The Status Of The Novel — Late April, 2021


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are going quite well with the novel right now. Things are moving along pretty well. I’m just about to enter into the second act, AGAIN in yet another first draft.

I can feel myself improving as a storyteller each time I attempt a first draft. Things are moving faster now because a lot of things I’ve been brooding over have clicked. My vision makes a lot more sense for no other reason than I’ve just written so much that I’ve finally been able to get a hang of writing a novel.

I continue to worry about someone out-of-the-blue stealing a creative march on me, but there’s little I can do about it. In hindsight, I would have been far more secretive about what I’ve been working on. But this was my first serious attempt at writing a novel so I made a lot of mistakes in more ways than one. If the worst does happen, I have half a dozen other concepts I can pivot to after the grieving process is over.

One thing I need to do is read a lot more. A whole lot more. I have all these books I bought with the best of intentions. But I struggle to tear my attention away from producing content enough so I can consume it. Yet some of the books are ones I really, really need to read to improve the overall experience of the novel.

So, I guess I’ll soon enough force myself to do all this reading I’ve been putting off.

An aspect of this novel (actually two novels, one story) is how it toys with the tropes of the Trump Era. Even though the Trump Era is over (for the time being?) I think by the time I’m trying to sell these two novels that people are going to be thinking about the Trump Era again because politics will be on people’s minds again.

At least, that’s my thinking.

A lot is going on with these two novels. A whole lot. I’m really throwing everything I got at them in various ways. I’ve split the story into two because I checked the number of scenes for the entire story and it was way too close to 200 for my liking. If you figure each scene is about 1,000 words, then that would be a 200,000 word novel, which is just too long.

And, the way I have it mapped out in my mind, I have a solid cliffhanger at the end of the first book. I’m still in the delusional phase of development and writing, however.

It won’t be until I attempt to query a literary agent that the delusional phase of all of this will come to an end.

Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

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