by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Now that I have pretty much built the cornerstone of the third draft by having a stable first chapter, I can get down to business. There is the issue of a ‘canon.’ To date, I have kept canon up to date in my mind by simply reading and re-reading what I’ve already written.
Heroine of my first novel looks like Corrie Yee, phenotype wise.
But that has led me to grow very unhappy with what I’ve written and, as such, rewrite everything. This has obviously slowed me down a great deal. But I took a look at the new version of the first chapter today and realized my heart wasn’t in it. This is a good sign — I can now throw myself into finishing the rest of the first act.
And what SHOULD happen once I finish the first act is things go very, very fast. That would put me on track to finishing the third draft of the novel no later than, say, around April 1st. That’s the hope, at least.
President of Hollywood, are you out there in the aether, reading?
Then I would have all summer to figure out how to afford a professional manuscript consultant to look at the novel before I query in in the fall — just as my world — and everyone else’s — is thrown up in the air because of a potential “perfect storm” of the Fourth Turning and a some sort of Petite Singularity.
Or we might actually punt our problems down the road such that I can try to enter the querying process in peace and quiet. If I legitimately thought someone in some way connected to the Hollywood industrial complex was interested in this novel I MIGHT post the stable first chapter of the novel just to give them a taste of what I have.
But I am well aware that by saying that outloud that some asshole will use a proxy to make it SEEM like someone with Hollywood connections was lurking out there in the aether reading this blog.
So, lulz, not going to do that.
But the first chapter is shaping up to be really, really good. I rewrite a lot of it recently because I used AI to give a sense if it was any good and it told me “not enough tension.” So, I reworked it to make the things a bit more tense and give the thing a bit more of a flow.
I am well aware that many, many other people are doing the same damn thing I’m doing and they’re not drunk cranks. I know anyone doing due diligence on me would probably conclude I was too much of a freaky weirdo to give a old drunk crank like me a chance.
Oh well. Slings and arrows and all that.
