Month: June 2020

Of Music And The #Novel I’m Developing #AmWriting



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I keep saying, music — specifically pop rock — is at the heart of this novel for no other reason than the novel is really me talking about those brief few months about 15 years ago when I was both DJing and publishing the sole magazine for expats in Seoul.

I finally figured out a way to tell that story, but only as a very deep layer. You would have to have a fairly lengthy drunk conversation with me for it all to make sense relative to what’s going on in my mind. But tell that story, I have, at last, figured out to do.

So, there you go.

Because I really, really have no clue what I’m doing and I’m doing it in a vacuum, I have spun my wheels for months and months and MONTHS. But, now, I think, out of sheer desperation, I’m going to just wrap up the outline about the July 4th weekend and just go for it.

I have to write a first draft so I can have a second.

I’ve worked really hard for this, now it’s time to follow through.

Webstat Fun



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m obsessed with who looks at this Website. I spend an inordinate amount of time studying the URLs of people who look at what I post here, in large part because so few people do. (Though I think the monitoring software I use doesn’t get everyone — sometimes people obviously have gotten a link to a specific URL in email and I wonder how THAT happened, since it seemed to happen out of the blue.)

In all, it’s something of an addiction.

But of late, I really haven’t get very inspired to write that much on this site because it just doesn’t seem like anyone cares what I have to say. I’d much rather throw all my energy into developing the novel (my primary obsession) than writing for a blog that might get one or two unique views in a day.

I guess what I’m saying is, if you like what I’m writing here, see if you can get people you know from, say Studio City in California to look at it from a work computer. That would, like, make my day — maybe my week.

But, meh.

Once I finally — finally — wrap up the outline phase of development, I hope to be so busy writing that I won’t have all that much time to worry about such things. Even though, of course, I still will.

There’s So Much To Manage When Developing And Writing A Novel


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A novel is like a machine with a thousand moving parts that you have to monitor at all times. You have POV management. You have tone and mood management. You have IP issues that come out of the blue when you least expect it. The list goes on.

But I’m slowly beginning to feel far better about this novel. I’m about to “abandon” Part One. It may be another 24 hours before I simply say I’m not going to tinker with the Part One outline anymore. But I’ve said that a dozen times before and it didn’t happen. So, we’ll see.

I’ve given myself a very strict deadline of the July 4th weekend. Whatever I have by that point, I’m going to use, even if it’s not finished. I’ll fill in the holes as a I go along.

I refuse to keep spinning my wheels forever. This is novel has no literary aspirations. This is meant to be pulpy like Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series. It’s not nearly as nasty as that book was at times, but it is meant to be read as a dark, serious thriller. I say that knowing that it’s going to be a struggle. I, my nature, am quite carefree and happy-go-lucky and having to be serious in virtually anything for any extended amount of time is a real struggle.

But I can tell you one thing — this novel is going to be entertaining, especially if you like pop rock music. To that extent, this thing should be a breeze to adapt for the big screen. A mutual love of pop rock music of the last 50 years is the glue that keeps several of the characters close as the plot progresses.

And, really, I should have attempted to make this a screenplay from the beginning given how cinematic it is at its heart. But I wanted to write a novel, so there you go.

America As Autocracy



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ultimately, all Trump has to do is get into his second term. It doesn’t really matter what happens after that. I believe Trump is going to either pick Ivanka as his second term veep (allowing her to pick say, Tom Cotton as VEEP for her eight year term so he can run for another eight years) or someone so insane that once he finally loses his mind we’ll really have something to cry about.

But the damage has been done, no matter what.

America is now a Russian-style “managed democracy” because of some serious macro problems that we were blind-sided by over the last three or so years. The last step is a Constitutional Convention that would rewrite the Constitution such that we’re a white-ethno state de jure, not just de facto.

The ICE Camps will be weaponized and that will be that.

Even if Biden wins and is actually sworn in, it’s just part of a broader death rattle. I’m reading a book called The Fourth Turning and pretty much exactly what it predicted 20 years ago is happening.

All I can say is, once the Browning of America and the Gray of America cross in about 20 years, we’re in for some very, very interesting times. AOC is likely to become president via a popular uprising.

Liz Plank, Jodi Kantor, Erin Ryan & Some Mulling Of My Novel’s Female Romantic Lead



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have spent a ridiculous amount of time struggling to figure out how my novel’s female romantic lead is. I know her appearance is inspired by Alexa Chung, but it’s taken a lot — A LOT — of struggle to get to the point that I have a character who can be a “Twitter liberal” for the purposes of the plot.

It would help if I, like, actually had friends, huh.

Anyway, I think I may have come up with a character that readers will like. She’s a lot more more a Liz Plank – Erin Ryan character than I expected. Jodi Kantor, while cool and all, just seems a bit more intense and reserved than I need for my purposes. As I’ve said before, if my win-the-lottery dream comes true and I somehow sell this novel and it’s optioned to be a movie, I see someone like Phoebe Waller-Bridge playing the character. At least, that’s who I think about a lot as I develop the character in my mind.

*I* have to want to hang out with this character to write them. Kantor seems like she would be always be quietly judging me for being the doofus that I am. I want someone fun and smart, not scary and smart. (Not to pick on her, but she comes off as rather intimidating to me.)

I’m quite please, like I said, with my female romantic lead. Things are starting to fall into place. I just have to figure out how to give her enough POV screentime so people are willing to see her as real and complex enough.

Though someone called me “both delusional and stupid” for suggesting there are “woke Park Slope Moms,” I do get the sense that these women do exist. I don’t know. No one cares what I do, why can’t I have a little fun to entertain myself by constructing a group of women who probably don’t even exist in any meaningful manner.

This Weekend *Might* Be The Most Significant In The Trump Era



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, the conditions are there for this weekend being the single most significant weekend in the Trump Era. I say this because of the following:

  1. The Tulsa Rally
    Trump is having an extremely ill-advised (and, as such very on-brand) MAGA Nuremberg Rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is major COVID19 hotspot right now. Since no one is going to wear a mask, he’s putting not only his own life — and I think Pence! — in danger, but the lives of the 19,000 attendees in danger. We won’t know for about two weeks if this what I fear — a COVID19 strategic superspreader event.
  2. The Berman Crisis
    Meanwhile, Trump — through Attorney General Barr — is TRYING to fire a prosecutor connected to the SDNY. Right now, it’s not working. That would be some split screen to have Trump ranting at his Tulsa MAGA Rally on one side and a Saturday Night Massacre type situation on the other.

The thing about this type situation is you just never know. You never know until after the fact that it was obvious that SOMETHING BIG was going to happen. I honestly have no idea what is going to happen this weekend.

Could be nothing.

Had A Little Writer’s Retreat This Weekend



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I had the opportunity to sort of chill out this weekend and think about the novel I’m working on. I think I may have figured out the “Part One” of the novel AGAIN.

Something about getting out of my rut really helps my creative juices flow. I came up with a completely re-imagined beginning. Now I have to work on the “Part Two,” which is essentially the rest of the first act after the Inciting Incident.

It’s shaping up to be far more “thrilling” than it was before. I also have a lot more room to develop some characters so you care about them when bad things happen to them. But I think, really, some of all of this is my storytelling ability is getting better.

But, as I keep saying, I’m going to wrap up the outline by the July 4th Weekend and roll with whatever I have at that point. I have a huge amount of reading to do. I must have 30 books to read at this point. I am so clueless about so much of what I’m doing that by the time I actually wrap up the second draft, the entire context of the novel will be significantly different.

Anyway, I hope to spend the rest of this weekend fleshing out the outline for the rest of the first act.

Fucking QAnon Has Taken Over The Entirety Of The Republican Party



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have one contact in the Republican Party who is usually pretty normal. He’s very conservative, but also very charismatic and generally a great guy. So when he told me the following via Facebook Messenger about what’s going to happen in the fall, I was shocked.

HIM: Electoral College scoreboard will be a 2016 repeat with a slightly larger margin for Trump. However, he will be killed soon by establishment agents.

ME: What are you talking about “killed.”

HIM: Assassinated.It will be poison or bio agent.

So, this leads me to believe that even the base of the Republican Party knows something’s wrong with Trump and they know that there’s a good chance he won’t finish his ill-gotten second term.

Still think Ivanka or some insane person is going to be Trump’s second term Veep, though. Someone far worse than Trump has ever been because they will be young, focused and actually know what they’re doing.

My Outline Deadline Is Still July 4th



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have no idea what I’m doing. I keep thinking I have everything sorted out with this novel, only to realize I sure don’t. Each time this type of “system crash” happens, it’s more painful and frustrating.

But the general concept remains strong. It’s just sometimes, I get a little too cocky and everything falls apart on a systemic level in a rather dramatic fashion. I find myself near tears, staring out into space, wondering if this is the time I give up.

Then I dust myself off and soon I tilde wave of new ideas roll over me and I finally figure out how to go forward. This used to happen on a daily basis. Now, it happens, maybe, once a month.

So, it’s happened again.

So, now once more into the breach. I have a whole fucking first act I have to rework because I realized my “thriller” had no “thrill.”

A Major Recalibration



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Welp, I guess I didn’t have things locked down after all. I’m going to have to rework a whole lot of the outline I’ve been pounding away on because the it simply fell apart.

I had a system crash, if you will.

But there’s so much good about it, that once I turn things around in a few days, I’ll still be on track to finishing the outline by around the end of the Fourth of July Weekend. I’m really pleased with the novel, it’s just the learning curve is so much sharper than I could have possibly imagined.

And, yet, that’s part of the adventure of it all, I guess. Why you do it in the first place.