by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
They say it’s better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all and that’s really the only way I can comfort myself when it comes to the idea that I may write the great American pop novel, only to be canceled for some stupid shit I did 20 years ago.
But, who knows. I can’t predict the future. It’s possible that should I sell a novel and it is a success of some sort that all my bad behavior back in the bad old days will either never come to light because no one really will care that much or it will come to light and I’m just being paranoid.
I didn’t really do anything THAT bad, but there was a stretch of time back in my drunken bad old days where I was…difficult. But I can’t go back and change the past.
The point of all of this is just to prove a point — that I’m if not a good writer I’m a good enough storyteller that I can finish a novel that someone not related to me will read all the way to the end and enjoy.
Everything else that happens in this particular journey will be icing on the cake. So, lulz, I have to prepare myself for the possibility that I will actually do what I set out to do, but because of some dumb drunk thing I did a long time ago, any “success” I might have won’t last very long.
Of course, I have to finish the damn novel first. I’m well on my way to doing just that. As predicted, because I have the foundation of the novel set now, things are moving a lot quicker.
It will be interesting to see what Beta Readers think of the novel and how much retooling I’m going to have to do as a part of the Beta Reader process. At the moment, I’m pretty stoked at how good the novel is becoming. But it could be that there are a lot of problems that I’ve missed in some way and I’m going to spend a lot more time than I now believe reworking things.
And that doesn’t even begin to address the issue of having to save up enough to get an editor to look over the manuscript before I begin the — gulp — querying process.
