‘Recalibration’ #WritingLife #AmWriting

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


I’ve realized that I need to learn more about structure. What I have been doing — using Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl Who Played With Fire” as my textbook on structure simply doesn’t work with my novel for a number reasons on a number of different levels. I have an actual text book on scene and structure and I’m going to at least attempt to sit down and read that now. This has happened for a number of reasons. I can’t keep trying to do a one-to-one copy of The Girl Who Played With Fire’s structure. It just doesn’t work. I have to understand structure independent of that book.

I had an interesting conversation with an elderly woman who definitely had a very low opinion of my efforts to write a novel. But, ultimately, the chief take away was — I need to go faster and I need to realize I probably have a limited amount of time to get this done. I’ve been moving forward with development, yes, but this ideal situation isn’t going to last forever. I am going to at least try to re-double my efforts and be more focused on the task at hand. Hopefully.

Any normal human being would shut up about what he’s working on, but I’m not normal. I’m 100% extroverted and usually — unless there’s a specific reason to do otherwise — I pretty much just talk about whatever’s on my mind in as conspicuous a manner as possible.

Regardless, I’ve entered yet another new — if subtle — phase in development. I have a better understanding of how badly I miscalculated at the beginning of this process on more than one level. I thought this was going to be simple of a matter of casually studying The Girl Who Played With Fire and could happen all within maybe two years.

What happened was the whole thing was very poorly thought out at the beginning and as my storytelling ability has gotten better, my personal demands on myself have also gotten higher. And so there you go.

Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

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