Month: December 2021

Fixed A Massive Structural Problem With This Novel Project


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Well, I solved a long-running structural problem with this project. I now have a traditional trilogy. What’s more I have the first two books of an additional, more open-ended series ready to be finished once I finish the trilogy. This leaves me feeling pretty good.

Additionally, the focus of all of this is now worked out. The trilogy would be character-based and a lot more Mare of Easttown than Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The trilogy would focus on a mother’s love, be it for her own child or for that of another (dead) woman. Meanwhile, the first two books in the open ended series would be about revenge, pure and simple and be meant to evoke the same type of vibe that the Millennium series does.

And I’ve managed to sketch out pretty quickly the structure of the now split in two first book. It occurred to me today that because of all of these changes I’ve reached quite and accomplishment — I’ve finished a (proto) first draft of a first novel.

It’s not a real first draft because the structure is all wrong (it’s just the first act and the first half of the second act) but it’s length — about 87,000 words — is a novel. And, you could read it and it would be a coherent — if very bad — novel. So, there you go — accomplishment unlocked.

Now, to sort of chill out.

They tell you to wait a month after you finish your first draft before you start to work on the next draft, but I’m not really going to consider what I’ve “finished” as my first draft, so while I’m going to chill out — because of my fucking broken ankle — I’m only going to do it so much.

Any pause I do for the next few weeks will be more about doing a lot of reading and development that I should have done years ago. I need to psych myself up for really throwing myself back into this project come come January 1st. Things could change a bit for various reasons, but I’m stoked.

While I’m still extremely delusional — and have to continue to be for some time — all the pieces are there for me to write a trilogy just like Stieg Larsson, while having two additional books in the wings which are a more direct homage to his work.

Hopefully I can avoid the whole dying of a widow maker heart attack that poor Larsson did.

Life In Weimar America


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m growing exasperated with Twitter liberals who are completely oblivious to how popular the prospect of white autocratic rule is among a lot of Americans — especially the ever-crucial “Traditionalist” vote.

We have the makings of a massive clusterfuck in the 2024 – 2025 timeframe.

Look at it this way — it’s possible that we could have cold, hard proof that Trump is criminally exposed for the January 6th insurrection and Republicans still win the House in 2022 and Trump still becomes speaker. Speaker Trump will impeached both Biden and Harris repeatedly and continue to stoke violence at every turn.

And, what’s more, given our status as an autocracy without an autocrat, even if you somehow magically neutralized Trump, the MAGA movement is so potent that someone else would step in to finish the job he started. In a sense, Trump has already wrapped up his historical job — show others that America is ready for autocracy.

But wait, there’s more.

Our transition into autocracy could still be bungled and we end up using WMD on ourselves and sending the whole world hurtling off a precipice into a dark and unknown future.

History has awoken. And either you see how dire things are, or you don’t. They say you go bankrupt gradually, then all at once, and so it is at least possible that things will be blown up rather abruptly. At some point between now and January 2025, everything we take for granted could be suddenly put into question.

Everything could grow existential. A lot of the folly of the modern center-Left were the issue of proper use of pronouns is more important than defeating real-world fascism will come to and end. Even your most fey latte swilling hipster will sit up and take notice with a gun is put in their face and they can’t use the Internet because of an EMP burst.

I have no easy answers for you. Get ready, is all I can say.

A Potential Solution To A Conundrum


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ever since I decided to add two books to the four novels I had been working on for years, I faced a problem — suddenly I had a series of four, rather than the traditional trilogy.

But I love all four novels and am willing to fight for them, so there you go.

And, yet, it has occurred to me that now that I better understand the first novel that I may have a fix at hand. Instead of a huge story I have to figure out how to compress, I simply use the first half of the first novel as the first novel. The second half of what is now the first book becomes the second book. The second book becomes the third in the trilogy.

The last two books would be the start of a new Millennium-like series focused around not the Mare of Easttown type heroine of the the three trilogy, but the Lisbeth Salander-type character.

At least, this is now a viable option. It would fix a lot — A LOT — of problems. I would now have two novels that were about 100,000 words and one novel that was a longer to wrap up the series. There was be a lot more consistency of tone with this now trilogy because the three stories would deal with the same general theme.

But all of this is still very much on the bubble. I may just say screw it and keep what I have. I do this all the time. I come up with a great(?) idea then vacillate wildly until I figure out if I’m going to use it or not.

Bouncing Back — A Creative Holiday


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

After yesterday’s dark storms have passed and I’m again feeling good about these four novels. The solution to yesterday’s angst is to recalibrate my estimations about how long this project is going to take. I think I have about two years more ahead of me.

It could be closer to a just a year, but I’m going to assume that given the huge size of this project that two years is definitely a pretty good estimate as to how long all this is going to take.

But this holiday season, I’m going to try to go outside my comfort zone and dabble in things like short stories, reading up on photography and screenwriting. I also hope to read up on some primary text that will help me flesh out some of the personalities of the characters I’m working on. The point of doing this would be to stop making myself feel bad for not meeting the deadline in my own mind about when I was going to finish the first draft of the first book.

All of this makes me think about how Stieg Larsson was able to write three novels at the same time then sell them. Hopefully, I’ll sell my four novels and not take the next step of dropping dead within days of doing so.

Anyway, the point is, I’m back, baby. I’m ready to rock. But I also know that I need to relax and be creative in different ways over the course of the holiday season so when January 1st rolls around, I can throw myself back into these four novels, working smarter, not harder.

Proposal: A ‘Radical Moderate’ Podcast to Fight Fire With Fire Against Bannon’s War Room


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

American politics is dead. The two sides’ positions have hardened to the point that if you try to talk to politics to with someone you disagree with — you just start screaming at each other.

Steve K. Bannon

The two sides no longer believe the same facts or live in the same political reality. There is absolutely nothing — NOTHING — that can get the people who are needed, Traditionalists, to make common cause with libtards like me. Nothing. They’ve made their decision and that decision is autocracy.

In other words, we’re fucked.

The last time this happened in America was the late 1850s. We’re careening towards autocracy or civil war. That’s it. The worrisome aspect to all of this is the MAGA New Right cocksuckers have a huge head start in the real world. Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast is a one-stop-shop of treason and hate. He’s telling his “shock troops” what to do in the real world so, when the time comes, he can flip a switch on an “administrative coup.”

What’s more, Trump is so popular and has such an absolute vise grip on the fascist Republican Party that he probably won’t even have to cheat to win in 2024. And he could even become Speaker of the House in 2023.

As such, we need something to counter Bannon. MAGA has the War Room, we need, I don’t know, The Radical Moderate podcast. Something like that. Something catchy devoted to helping people figure out what they’re going to with these last twilight years before we either peacefully transition into autocracy or we have a civil war.

Someone needs to do this. I would do it but I have no friends and no one likes me. And I’m poor. But I’m also very frustrated that we’re allowing Bannon and his hateful cocksuckers to steal a march on us in the real world while we’re wrapped up in writing Twitter threads with “booms” that don’t effect change in the real world where it matters.

One thing we have to accept is the January 6th Commission could lay out exactly what happened — to the point that Trump is found criminally culpable — and Republicans will STILL win the 2022 midterms, one way or another. So, lulz.

Anyway. What do I know.

Resetting The Development Of These Four Novels


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh boy. Today has been a bad day for the novels. It has finally begun to sink in that I’m probably not going to finish the first draft of the first novel by the end of the holidays. It’s just not going to happen.

In fact, today it has hit me how massive developing and writing four novels at the same time is and how I’m going to have to take this all a lot more seriously if I’m going to finish it before I drop dead.

As such, I think I’m going to recalibrate in my mind my expectations. I would guess I have as much as two more years ahead of me the way things are going. And it’s all worth it because, lulz, what else am I going to do? I suppose this is the point where those few people who are paying attention say something like, “Just write a short story.”

These people are idiots and can fuck off.

The reason is — I have a huge ego and I’ve done a very good job of improving my storytelling ability. It’s just I was kind of drifting the last few weeks and I just woke up from a trance of sorts in the sense that I realized that the clock in my head whereby I finish the first novel’s first draft by, say, Christmas was wildly off kilter.

But I’m going to come back strong. I’m going to focus on reading the next few days, I think, then get back to developing and writing. I’ve just been stopped cold for the moment as I contemplate how to work smarter, not harder.

Not Great, Jon


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m a fan of Jon Favreau and Pod Save America, but today’s pod where they talk about what to do about the looming crisis of 2024 left me cold. What I fear is happening is I’m becoming subtly radicalized as it becomes clear that voting is slowly dying as a method to effect change in our politics.

When confronted with how batshit insane the events leading up to 2024 – 2025 might be, Favreau simply said we have to make sure our allies are in position to prevent the Fire Next Time.

There are a lot of problems with this type of thinking when Steve Bannon is out there doing the hard work in the real world of strangling our democracy on the local level. This thinking goes along with the, “Well, I guess we just have to win more elections” type of thinking that is going to do us no good going forward.

It is inevitable that the the Republican fascists will again get power. Then what. If you add aggressive voter suppression, the seizing of elections by Republican state legislatures and, and, and, and, then “just have more votes” is not a logical solution.

But what would be a logical solution?

Well, as I keep saying — I don’t write for VOX, so I don’t know.

On an abstract level, I would first figure out what you believe in enough in the real world to suffer for it — maybe on an existential level — if things get bad enough. Find people who agree with you politically and start to game out what you’re going to do in 2024 – 2025 if we really do face the existential choice of autocracy or civil war.

For the time being, I don’t have any concrete solutions for you.

Just get ready and prepare.

A Modest Proposal: A Blog (Or Podcast?) Devoted To The Rise of Fascism In The US Is Needed


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Absolutely no one listens to me. And I don’t have any money. But I do have vision and passion. I keep wanting to start a blog (or podcast?) and absolutely nothing ever comes of it. And, so, this is just another failed attempt at the moment. Until it isn’t.

There is a very specific beat, the “doom shit” beat, that I think needs to be covered extensively by a blog (or podcast.) If I could get New York Magazine or undead Gawker to either give me a job writing about this particular troubling situation or if they could just do it so I could read it, either one would be fine.

But, I’m a nobody. An absolute nobody.

I miss the old Gawker.

And, yet, my gut tells me that if you founded a blog (or podcast?) hyper focused on things like Steve Bannon’s podcast, or any number of other horrible trends floating around, I feel it would be a success.

I think I’m going to try to contact places like undead Gawker and New York Magazine to see if I can at least get them to hire someone, anyone to cover this beat so I can read their stuff.

COVID In Blue & Red


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m the red headed step child of my family on a political basis. My family is made up of bed rock Traditionalists, while I’m the paste-eating libtard weirdo. I would note, however, that it’s only since the rise of MAGA that the lines have hardened. I’m not really that liberal, but I’ve been forced to pick a side and I fucking refuse to ignore that MAGA is run by a fucking moron who is thisclose to being an autocrat.

Slings and arrows, and all that.

Something I find myself talking to the Red people in my life a lot these days is COVID. It is very interesting how different the two sides see this particular macro event in our nation’s history. I see it as a national health crisis, while my Red family members are just tired of it and want to move on.

One issue that is a bone of contention is when does the pandemic become endemic? When do we just take COVID for granted and see it as just another risk associated with being human? Even under the best of conditions, talking about this with my Red family members can seem like going in circles. They want to compare 1,000 people dying a day to other forms of death. And I keep saying, “But is cancer contagious? Is heart disease contagious ? Is an accident contagious ?”

I totally get why people are so tired of the pandemic. I get it. I really do. And we’re so divided as a nation at the moment that there will likely come a point when 48% of the population shrugs and decides COVID is endemic, regardless of what libtards say while 48% will still see COVID as a national health emergency.

So, as always, we’re fucked.

Of Trump’s Attempted Autogolpe


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I’ve repeatedly said — I got Trump wrong. But I was not alone. In fact, the people who voted for Trump in 2016 got him wrong too. And that’s the thing people like me going into the 2020 election totally misjudged — we thought Trump was an autocrat when he was just a fucking idiot.

The biggest mistake that Trump made was he did not strike when any other would be autocrat would have struck — in the summer of 2020. This is where Trump’s innate stupidity and laziness comes in. This is where him being nothing more than a vessel for white rage, rather than him being a Great Man comes in.

The moment that Trump let the election be called for Biden, was the moment he not only lost in the traditional political sense, but also when he started to panic. So, from that point in November to January 6th, Trump and his goons thrashed around, looking for some way to stage a self-coup, or autogolpe. The plan was something along the lines of, Trump would incite the insurrection and either that would be enough to browbeat Pence into not doing his job, or somehow something would go wrong in a big enough manner that Trump could literally stage the first autogolpe in American history. (In a very ham-handed manner.)

But everything — thankfully — went wrong for them on the day of. Pence, weirdly enough, did the right thing. And there were no counter-protesters to at the Capitol to give Trump a cause belli when it came to overthrowing the government via calling a “National Security Emergency.”

The key issue is what are we going to going forward?

When Trump’s autogolpe failed, the United States entered a very strange era where we’re an autocracy without an autocrat. We’re living in Weimar America. The failure of the January 6th autogolpe radicalized the Republican Party and set the stage for us to either slip peacefully into autocracy in four years or to have a civil war.

And, at the moment, it really could go either way. For the time being, I think we’re going to become an autocracy. But there is a small chance that things will get out of control and one side or the other will begin to leave the Union and we’re going to bomb ourselves into the Stone Age.

I wish there was something I could do on a personal basis to help prevent either one of those outcomes, but there isn’t. There’s no democracy defending organization to counter The Patriot Front. We need one, but it doesn’t exist. And, at the moment, our best bet is there’s something akin to a WW3 that so jiggles our domestic dynamic that Democrats can survive in power long enough for some severe structural problems in the United States to be fixed.