Month: February 2024

I Know This Novel Is Getting Good Now — Too Bad I Have No Friends & No One Likes Me

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

My gut tells me this novel is getting a lot better — a lot better. And I’ve started to get at least not-bad impressions from people I’ve let read the latest version of the first chapter. Some people have ghosted me randomly without giving me any kind of input, which is unnerving.

I get if they thought it was too bad to give me a response, but to agree to read the third draft of the first chapter then ghost me when I know it’s good….I dunno. It’s a mystery.

It’s times like these when I wish I had a wife or a girlfriend like Garp’s Helen in The World According to Garp. But I got squat. No one and nobody. All I got is my own views on what makes a good story. I have some very high — if arbitrary — standards.

Working on a novel all these years has all but ruined my ability to enjoy anyone else’s story. If a story doesn’t meet my standards, it’s really, really difficult for me consume it.

Anyway. Wish me luck, I guess.

‘National Security Threat:’ Zombie Arthur C. Clarke, Call Your Agent

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the re-occurring themes found within the scifi works of Arthur C. Clarke is the idea of nukes in space. So, my ears perked up when I heard that the “national security threat” that we’ve all heard about today might have something to do with…nukes in space.

But, who knows. No one listens to me. It is interesting that Clarke has a way of predicting the future on a reasonably consistent basis. But he never go the race war in South Africa he kept writing about. 🙂

I’ve Tentatively Locked Down The First Chapter Of The Third Draft Of The Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have handed out the first chapter of the third draft of the novel in an effort to sort of force my hand. I have to lock down things sooner rather than later or I’ll wake up in a year an be exactly where I am now.

My goal is to write a novel as popular as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

So, I am going to chill out for a little bit today then sit down and see if I can flesh out chapters two and three. Then, I can use the first three chapters as a cornerstone for the rest of the novel and things will go really, really fast. That’s the hope.

The big issue is word count. At the moment, I’m hoping to come in at no more than 140,000 words. My fear is that I’ll be closer to 200,000 words. If that happens, then I’m going to split the novel into two.

A first novel with 200,000 words is just too fucking long. I would never be able to get a first novel of that length published. So, like I said, splitting the novel into two would probably be the best option.

And I also need to start working on the various scifi novels I have floating around in my mind. I really need to stop daydreaming about these stories and start writing them.

A Disturbance In The Force

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are a number of destabilizing things floating around these days that make me very uneasy. The chief amongst them is the weird far Left bullshit focused on the “Free Palestine” movement. It definitely seems as though some crazy person might use the Free Palestine agenda as the underpinning of something very dramatic and unexpected.

What that might be, I don’t know.

I am very empathetic to Free Palestine, I just don’t think violence is ever the proper way to achieve an objective. And I worry that some weird thing is going to come at us from left field between now and early 2025 that we just can’t predict that will totally put a different spin on things.

To the point that it might be the “Black Swan” even that forces us to rethink everything. I have no idea what that might be, but I am worried that something might happen that is so historic that it’s up there with 9/11. It could be that whatever bad juju we should have to worry about has already been excised as part of the January 6th Insurrection.

Who knows. But I do, in general, sense Something Big is brewing out there in the historical aether.

Once I Stabilize The First Three Chapters Of The Third Draft Of This Novel, Things Should Move Really Fast

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am so close to stabilizing the first three chapters of this novel to the point that things might start to go really fast. One huge problem I face is I’ve so forked the story from what it was intended to be in the second draft that I have a huge amount of writing, rather than editing, ahead of me.

My dream is to write a novel as popular as Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

I’m going to have to just throw everything up in the air and reimagine a lot of the novel on a specific basis, with the third act really being something I have to work on. The third act of the second draft s u c k e d. It was horrible. So these days I spend a lot of of my time thinking in the back of my mind about how I can straighten out some serious problems in the third act.

Anyway. My storytelling and writing ability have both gotten significantly better. Some of it is I’ve being using AI some to help develop the novel — but not write it — because I’m doing everything in a vacuum and I have nothing to go on but my gut.

And sometimes my gut just doesn’t cut it.

But, in general, I’m very pleased with what I’ve managed to come up with. One key thing I have to do is stop being such an absolute perfectionist. The point is to finish a third draft THEN go back and edit it some. This business of forking the Goddamn thing all the time has got to stop.

Big Gretch For POTUS

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In an ideal world, Biden would step down ASAP and we would have a President Harris who would be thrown into the mix of who would be the next Democratic nominee. But even if Biden just decided not to run again, I know who I would support — Gretchen Whitmer. And I think Josh Shapiro should be her veep.

Big Gretch

That would be my personal ideal ticket, if nothing else.

I would throw Jon Stewart into that mix, but I would prefer if he got some experience in government before he ran for POTUS.

But all of this is just mental masturbation. Fighting Joe Biden isn’t going anywhere and so we just have to hold our collective breath for a few months to see if he can not only beat malignant ding-dong Trump but actually function as a human being.

I just don’t want to have to get a flood of hot takes about the intricacies of the 25th Amendment if Biden’s health really deteriorates. But, hopefully, that won’t happen.

My Heroine Looks Like A Mixture of Olivia Munn & Nicole Scherzinger — But Younger

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In general, my heroine looks like combination of Olivia Munn and Nicole Scherzinger, but younger. While those two women are gorgeous, for structural reasons my heroine is in her early 30s. I suppose Munn could “play younger” or be de-aged a little bit. (This is all delusional at this point because I haven’t finished the novel yet, much less gotten to the point where I can seriously think about any sort of movie adaptation.)

But I like to daydream, so, lulz.

Here’s a gratuitous picture of Olivia Munn.

So if you take Olivia Munn and combine her with Nicole Scherzinger…

And make this combined woman younger, you get…

…Corrie Yee.

Anyway. I’m just letting off some steam at the moment before I turn my attention to trying to lock down the first three chapters of the third draft of the novel.

Every Revolution Eats Its Young

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s surreal to me that someone as good as Jon Stewart is now the subject of political vitriol from…the Left. People have been picking apart is first show back at They Daily Show…and a lot of people are pissed.

We’ve reached the point where anyone — ANYONE — who tries to give some sort of even handed approach to the issues that divide us…is yelled at for “bothsiderism.” Now that IS a real problem in American political discourse. A lot — A LOT — of people simply do not want to address the fact that MAGA is American Nazism and should be shunned accordingly.

A lot of people actually agree — or are complicit towards — American Nazism and they just can’t brook the idea of siding with the Blues against them. But from what I saw of Stewart’s show, he did a pretty good job of saying that both Biden and Trump have problems that we have to deal with, it’s just that Trump is worse because he’s an old, malignant ding-dong.

I continue to believe that in an ideal world Jon Stewart would one day become POTUS. Too bad the only way such a thing might happen at this point is if we had a Blue Glorious Revolution because Trump went full tyrant on us.

I hate violence. I don’t want that.

Ok, Let’s Rock ‘n Roll

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ok. Now that I’m sober, I’m going to really focus on writing as much as I can. I’ve given a draft of the first chapter to a few people and there was general praise for it.

Of course, I promptly futzed with it and change it some so I have a NEW first chapter draft. But the changes are benign enough that the general story remains the same as it was. I just am feeling a lot of unease about not only my age and health, but what the fuck is going to happen later in the year in regards to the 2024 election.

There is a greater-than-zero chance that the United States will collapse into revolution and or civil war because of the 2024 election and I will have spent a lot of time writing and won’t be able to actually query the novel because of well, the end of the world.

But that’s kind of dark.

And it hasn’t happened yet. I need to push forward with this novel. I have a few other novels I need to work on, too, but I’m growing kind of embarrassed as to how long I’ve been working on the main story.

Time to hurry up and get it done.

I May Live To Write Another Day

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m not 100% sure, but I think — think– that a recent health scare I had has been cleared up. But it was enough to focus the mind, is all I gotta say. I’ve decided that if I am in the clear I will only drink “socially,” if I ever drink again. I just would prefer not to die of an alcohol-related illness.

But I don’t know 100% yet.

It could be that it’s something just as bad that I’ve got and I still have to contemplate meeting my maker. At the moment, however, I’m enough in the clear that I can focus on writing sober at least until Thursday when I have ANOTHER medical issue to attend to.

Ugh.