by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Every once in awhile these days, I will look at the completed outline for the third draft of my first novel and realize how content I am what what I’ve come up with. After years of hard work, I finally — finally — have a story that pleases me on a structural basis, if nothing else.
There are some macro problems with it — I still have no idea what I’m going to “comp” it to when I start to query, but, in general, the story is engaging, interesting — and spicy. Because I’m doing all of this in a vacuum I continue to be at a loss about what the reaction to my tale of a part-time stripper being obsessed with owning a small town newspaper might be.
A part of me thinks that if I do my job right — despite being a smelly CIS white male — that the female portion of the reading audience will really dig what I’ve come up with. But, at the moment, I just don’t know. It could go either way. I am TRYING my best to be as compassionate and empathetic as possible about the women I write about…but I am a smelly, middle-aged CIS white male.
I can just see the deluge of indignant Tik-Toks done by earnest young women complaining that I had the gall to tell this story at all. But, slings and arrows and all that.
If, nothing else, I’m pleased with what I’ve come up with. I have a huge chip on my shoulder about my writing and I feel that I have, at last, proven that I don’t suck as a storyteller.
I continue to worry about what the querying process will be like. Even if I stick the landing with this novel, I could be nearly 60 before the novel is in shelves. But, lulz, fuck it, so what. Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
