I Need More Structure In My Life

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that it’s February 1st and I have a looming 50th birthday just days away, I need to give myself more structure. I read a very depressing tweet from a woman who apparently has struggled for years to get a literary agent.

So. I think what I need to do is take a deep breath and start to carve out some time each day to work on something OTHER than the novel I’m working on. I finally know how *I* develop and write a novel and, as such, the next creative project(s) that I work on SHOULD go a lot faster.

Hopefully.

As such, I need to back up and buckle down. I need to read, use my Netflix account more and double down on working every day on something other than my first novel. I have two or three really solid scifi concepts rolling around in my mind and I think every day, no matter what, I need to spend a few hours on either those scifi novels or some other novel in the six novel project I’ve been working on.

I’ve finally reached a stable enough moment in this first novel that I can focus on working on something else with all this free time I have. These halcyon days are not going to last forever — and I’m not going to live forever, natch — so it’s put up or shut up time.

Now To Begin Thinking Of The Beta Reader Process

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh boy. Now that I’ve gotten past the struggle of the first few chapters of the second draft of this novel, I can now begin to think seriously about giving the novel to beta readers at some point in the near, near future.

It’s going to be a real pain in the ass.

But, as I used to say during the ROKon Magazine era, “every problem is just a opportunity in disguise.” So, as such, I’m going to have to be a beta reader for other people so they’ll be my beta reader. This is point in the process when, to a certain extent, things are out of my hands.

So, it could be a few months before I get any feedback on the second draft. As such, I’ve decided to really take more seriously the idea of working on a second and third “creative track” so I work on those novels while I wait for people to get back to me about the beta draft.

I’m growing alarmingly close to my 50th’s birthday so…I need to put up or shut up on the actually getting closer to the process of querying. It could be as early as this fall and it could be as late as about a year from now.

But it is going to happen.

The Rise Of The ‘Hot Lesbian’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While I generally have a very blase view on most things sexual, on a macro societal basis, I find myself growing just a bit alarmed at the rise of hot lesbians. These are women who are traditionally attractive but have decided to play for the other team, as it were.

Fletcher

Now, I validate their right to be lesbians and the whole “hot” part is equally a lulz, but…what is going on? Why would growing numbers of traditionally attractive women decide that they would rather date women? Or, I suppose a better question would be — why are lesbians deciding to dress in a way that makes them hot to men? Or is that just a side-effect of something I don’t understand.

Given that I don’t anything about anything, I suppose the last possibility is the most likely. I suspect I’m overthinking things. Lesbians want to be hot, too, and maybe even though they’re thinking of the female gaze, the way they’re doing it is mistaken by idiots like me as being “hot” in a heteronormative manner.

As an aside, I have to say that that very hot lesbian Fletcher leaves me at a loss. While I like her persona and her music, the more I listen to her stuff the more of an Old I feel. It seems very “of the moment” in a way that makes it very specific and niche.

Or, it could be, I’m just old and out of touch.

I hate being old. Anyway, there’s a good 10,000 word New Yorker piece to be written about the rise of “hot lesbians” and What It All Means especially in the context of the “woke cancel culture mob.” Scott Galloway seems like the type of person who would write it, too.