I Am Not Perfect

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Occasionally, I find myself daydreaming about writing not just under a pen name, but taking up an assume identity to get these novels published. I am so woefully imperfect that as this first novel gets better and better and I come within — at least in my own mind — shouting distance of getting published I review in my mind all the very flawed-human things I’ve done over the years.

I’ve managed not to do anything illegal over the years, but I have done a lot of things — usually because of booze — that make me wince now that I am an old, wiser graybeard. It just seems if I came up with the character of a 24-year-old transgendered Hispanic girl then maybe I could somehow find success without instantaneously being canceled for stupid shit I did in Seoul nearly 20 years ago.

Whenever I think shit like this, two things happen.

One, my ego kicks in and I’m like, “Fuck it, we’ll do it live.” Meanwhile, I also think of the old saw, “It’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.” So, yeah, I know I may be courting disaster by putting myself in the public eye by writing a really great pop novel — but at least I will have written a really great pop novel.

At this point, the object of writing this novel isn’t so much to get rich and famous — even though that would be great — it’s to prove a fucking point: I don’t suck.

I can tell a great story, if nothing else. So I’m willing to risk the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune if it comes to that.

Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

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