by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Now that I’m just about to leave the delusional phase of developing and writing a novel and am about to start thinking a lot more clear eyes about getting published traditionally, I’m having to face a lot of cold hard facts. One of those cold, hard facts is for all of my talk about how I think we MIGHT have a civil war, I’m living my life as if we’re probably going to slip into autocracy.
If I honestly thought we were having a civil war in late 2024, early 2025, I probably would be working towards something other than selling my first novel. I say this because even if I stick the landing and sell my first novel in, say, 2024, usually a novel’s post-production is a year….which would cause my novel to be coming out just about when we’re all going to be trying to avoid dying in a civil war.
So, for all my hysterical doom and gloom about a civil war, I don’t really think one is going to happen. I really want to go full speed ahead with this novel and so I have to wilfully ignore all the signs that the United States may collapse into anarchy before the damn thing can hit bookshelves.
I can’t predict the future and all my attempts to predict the future are just my gut reaction to macro trends. At the moment, we’re still too far out for me to be able to game out if we’re going to have a civil war, transition peacefully into an autocracy or live under a military junta. I just don’t know.
All I do know is we can’t keep punting our problems down the road. I suppose, if I’m lucky, that might be want happens. I stick the landing with this first novel, I sell it and it comes out at some point 2025….all while we magically punt the existential crisis we face down the road four more years.
That’s the best case scenario relative to me and these six novels I’m working on. I’m not getting any younger, though, which sucks. I’ll be in my mid-50s, probably, before I really get to enjoy the fruits of all my hard work if things really go as well as I hope. All my peers will be checking their watches, thinking about retirement and I’ll be like, “Let’s rock n roll!”
