Tag: writing

My Backup Scifi Novel Is Beginning To Get Fleshed Out

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am going through my main novel — which I now see as a “passion project” at quite a nice little clip. I hope to wrap up the latest iteration of the third draft in a few weeks. Then I will probably go through and really look carefully at each scene to make absolutely sure that it’s good enough to keep as-is.

Meanwhile, the scifi novel, which I am developing specifically to be as marketable as possible, is coming along as well. I’m using AI to help me develop the novel because I have no friends and no one likes me. I have had decidedly mixed results using AI for development.

Sometimes AI has given me so really good suggestions. Other times, meanwhile, the results have been rather…meh. But, in general, using AI has sped development up significantly because it has given me at least some sort of path as to where I should go. Too often in the past I’ve spent a lot of time just spinning my wheels, not really knowing what I should do.

Anyway, the next step with the “passion project” novel is to save up money for an editor. It’s going to take me a few months because I’m living in poverty. But it will be worth it. I am still rattled by the fact that I managed to scare off one editor I wanted to work with simply because I’m a freaky weirdo.

But I have to accept that within a few months — hopefully no later than July 22nd, 2024, I will begin the querying process for the “passion project” in some way — even if it’s just continuing to save money up for an editor of some sort. I may break down and just start to query the novel if I fear it’s just going to take me too long to get through the editing process.

Memories Of The Future

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Writing a novel set “the day after tomorrow” is a lot more difficult than you might think because of how fast the future is rushing towards us. So, I find myself drawing upon a lot of my personal fears about the future and throwing them into the universe I’m building.

There’s a pretty good chance that things will begin to move so quickly that even my wildest dreams about technology may see rather quaint before the novel is even queried. But I like the challenge. It’s fun to see if I can think of really exotic technological problems.

But, in general, the scifi novel I’m working on is getting really interesting. It’s fun to be able to use all these daydreams I’ve been having about the near-term impact of technology and then expounding upon them. It definitely will be interesting to see if the real future beats me and my fictional future.

It is interesting how much I’ve been able to lean into some personal gripes I have about some things that have happened to me in the past. I’ve managed to seamlessly shoehorn some pretty important situations from what happened to me in Seoul in to the novel.

All good stories are true stories. So, there you go.

I’ve been really impressed with how the chatbots I’ve been using to aid in development of this novel have been really good at helping me improve the treatment I’m working on. I’m doing all of this in a vacuum – yet again — so I’m forced to use AI just to have some sense of what to do with the overall story.

‘Passion Project’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve pretty much wrapped up the treatment for the scifi pandemic backup novel I’m working on. It’s really good! Of course, if I was 25 years younger, I would probably write the story out as a screenplay. But, lulz, I’m old as hell and I just don’t have time to overcome the learning curve associated with learning how to properly write a screenplay.

So, novel it is.

I’m going to give myself one to two years to work on this scifi novel. But I am well aware that given how obvious this particular concept is, that someone else could very well beat me to the punch. It’s just a professional hazard, I guess. Or, “No one ever got anywhere in this world without taking a chance,” as my father would say.

Meanwhile, it’s becoming more and more clear to me that the main novel I’m working on is something of a passion project. There are just too many potential issues for the “woke cancel culture mob” to quibble with for me to have too much faith in it being published without me being able to leverage the success of another novel — in this case, my back up novel.

And that doesn’t even begin to address issues like my age, my general kookiness and all the crank-like things I’ve written about online. I can’t help how old I am and I can’t help who I’ve been well, all my life. But I do plan to wrap up the main novel pretty soon.

I am still on track to finish SOMETHING by no later than July 22, 2024. When that happens, I will take a deep breath and take stock of where things are creatively. I will probably being to query at some point, but I also may cool my heels — with the main novel, at least — while I save up the money for a manuscript editor to look over the third draft.

If, that is, I’m able to overcome what a kook I am and how conspicuous I’ve been with that kookiness online.

But I hope to start writing on my backup novel ASAP. It’s really, really good and allows me to explore a number of themes that are near a dear to my heart. And, what’s more the novel also allows me to address some really personal issues that I’ve long wanted to address in fiction.

You take yourself where ever you go, as they say.

‘The Backup’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I finally have started to work on my backup novel. It’s a scifi novel that deals with a pandemic. It’s really good, but for one thing — the concept seems pretty obvious to me.

So obvious, that I am preparing myself to wake up on day to discover that a movie or novel has been released with the exact same concept. I have some other ideas to use as a back up, but I really like this back up idea and it will really suck to put all this work into it, only to have to pivot to something else.

But development of this backup concept is moving really, really fast. I’m about two thirds of the way through a treatment. Once that is done and stabilized, I hope to do some character studies.

THEN, I will sit down and block off some time during the day to write the first draft. I am going to be really careful to think about current market trends with this backup novel.

There won’t be nearly as much sex as there is with the main novel. The chapters will be shorter. I will have only one — male — POV so the “woke cancel culture mob” won’t get their panties in a bunch because a smelly CIS white male is writing from a female POV. Ugh.

So, I continue to press forward with the main novel project with an eye towards starting a backup project pretty soon. I continue to dread the querying process. It’s going to be tough, being rejected all the time.

But you have to believe.

Pondering The Midpoint of The Treatment Of My Backup Scifi Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve pretty much gotten the first half of the treatment for the backup scifi novel I’m developing wrapped up. But I’m at the midpoint and, for the moment, I’m struggling as to what the “midpoint switch” will be.

I’m very pleased with the first half of the treatment. I have interesting characters and I get to talk about some weird problems in the world that I’ve come up with. But I just don’t quite know at the moment what should happen at the midpoint.

I have a number of ideas, but nothing really seems to provoke the type of thought I need. I’ve been using AI to help me develop this treatment and some of the ideas have, in general, been pretty good. But even that has only given me mixed results.

Update:
I may have come up with a midpoint switch just now using AI, but I’m not sure. The second half of this treatment is shaping up to be a lot more difficult than the first half. But I am very pleased that I have, at last, figured out how to mentally have two different creative tracks.

Things Are Moving Fast With My Backup Scifi Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Because of how “racy” my mystery-thriller is, I’ve finally decided to work on a backup novel. The novel is a scifi novel with a pandemic element to it. As I’ve said before, it’s a pretty obvious way to talk about pandemics — at least in my opinion — so I keep expecting to wake up and read in Variety or The Hollywood Reporter that a movie with the exact same premise has started production.

But I really like the idea and it gives me a sense of insurance against my main novel being too “racy’ to ever get published. I have a few other novel ideas to pivot to if disaster strikes and even the scifi novel I’m working on is somehow co-oped by someone else.

One key thing that I’ve learned working on the mystery-thriller is you have to have a proactive protagonist. Too often in the past, I’ve had very passive protagonists, which has made for a dull story. So, now that I am very aware of how important having a proactive hero is, the scifi novel concept is moving a lot faster.

At the moment, I’m just at the treatment stage for the scifi novel. But things are moving a fairly nice clip. I’m beginning to struggle with the second half of the novel at the moment. And once the treatment is done, I think the next step is to do some rough character studies so I won’t be where I am now with the main novel where I have to reverse engineer character development in a story that is pretty much all plot.

I have developed a hero for the scifi novel that resembles me, which is bad because you’re not supposed to have a “proxy you” in the novel when you write one. And, yet, at the moment the elements that are similar to me work, so, lulz, why bother fixing them.

And I’m still pretty early in the process.

I continue to worry that all of this will be moot because of the looming possibility of a “perfect storm” involving the so-called political Fourth Turning and a technological Petite Singularity.

But while there’s life, there’s hope.

Watch Out For That Last Step: Pondering The Querying Process

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am soon going to be finished with the third draft of my first novel. As such, because I want to go the traditional publishing route, I have to begin to take seriously the querying process.

Mood.

Now, the stressful thing about this is I have no idea what to do. I only vaguely know at this point about things like “Query Tracker” and the fact that I have to write a query letter. I have been knee deep in active delusion for all the years it has taken me to write this novel and now, suddenly, the cold, dark waters of reality are beginning to rush in.

At the moment, I would like to hand over the finished third draft to an editor of some sort. It may take me months to save up the money to get someone to edit the novel. Yet that’s just the beginning.

I think I’m going to have to be really careful about this element of the querying process because I’ve already managed to screw up once. I alienated one prospective editor because I think that not only did she think I was freaky weirdo after reading this blog, but she thought I was going to be too emotionally needy.

So I need to give the idea of what I say to any prospective editor some thought. And I have to accept that there is a good chance that any editor worth their salt is going to search for me online and look at this blog and be aghast at what a freaky weirdo I am. And that doesn’t even begin to address what they might think of my Twitter feed.

This very real prospect rattles my cage a great deal. I’m not getting any younger and I would prefer to be a published author before I reach 60. Just my age itself is problematic — not to mention that I really haven’t done shit with my life in a long time. AND I’m bonkers.

And, yet, the only consolation I have is that while there’s life there’s hope. I do have to manage my expectations, though — any success with a spec novel is like winning the literary lottery.

So it’s possible that I could stick the landing and STILL either not find an agent or being in limbo for years. And that doesn’t even address the fact that late 2024, early 2025 could be some of the most momentous months in modern American history.

I don’t know what to tell you. I write because I have to, not because I want to. So I suppose I continue to be delusional, even as the looming transition into the querying process demands I be a lot more honest with myself about my prospects.

Speeding Up The Novel Development Process

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that I am zooming towards wrapping up the third draft of my first novel, I find myself wondering how I can speed up production of the next novel. I can’t spend years and years working on the next novel because I’m old and have a limited amount of time on the earth.

Mood.

As such, I think one way to speed up the development of my next novel will be to better game out what the novel’s story is. Now, at the moment, I actually have two novels I want to work on. One is the a direct sequel to my first novel while the other is a totally unrelated scifi concept.

The scifi concept is pandemic related and to me, at least, is seems like a very obvious idea for a novel. So obvious that I keep expecting to find out that someone else has already written a novel or screenplay with a similar conceit. But it hasn’t happened yet, so I’m going to go full speed ahead.

Not knowing what exactly the story I wanted to tell was one of the reasons why it took me so fucking long to get to this point with my first novel. Once I understood what the story was, everything clicked and began to move much quicker.

Of course, another problem was I have been drifting towards a general goal without realizing how much time was elapsing. My age kind of snuck up on me. But now that I’m in my 50s, I have every reason to buckle down and focus a lot harder trying to knock out novels as quickly as possible.

And none of this, of course, addresses the next stage of the process with my first novel — querying. As had already been proven, there is a good chance that anyone doing due diligence on me as part of the querying process is going to think I’m nuts and won’t want to have anything to do with me.

But while there’s life, there’s hope. I write because I have to, not because I want to. And the point of writing a novel in the first place — that of giving me a Big Project to think about rather than feeling sorry for myself.

Why Has It Taken Me So Fucking Long To Get To This Point With The Novel?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am now lurching towards wrapping up my first novel after years of working on it. I am taken aback by how long it has taken me to get to this point. Reviewing in my mind the journey that got to me to this point I have come up with some observations.

Mood.

One is, I simply had no idea what story I wanted to tell. I spent some time thinking I wanted to write a scifi novel, but that turned out to be just to huge and I shelved it. Then I pivoted to the idea that I wanted to write a mystery-thriller that would allow me to make some political and social commentary about the Trump Era.

But I spent a lot of time just spinning my wheels on that one and I was still spinning my wheels when I realized in early 2021 that because Trump was no longer POTUS that my original intent for the story was no longer as timely. It occurred to me that I had this massive backstory about the novel I was working on at the time and it would be interesting to tell the very beginning of a 25 year tale that would end with the novel I had originally wanted to write about the Trump Era.

Once I got to that point, things began to move a lot quicker, even as the project went from one novel to two, and ultimately six.

I hope to write a novel that is as accessible and popular as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

And then something curious happened. I had planned to begin the third draft of the novel in September, only to spend months just spinning my wheels in the first act. I just could not figure out what I wanted to do with the first act of the novel.

There came a point when I realized that there was a way where I could write a novel that made sense and yet was totally different than what I had originally planned. It would require me to expand what was the first act of the novel into two third of a new novel and using a chunk of what had been the end of the first act and the beginning of the second act of the second draft.

This is the point where things changed dramatically for the story. It occurred to me that it would be very provocative if I leaned into something only alluded to in the second draft of the novel — the idea that the heroine owns a strip club. As such, I decided to have the heroine not only own a strip club but, for the duration of the novel, on occasion strip, too.

Now, clearly, if I had a wife or a girlfriend who was a Reader who could tell me “no” I probably wouldn’t have decided on such a strategic change to the plot of the novel.

But I don’t have that. So, lulz, I’ve come up with a really compelling story that MAY have too much sex in it to ever get published. But I don’t know yet. I’m too obsessed with finishing a novel of some sort that I am going to wait until I finish the third draft of this novel before I make any assessment like that.

And I continue to want to work on a backup scifi novel just in case my fears about the main novel being too “spicy” turn out to be correct. Then there is the issue of me being too bonkers for any literary agent who does due diligence on me so, well, there you go.

Mistakes We Knew We Were Making

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The predicament I find myself in with my first novel is a prime example of what happens when you don’t have anyone around you to tell you “no.” The story I’ve come up with is compelling and intriguing enough — if you give it a chance — that you’ll finish it wanting more.

Mood.

But there are a few problems.

The most obvious one is, well, I’ve realized that it has a lot of “spicy” scenes in it because it deals with a woman who not only owns a strip club, but for the duration of the story, also, on occasion, is depicted stripping. If I had a wife or a girlfriend as a “Reader” there is a good chance she would put the kibosh on that particular element of the story.

It’s just too easy for the mythical “liberal white women” or the “woke cancel culture mob” to blanch at such a storyline, especially one written by a man. If I was an twentysomething undocumented trans woman then that would be a different story. (There you go, I’ve put all three of my running gags into one paragraph to trigger you when you do your due diligence on me.)

There are a few other problems with the nature of my first novel that are structural and existential so, lulz, I just have to accept them going forward. I really love this novel and the characters I’ve come up with and, I suppose, in the end, if nothing else, I’m the audience of the novel and as such am willing to expend the time and energy necessary to finish it.

I am WELL AWARE that if you don’t know me and you read this blog you will probably want nothing to do with me. Ok, I get it. So, in a sense, this blog is like online dating for me — absolutely no one will swipe right on me online, but if I was given the opportunity to use my “rizz” on you in real life, then maybe you might give me a date.

The last few days have been full of self-doubt about this novel. But I’ve concluded that the point of this novel is to prove a point to myself, if no one else. I know I’ve come up with a really good story, despite its obvious flaws, and I’m going to see this project to its completion.

Having said all that, I am still going to pivot — when I have some time — to a backup scifi novel that will be tailored specifically with marketability in mind. I need that type of insurance policy to give me the juice necessary to move forward with the main novel. I don’t like the idea of putting all my creative eggs in one basket.