I dreamed in colors I never wore Left some rooms I should’ve walked into more But the math don’t lie and the math don’t bend One story, one middle, one end
Pre-Chorus No dress rehearsal, no do-over line Just this one shot, and it’s already mine
Chorus You’re one person, you get one life One heart beating through the dark and the light No copies, no clones, no second try You’re one person — so make it count before you say goodbye
Bridge Maybe that’s the gift and not the cost The reason nothing’s ever really lost ‘Cause I only get to lose it once So I’m loving every second, every ounce
Final Chorus You’re one person, you get one life One heart beating, burning bright No copies, no clones, no second try You’re one person — so make it count, make it count, before you say goodbye
The concept of the Technological Singularity—a hypothetical future point where technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization—often conjures images of superintelligent AI and mind uploading. However, one of the most profound and immediate implications of the Singularity is the potential for radical life extension. Futurists like Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey suggest that as technology accelerates, we will reach “longevity escape velocity” (or the “Methuselarity”), a point where science can extend human life faster than time passes, effectively halting or reversing aging 1.
If anti-aging technology grants us centuries or even millennia of life, how will society adapt? Will we become enlightened beings, or will our extended lifespans amplify our flaws? To explore these questions, we can look to two distinct visions from science fiction: the Spacers of Isaac Asimov’s The Robots of Dawn and the “dittos” of David Brin’s Kiln People.
The Spacer Stagnation: Longevity and Isolation
In Isaac Asimov’s Robot series, particularly The Robots of Dawn, humanity is divided. Earth is overpopulated, and its inhabitants live short, crowded lives in enclosed underground cities. In contrast, the Spacers—descendants of the first wave of human colonists—live on fifty sparsely populated worlds, such as Aurora and Solaria 3. Through advanced technology and genetic engineering, Spacers enjoy lifespans of up to four centuries 3.
However, Asimov does not portray this longevity as a utopia. The Spacers’ extended lifespans come with significant societal and psychological costs. Because they live so long, they become incredibly risk-averse. The fear of losing centuries of potential life makes them overly cautious, leading to cultural and technological stagnation. They rely heavily on robots for labor, defense, and even companionship, isolating themselves from one another 3. On Solaria, this isolation reaches its extreme: individuals live on massive estates surrounded only by robots, interacting with other humans almost exclusively through holographic telepresence 3.
The Spacers illustrate a potential pitfall of radical life extension: the loss of dynamism. When death is no longer a natural, imminent boundary, the urgency to innovate, explore, and connect may diminish. A society of immortals might prioritize preservation over progress, leading to a comfortable but stagnant existence. Furthermore, the Spacers’ weak immune systems—a result of living in sterile, pathogen-free environments—serve as a metaphor for their cultural fragility 3. They are physically and socially ill-equipped to handle the messy, unpredictable nature of the wider universe.
The Ditto Dynamic: Disposable Lives and the Value of Time
David Brin’s Kiln People offers a radically different perspective on longevity and the value of a lifespan. In Brin’s future, people can create temporary clay duplicates of themselves, known as “dittos” or golems 4. These dittos retain the original person’s memories up to the point of creation but only live for about 24 hours 4. At the end of the day, the original person (the “archie”) can choose to upload the ditto’s memories, integrating the duplicate’s experiences into their own 4.
While Kiln People is not strictly about biological immortality, it explores the concept of experiential longevity. By dispatching multiple dittos simultaneously, a person can experience days or weeks of life within a single 24-hour period. Dittos are used for mundane chores, dangerous work, and even experiencing extreme pleasure or risk 4.
The dittos represent the inverse of the Spacer dilemma. Where Spacers are paralyzed by the fear of losing their long lives, dittos are liberated by their short ones. Because a ditto knows it will expire in a day, it can take immense risks. However, this also raises profound ethical and existential questions. The novel explores instances where dittos develop their own desires, diverging from their original’s intentions, and questioning the morality of creating sentient beings only to discard them 4.
If anti-aging technology allows us to live indefinitely, will we view our time as infinitely valuable, like the Spacers, or will we seek ways to multiply our experiences, perhaps through digital avatars or mind-clones akin to Brin’s dittos? Kiln People suggests that the human desire for experience and productivity might drive us to fragment our consciousness, seeking a different kind of immortality through parallel living.
The Implications for Our Future
As we approach the possibility of the Methuselarity, the contrasting visions of Asimov and Brin offer valuable insights into the societal implications of radical life extension.
Theme
The Spacers (The Robots of Dawn)
The Dittos (Kiln People)
Potential Real-World Implication
Risk Tolerance
Extremely low; fear of losing centuries of life leads to caution.
A society of immortals may become highly risk-averse, potentially stifling physical exploration and dangerous innovation.
Social Interaction
Isolated; heavy reliance on robots and telepresence.
Multiplied; individuals interact through various disposable proxies.
We may see a divergence: some might isolate to protect themselves, while others might use technology (like VR or AI avatars) to safely multiply their social presence.
Cultural Progress
Stagnant; focus on preservation and comfort.
Hyper-active; constant accumulation of parallel experiences.
Without the generational turnover that traditionally drives cultural shifts, society might stagnate, or it might evolve in entirely new, unpredictable ways through continuous individual growth.
If the Singularity brings about anti-aging technology, we must be wary of the Spacer trap. A long life is only valuable if it is lived with purpose and connection. We must ensure that the elimination of aging does not also eliminate our drive to explore, create, and engage with the world.
Conversely, the lesson of Kiln People is that the quality and density of experience matter just as much as its duration. Whether we live for a century or a millennium, the challenge will be to find meaning in a world where time is no longer a scarce resource. As we stand on the brink of potentially conquering death, we must ask ourselves not just how long we want to live, but how we want to live those extra years.
The key issue when it comes to querying this particular novel is I see it as an opportunity to get the lay of the land. I just want to understand better how exactly to query so the next novel I try to query might get a little bit closer to the goal of being successfully bought.
As it stands, the querying process seems rather overwhelming. I just need to get into the right mindset to do it. I need better understand things. As it stands right now, I really have only a limited understanding of what goes into querying.
And, really, if I was all that eager to get the novel into the hands of actual human beings I would self-publish. But I know that would be a failure because I can’t sell for shit and that’s just not my vision for my work.
I would rather not publish the novel at all than self-publish. To me, self-publishing is kind of a cop-out. I understand why people do it, of course, but it’s just not my vision for my works.
Anyway, I’m going to keep reading about querying today and hopefully be a lot more productive than I have been for some time now.
I’ve sort of been experiencing post-partum creative depression when it comes to what I’m going to do next after finishing my first novel. (Actually, it’s my second, but it’s the first novel that I feel is good enough to query.)
I’m hoping writing this out will get me in the right headspace to get back to writing again. I really also, of course, need to bone up on querying. But the last few weeks I’ve just been in a severe funk because I’ve finished a pretty good novel but I couldn’t think of what next to write about.
Thankfully, a new novel idea came to me in a dream. So, the moment I woke up, I rushed to my computer and started talking to Claude and Gemini LLMs about it. After about 20 minutes, I had the basis of a fully-formed novel gamed out.
But, like I said, I’ve really had problems actually doing anything with the novel. Yet I hope I can bootstrap myself back into developing and writing a new novel starting today. I just can’t daydream and be immobilized forever.
The new novel idea comes at the android-human debate from the opposite direction as the last novel. Which is something of a challenge that I like having to work on. I still have a lingering desire to write a trilogy that is an homage to Stieg Larsson’s work…but I just don’t have the time to write a trilogy.
I’m not getting any younger.
Even as it stands, I could be closer to 60 than I would prefer even if everything went right with the novel that I want to query. That really is depressing and discouraging.
But I just can’t change that it took me 20 years to figure out that the only thing I’m reasonably good at is writing fiction. And even that is debatable to a lot of people. (I guess in real terms the only thing I’m natively good at is being a rock DJ or photograph, but neither one of those is a viable option for me right now.)
I have several things I need to do today. I need to read up on querying. I need to read some comp books for my novel and I need to throw myself into development on my new novel.
While I’ve gotten some positive reactions to my novel, I’ve also gotten at least one person who said it sucked and I should start all over again because there were structural, fundimental issues with how I wrote it.
If I was 20 years younger, I would be open to that. But I’m not. The point of querying this particular novel is simply to understand how to query the novel to get some sense of what of how to do it. I’m well aware of the problems with it but I’m not getting any younger and I feel this novel is at least not so bad as to embarrass me.
Someone I respect has read the novel and is supposed to chat with me in person about it sometime soon. Before I got the “it sucks” note from someone I was thinking I might go into the meeting a conquering hero. But, now, oh boy. I think I need to be a bit more humble.
I have no idea what the person is going to say to me about the novel and it could be that he says, “Look, it’s an ok read but I just don’t think you can query it.” It’s going be a gut punch. But I’m going to query it anyway because, like I said, I want to test out the waters for the next novel.
I had a dream that prompted the premise for my new novel. I’m leaning into AI a lot to speed up development. But one thing I’m definitely not going to do is use AI to write any copy. I just see it as a manuscript consultant that will help me speed up structural development stuff.
Meh. I don’t want to do anything today. And, yet, I can’t just keep this up forever. I have to sit down and both read up on querying and start development on a new novel.
I really have to accept that while I may not make a fool out of myself with the novel I’ve finished, I have to understand what it is. It’s just the pathfinder for another attempt with a better novel to query — probably in about a year.
I still like the novel I’ve finished, even if it apparently sucks. It think it’s a nice, easy and accessible read. What it obviously needs is an editor. But I just can’t afford that right now, so I have to take a swing at querying with what I have.
I continue to feel a little uneasy about what the liberal white women who make up up the majority of literary agents will think of me — especially once they read this blog as part of due diligence. They’re probably going to think I’m nuts.
Anyway. It’s kind of too late now. I have to accept that a third party is probably going to see me as a fucking weirdo. But, as the late Annie Shapiro once quipped about me, I’m a “delusional jerk with a good heart.”
And if that’s the worst someone who knows me can say about me, then I think that’s ok.
Just when I was getting a little excited that maybe my novel was…actually good?…I got someone to look at it and they pretty much said start from scratch. And their points were legitimate.
But I’m just not prepared to do that. It could take at least a year to rewrite the novel the way they suggested and it probably would be a lot longer as well. So, I’m going to use this particular novel as the tip of the spear for the next novel I’m going to start working on very soon.
I will admit that I continue to daydream, however. I continue to drift. And, yet, at the same time, I also have the deadline of Sept 1st for when I’m going to start querying the novel I have finished.
So, I guess I need to throw myself into boning up on how to query a novel. I need to do that ASAP. But, to date, I haven’t really been the mood. And, of course, I also need to start to really throw myself into development of the new novel idea I have come up with — in a dream, no less.
I got some preliminary feedback from one of the readers of my novel and it left me excited because it wasn’t just “it sucked.” And the idea that someone would actually finish a novel I’ve written has also gotten me a little excited.
So, today, I hope to sit down and read up on how to query. I think that’s what I need to do so I can focus on getting my head in the right mindspace to do such a thing.
I am under no illusions — I am well aware as to how unlikely it is that I will successfully query this novel. And, yet, that’s not really the point. The point is to see how far I can get with the process so I can get even farther the next go round.
But I am also well aware that I’m not getting any younger. Even if I stick the landing with this novel and it is sold, I could be closer to 60 by the time it hits bookshelves.
Anyway, I guess I’m still looking for beta readers. I still have some slack in my chronology of events before I query.
Today, I’m determined to be productive in some way. I’ve been daydreaming for way, way too long. I’m going to start to move towards querying and I’m going to read / watch TV some and I’m going to, most of all, write, write, write.
All of this come in the context of me knowing my life is probably going to change a pretty dramatic fashion one way or another pretty soon. Elements of Trump’s fucking “Big Beautiful Bill” are directly targeted at me, it seems.
So, as such, I’m going to buckle down and actually get some work done, especially when it comes to querying. My dream is, of course, that I successfully query this novel, it’s a success and I can fucking leave America forever or at least until MAGA is no more (which is essentially forever.)
But that’s very much daydreaming. Even if I got an agent and sold this novel, it would be like winning the lottery just to get that far. But I need some reason, any reason, to find some motivation to do something constructive and productive.
I can’t just daydream for the rest of my life. There is going to come a time when this rather idyllic situation I find myself in will end and I’m going to look back and realize I didn’t use my time as wisely as I should have.
I continue to worry about being “canceled” should I ever have any success. I’m not perfect and I’ve done my fair share of things that might be interpreted poorly under the right circumstances. But as I keep saying, I’d rather love and lose because of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune than not do anything.
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