Month: October 2023

Why The Good Money Is On Trump Winning Re-Election

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a very conservative relative — whom I love dearly — who is a part of the non-MAGA conservative base of the Republican Party. He hates Trump, even though he voted for him the second time. The last time I talked to him, he made it clear that he hates the “liberal agenda” so much that he will vote for Trump AGAIN if he wins the nomination in 2024.

Another interesting element to our discussion is how angry he still is over what happened with COVID. I keep telling him that the average person just doesn’t care anymore, but that doesn’t stop him from ranting about how the government lied and did a lot of unnecessary damage. He is very curious in the candidacy of RFK, Jr. because of this.

Just from my conversation with him, it seems clear that Trump is going to win in 2024. At least it seems so at the moment. The differences between Red and Blue have grown so extreme that people like my relative — who in the past were strong believers in traditional American democracy — now are willing to sell their birthright to a malignant fascist ding-dong like Trump just so they can “own the libs.”

As such, I think we need to start to prepare for a rather dystopian future starting in late 2024, early 2025. It could be that Trump is so astonishingly tyrannical starting in 2025 that the U.S. Military does the unimaginable — it steps in and deposes Trump.

Or maybe not. I just can’t predict the future. But it definitely SEEMS like we’re heading towards some rather major historic event within the next 18 months.

Feeling Creatively Restless

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It appears that I MIGHT have a pretty good path to wrapping up the first act of the third draft of this novel pretty soon. The third draft might also be too long to the point that it needs to be cut into two novels connected by a cliffhanger.

Maybe.

I’m not prepared to do that just yet. The macro structure of the novel has changed so much that I have no idea how long it will ultimately be.

But all of this is happening as I grow creatively restless. I continue to have a lingering desire to have a second creative track that I can turn to whenever working on the main novel turns into too much of a chore.

I have at least three other really strong novels that I could turn to. But all of this is happening in the context of my turning 50 and a lingering concern about what is going to happen in the United States starting in late 2024, early 2025. I have a real fear that just as I’m querying my first novel that the entire world could go tits up in a rather dramatic manner.

Or any number of other things could happen that would make finishing may main novel a lot more difficult. The key thing is — I’m in put up or shut up mode now. I just have to finish something and start to begin the post-production, pre-querying stage of things. I’m not going to live forever.

Is The United States A Modern Austro-Hungarian Empire….Or The Ancien Regime?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

America is an unsettled place at the moment. We all sense that we’re careening towards a dark future, a momentous event of some sort that would start within the next 18 months.

But there are a lot of theories about what we should compare modern American to. Some people point to the collapse of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of WW1, while people like me see a closer analogy to the state of affairs with the French Ancien Regime in the days leading up to the French Revolution.

I just don’t see a comparison to the Austro-Hungarian Empire being adequate to explain what’s going on in the United States at the moment. The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed because it was a bunch of small nations fused together. The United States, meanwhile, has a very clear sense of national unified national identity that is being frayed by a combination of a growing sense of white nationalism and more economic agency for women.

I do think that we face not one, but three main possible futures starting in late 2024, early 2025.

The first, most obvious, option is we peacefully slide into some sort of MAGA-themed autocracy. About 1 million smug, wealthy liberals leave the country and there is a total re-alignment of the post WW2 liberal global order as the United States leaves NATO and South Korea and forms an alliance with Russia, Turkey and Hungary.

The second, less likely option is Biden wins and Trump, in an effort to avoid going to prison, freaks the fuck out and starts to rant about the need for a National Divorce. The country implodes into civil war. WW3 happens in conjunction with this and about 1 billion people die.

The third, far less likely option is a French Revolution type situation when Trump’s tyrannical, erratic behavior grows so unbearable to enough people that there is some sort of collective uprising against MAGA. The country breaks apart, but only in conjunction with the broader effort on the part of Blues to re-unite the country under a Third Republic. All of this might happen in the context of the U.S. Military stepping in at some point, as well.

But, in general, the issue is a number of macro trends are all heading to a conclusion around the same point in the future. What’s more it’s possible that we may be heading towards something akin to a “Petite Singularity” that would involve AI eliminating an unpreceded number of jobs a very short amount of time.

All of this is, of course, very speculative. Anything can happen in the future. I totally misjudged what happend with Trump in 2020. I can’t predict the future, but that doesn’t stop me from being….alarmed.

Ugh. Word Count

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The rule of thumb is the sweet spot for your first novel is somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 words. There is a chance that I may FINALLY have figured out a suitable beginning to the third draft of this novel and yet the first act has ballooned to about 48 scenes. In general, each scene is 1,000 words and so that’s potentially 50,000 of my 100,000 allotted words right there.

My novel has a Barry-esque element to it.
The first step is to just write the thing and see what happens. There is a chance that the whole novel is going to be about 140,000 words, which is about what The Girl On The Train is, as I understand it.

At that point, I have two options.

One, I could theoretically figure out a way to split the novel into two, self-contained novels. This would be difficult, but not impossible. This is what happened to my first serious attempt to write a novel in this universe. Those two novels are now the last two novels in what is projected to be a six novel project. If I did split this novel into two, that would really help me keep it being a six novel project while eliminating what is now the second novel because I’ve been struggling to figure out what to do with it.

The last option is to say fuck it and just try to sell a novel that is 140,000 words. The success of The Girl On The Train proves that it’s not impossible to sell a novel that is a little bit longer, as long as it’s good.

I think the solution to this problem is to just finish the third draft and then pause to take stock as to what I’m going to do.

Idle Rambling About ‘The Fourth Turning’

The Interesting Conundrum Of Bella & Gigi Hadid

Why, Yes, My Novel’s Heroine *Is* A Sex Worker. Now What?

The Curious Case Of A Lack Of A Beatles Bio-Pic

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems as though the bio-pics of Queen and Elton John have been proxies for the big prize — The Beatles. To date, the whole subject of the rise and fall of The Beatles simply has not been addressed by Hollywood.

I don’t know how much of that is the lingering cultural significance of the band and how much is the remaining living members are very protective of the group’s legacy and simply won’t sanction any sort of attempt to document what happened.

But here, just for fun, is how I would structure a movie about The Beatles.

Beginning
You open with where the four future Beatles are just before events cause their lives to become intertwined.

Inciting Incident: John Lennon meets Paul McCartney.

You spend much of the first act showing the lead up to the formation of The Beatles. Crucial points of the first act would be Brian Epstein becoming the bands manager and Ringo joining the band. You would linger on John, Paul and George’s time in Germany.

The band appears on Ed Sullivan.
Middle

This would be the “fun and games” point of the story where you see how the individual members of the band reacted to Beatlemania.

Midpoint: Brian Epstein dies.

Crisis: John Lennon produces the “How Do You Sleep” diss track towards MacCartney.
End

Climax: Lennon is shot.

End: The last meeting of Paul, George and Ringo.

My Writing Agenda For Oct. 10th, 2023