by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
After a few days over the weekend cogitating, I am now ready to throw myself back into writing a new and improved second draft. It’s taken some fancy footwork to get to this point, but I’m feeling pretty good. There is a new element to this story which is either going to be seen as ridiculous or totally unexpected.
By doing so, I continue to draw upon ideas I was toying with using in the last two novels in this projected six novel project. Because at this point I have no idea if I will ever get to write all six novels, I feel pretty safe in drawing as much from the drawing board as I can if that means the first novel is more likely to get sold.
The new version of this novel flows a lot better and there is a lot more character development. And, what’s more, I’ve established clear stakes as to what will happen if my heroine doesn’t get what she wants. Now that I have established stakes, the story has a little bit more spice to it. And is, in general darker. That has been a real problem to date — the story just hasn’t really seemed as dark as a modern thriller for adults should be.
I have fixed things on that front, but now I find myself concerned that there is too much “spicy” content. And, yet, as far as I can tell, all the spicy things that happen in the story push the story along — none of it’s gratuitous.
As an aside, I am now actively working to ignore as much online “writing community” content as I can. I know that at this stage, any such content that I engage with will just make me feel bad. I have a very specific vision for this novel and, lulz, all that will happen if I look at writing community content is I’ll either get mad or I will aggressively ignore it.
It just seems as though all writing community content online can be boiled down to the following: you’re a fool not to self publish and if you do try to get traditionally published, however it is I’m doing it is wrong.
Fuck that.
I don’t want to self publish, I want to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune associated with trying to get an agent and getting the novel traditionally published. I validate people who self-publish, but that’s just not my vision for this novel. I feel I’ve come up with something good enough to get traditionally published.
As I’ve said before, I’ve reached the point in the process where but for the fact that I am 100% extroverted I would go dark. I wouldn’t use social media and I wouldn’t write about the novel at all. It’s time to work, not talk. And, yet, I just can’t help myself.
Sometimes, I need to let off some steam and because I have no friends and no one likes me, all I got is writing and doing videos on social media. So, lulz? Anyway, my goal is to wrap up the first act (again) as soon as possible so I can throw myself into a totally revamped “fun and games” portion of the novel by, say, maybe the end of the week?
