I’m neither a Swifty nor am I thinking up any new idea about “Cruel Summer” that I’m sure hasn’t already been discussed before. But it definitely SEEMS like Tay-Tay is talking about cunnilingus being performed on her from her POV when she sings, “He looks up grinning like a devil.”
As in, the guy is between her legs eating her out and he looks up from his cunnilingus to give her a big “devil” grin. For a long time, I thought maybe Tay-Tay was a virgin…but not more. As commented on a Tik-Tok done by a middle aged comic who went to an Era Tours show, it’s clear that Tay-Tay “fucks.”
You go, girl.
Anyway. No one cares. But it’s fun to smirk and think about Tay-Tay “writing blue” a little bit in a way that totally goes over the heads of the tweens who so often love her.
There are a few professions that if you involved with them ONCE in your life, that is how you’ll be referred to for the rest of your life. Stripper is one of them. If you strip for a little while in your life, then you’re a stripper for the rest of your life, no matter what else you might do.
Journalist is the same way, in large part because it gives OTHER journalists a hook to frame whatever it is your in the news for. As such, when Tyrant Trump snatches me off the street in early 2025 because of all the times I called him a “fucking cocksucker” on this blog, then the local Sinclair owned station will call me a “failed journalist” who got what was coming to him.
The great irony is, of course, that if I ever need to pivot back into actual professional journalism again, I would probably do a really good job. I only bring this up because I’m nervous about my future and I’m thinking about looking into freelancing again.
There is the problem, of course, of all the bizzaro posts I’ve made to social media over the years. No editor worth his or her snuff would poke me with a 10 foot poll because they would think I’m clearly bonkers. (And, sadly, maybe I am.)
Anyway, the biggest reason why I “failed” a journalist the first go round was, well, me. I’m 100% extroverted and all good journalists TEND to be introverts. I love to talk and socialize — I’m anything BUT one of those deranged guys that everyone says “was quiet and kept to himself.” I’m NOT quiet and I DON’T keep to myself.
In fact, if I somehow managed to sell this novel and it become any sort of success, I would probably make a name for myself for being quite the character. I would do rather well on the late night TV talk show circuit. But, who am I fooling –I’m old as dirt. And it would be extremely surreal if somehow my life righted itself after a lifetime of being a drunk weirdo.
Now that I have pretty much built the cornerstone of the third draft by having a stable first chapter, I can get down to business. There is the issue of a ‘canon.’ To date, I have kept canon up to date in my mind by simply reading and re-reading what I’ve already written.
Heroine of my first novel looks like Corrie Yee, phenotype wise. But that has led me to grow very unhappy with what I’ve written and, as such, rewrite everything. This has obviously slowed me down a great deal. But I took a look at the new version of the first chapter today and realized my heart wasn’t in it. This is a good sign — I can now throw myself into finishing the rest of the first act.
And what SHOULD happen once I finish the first act is things go very, very fast. That would put me on track to finishing the third draft of the novel no later than, say, around April 1st. That’s the hope, at least.
President of Hollywood, are you out there in the aether, reading? Then I would have all summer to figure out how to afford a professional manuscript consultant to look at the novel before I query in in the fall — just as my world — and everyone else’s — is thrown up in the air because of a potential “perfect storm” of the Fourth Turning and a some sort of Petite Singularity.
Or we might actually punt our problems down the road such that I can try to enter the querying process in peace and quiet. If I legitimately thought someone in some way connected to the Hollywood industrial complex was interested in this novel I MIGHT post the stable first chapter of the novel just to give them a taste of what I have.
But I am well aware that by saying that outloud that some asshole will use a proxy to make it SEEM like someone with Hollywood connections was lurking out there in the aether reading this blog.
So, lulz, not going to do that.
But the first chapter is shaping up to be really, really good. I rewrite a lot of it recently because I used AI to give a sense if it was any good and it told me “not enough tension.” So, I reworked it to make the things a bit more tense and give the thing a bit more of a flow.
I am well aware that many, many other people are doing the same damn thing I’m doing and they’re not drunk cranks. I know anyone doing due diligence on me would probably conclude I was too much of a freaky weirdo to give a old drunk crank like me a chance.
While she maybe doesn’t dress as provocatively as Corrie Yee does in this photo, Ms. Yee is pretty much what I imagine my heroine looking like as I write her.
The moment I think I have a stable first little bit of this third draft of the novel, everything collapses. So, I dunno. I guess I have a stable first chapter? Maybe? It’s possible? I really like what I’ve come up with, regardless.
Yes, President of Hollywood, I’m working as fast as I can. I’ve reworked the first scene YET AGAIN, this time so it has more tension in it and is more focused. But the changes I’ve made in the story have now forced me to rewrite everything that comes after it. This. Happens. All. The. Time. I think that’s a sign that my storytelling ability is getting a lot — A LOT — better.
I hope.
Anyway, I continue to fall apart on a physical basis. I have some real concerns about the state of my teeth. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that in the near to middle term. I have a fear things are going to get really, really bumpy, only to sort themselves out in a way I can live with.
It’s just going to suck in the near term. Ugh!
I hope I can sprint between now and Christmas when my next de facto deadline is. Christmas is when some relatives will return who I will feel compelled to show at least the first scene to. They were quite pleased with the last version I showed them, then I asked ChatGPT about what I had written and it said, in effect, “This sucks — no tension.”
So I went back to the drawing board and gave the first scene more focus and more tension. I’ve learned a lot of my problems come from simply having too fucking much going on in a scene. Just by cutting long, meandering scenes into shorter, more focused scenes, I fix a lot of problems.
I have also realized I have to hurry up. I can’t keep screwing around. I have a limited amount of time — I’m NOT going to live forever. I’m already in my 50s and not only may AI make all my hard work moot, the prospect of a significant political crisis in the United States starting in late 2024, early 2025, is a “not great, Bob” type situation.
I love Hollywood and the movies. I love everything about them. I love the pomp and energy of a bunch of creative people getting together to entertain people. I listen to the Little Gold Men podcast a lot and really enjoy it.
Because I’m a delusional, ambitious crank, I often find myself daydreaming about who might play this or that character in any hypothetical Hollywood adaptation of these six novels I hope to one day write. Now, take all of this with a grain of salt — actually selling my first novel, much less SIX would be like winning the fucking creative lottery.
But I’m delusional and feel like gaming out some of the characters seen throughout the series. As I’ve said before, I think the heroine of first novel is first introduced to us looking a lot like this:
Corrie Yee
Meanwhile, one of my two male romantic leads looks — in my mind — like a young Jarvis Cocker.
Jarvis Cocker as a young man.
But all of this is very dumb. I’m just daydreaming. I have no reason to believe at the moment that any of this is anymore than mental masturbation. That doesn’t stop me from struggling to think of a character in this series that might be played by Jennifer Lawrence.
I suppose she would be perfect for the FBI agent later on in the series that causes our Hero no end of grief. She would need to dye her hair read, though. 🙂
I fear there is going to come a moment in the very near future where the context of me writing a novel will change dramatically. I have written and developed this novel in a rather idyllic situation but all good things must come to an end. If nothing else, this knowledge encourages me to work as hard as possible to finish the third draft of this novel ASAP.
The thing about these fears is it could be that things will suck for a while…then turn out alright. Even if my teeth problems worse and I lose a few because I’m poor and can’t afford a root canal….then maybe I’ll sell this novel and have enough funds to fix that particular situation?
A guy can dream.
Anyway, I’m also old. And at the same age Stieg Larsson was when he dropped dead (50.) But he had sold three novels at that point. I, on the other hand, don’t even have a third draft finished.
The meaning of (my) life. But this third draft will be the last structural draft. Any drafts beyond this will be just for editing. Though if I somehow magically find the funds to show this third draft to a manuscript consultant…I suppose I might have even MORE structural changes to implement.
Yet I know — KNOW — that this is a great story. The story is probably going to be closer to The Girl On The Train’s ~140,000 word count that the ~100,000 word sweetspot for a first novel. But, lulz, I’m hoping all the “spicy” scenes in the first act will get people interested enough to finish the fucking thing.
For nearly 20 years, I’ve been mulling the following scenario — what if a Galactic Empire came to humanity with a deal: it will zap a huge number of people to three new habitable planets in a new solar system….but once we were zapped to the three planets, we would have to figure out how to reboot civilization.
I love making this type of situation as complicated and convoluted as possible. As such, my current thinking is, given the conditions of the scenario, that you would want to start off a REALLY SMALL number of people. I think this, because not only would the selection process for a really small — but important — number of people settling new planets be fun to explore, but that just seems the best way to do things.
If you had a lot of people as your first group of settlers — say the first few days or months of settling these far away planets — it would be too easy for things to go wrong. But just a few people together with the ability to zap new people to the planets they were colonizing makes a lot more sense.
Sometimes, I think I’m discovering some basic element of Game Theory or whenever I realize some basic thing you would have to do given the conditions of the scenario.
Yet AGAIN, I edited the first few chapters of the third draft of the novel and realized there was a better way to do things. So, yet again, I’m reworking things. It’s very, very frustrating.
I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep rewriting everything just because I edit. I have to accept that I’m never going to get things perfect. I think the only way to solve this particular problem is…just not to look over my stuff again until I finish the alpha version of the third draft.
If I don’t do that, then it will be a year from now and I’ll be dodging nuclear tipped artillery shells from MAGA Nazi forces and STILL not have a finish third draft. It’s going to be a real fucking pain in the ass and go against everything I’ve done the last few months — but it’s the only thing I can think of to fix this particular issue.
But before I do that, I’m going to rewrite everything according to a slightly better vision for the novel that editing has provided. Ugh.
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