by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
During the course of working on these now six novels, I’ve made many, many, many mistakes. One of the many mistakes I made is I’ve been way too vocal about the fact that I’m writing a novel (or novels.) I compare the reaction to this to when a woman at a church tells everyone she’s pregnant and all the old wives come out of the woodwork to scare the shit out of her with their breach birth tales.
Anyway, a lot of people have a lot of opinions about how you’re suppose to write a novel, or screenplay or whatever. And it’s usually people who are the most full of shit who have the strongest opinions. I’m writing my novels in third person intimate with rotating POVs like Stieg Larsson and I’m also referencing people by their surnames like he did. Both of these decisions have made people get really mad at me and tell me that it’s just not how things are done.
It gets even worse when some people learn that I’m at times I’m going to be a man writing as a woman from a third person intimate POV. The fact that a middle aged CIS white male might do such a thing makes some woke people EXTREMELY ALARMED.
They can fuck off, is what I say.
The point is to tell a great story. If you can accomplish that then you’ve written something that you can be proud of. I get really angry with people who tell me I can’t write the novel in the way I want to write it for this or that dumb reason. I know how to tell a story and so please shut up.
Anyway, things are going well with the novels I’m working on. At least for the moment. It will be interesting to see how long it takes me to wrap up the first novel and how long it takes me to finish all six novels. With this first novel, at least, I think I’m facing querying it not during the spring 2023 season, but the fall 2023 season.
Ugh. Anyway. Maybe I’ll have finished more of the novels by that point.
