Ok. After sleeping on it, I feel a lot more confident I can finish this novel, despite it being “racy.” There are several reasons for this. One is I’m pretty sure once I finish a few new scenes that I should be able to zoom through the rest of the novel.
Also, I feel like I’m putting too much emphasis on what people who know me think. The issue is convincing people who don’t know me that this novel is worth it. I can’t help that I have no friends and no one likes me.
As such, full speed ahead. I continue to dwell on a scifi novel that I can use as a backup.
One of my Readers finally got back to me and while she liked the first three chapters of the novel in general, she did mention that she found it “racy.” Add to this that all my other Readers have completely ghosted me for some reason and it’s all led to a great deal of angst over the status of this novel.
My heroine sports a sleeve tattoo much like this one that Megan Fox now has, but I thought of the idea first.
But every time I lose faith, I realize that this novel is existential for me. I really believe in it and I want to finish a novel by the time the 20th anniversary of my first trek to Asia happens on July 22nd. As such, lulz, what else am I going to do but finish the novel?
All of this self-doubt HAS made me think even more seriously about a backup plan. My fear is the novel IS too “racy” and, as such, will make the liberal white women who are most literary agents blanch. This is probably the most rattled I’ve been about this project since I first started it.
And I have to admit that if I was younger and had a career, this might be the point where I would either just give up or piviot hard to some other novel project. But that’s just not the state I’m in at the moment. I really want to get this novel done ASAP so I can begin to query it in a traditional manner.
I want to write a heroine as interesting as Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander.
The novel tells a cogent, coherent story that I think the audience will really enjoy. And the “racy” nature of it isn’t fatal — if all else fails, I can always finesse things in an effort to tone things down.
But I do really want to think hard about a backup scifi novel. I want a backup in case my fears about this novel being considered too “racy” come true. The scifi novel will have A LOT less sex in it and that might position as something that might be more marketable.
Oh boy. It is clear to me that MAGA Nazis want to replace the Administrative State with the Moralistic State. The great irony of it all is, of course, if you talk to a lot of Traditionalists they will lulz the idea that MAGA Nazis would come after birth control.
They simply don’t believe it possible.
What makes all of this such a fucking clusterfuck is contraception is, at its heart, not only a moralistic issue, but also an economic one. The thing about the fucking MAGA Nazis is the vessel for their tyranny is ding-dong Trump who could very well, unto himself, cause the collapse of the United States into chaos and anarchy.
Any other Republican in Trump’s historical position could easily escort the United States into autocracy. They would be smooth about it and gradually consolidate power in such a way that most people who weren’t obsessed with politics wouldn’t even notice.
But the person that history has entrusted with transitioning the US into an autocracy is such a fucking lazy idiot that he could very well be deposed in some way through a Blue Glorious Revolution, which, would, in turn cause a civil war because Red States wouldn’t stand for it.
And, yet, there’s just so much unknown about what may happen in late 2024, early 2025. I spend all this time thinking about the absolute worst possible scenario when it’s possible…lulz, we just kind of muddle through. The only reason why I have my doubts about that is if Trump is re-elected he will go out of his way to push America to the brink of collapse.
I’m a pretty ambitious person, all things considered. While it definitely outwardly seems as though I’m a drunk loser who hasn’t done much with my life, on an abstract basis, I dream big. As such, at the moment, in my mind I have a seven novel project set in the same small town in Virginia that will culminate with the a new series about a young woman who is kind of an American Lisbeth Salander.
Zendaya
Now, obviously, at the moment, this seems rather delusional. Add to this how fucking old I am and there’s every reason to believe my delusions about a seven novel series will remain just that — a delusion.
But I do, on occasion, see a picture of Zendaya and think how her phenotype matches that of the heroine I imagine will be the focus of the new novel series after I finish this possibly seven novel one I’m working on at the moment. But, of course, she will be too old by the time everything is finished.
But the heroine is introduced in the last three novels of the series. I’m really pleased with what I’ve managed to come up with. I just hope I don’t croak before I get near my goal. And that doesn’t even address how any number of unexpected things might happen that will throw my efforts to write seven novels totally up in the air.
I am, after all, abut 25 years too old to be doing any of this.
If ever there was an instance of someone who will not, can not take a hint, it’s JK Rowling. Sometimes saying nothing is far better than saying anything and Rowling continues to muck about in the very, very touchy subject of trans-rights as is shown below with this statement.
I’m impressed that despite the total freak out by the vast majority of people who read her books, she continues to stick to her guns on this subject. I, myself, struggle with trans rights because it’s so an effective wedge issue for fucking MAGA Nazis to use.
We must protect Ethel Cain at all costs.
Just within my own family, sometimes all my far more conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — want to talk about is some of the more exotic scenarios involving trans people. It definitely seems to me that too often the “woke cancel culture mob” is so blinded by their desire to make trans people some sort of “protected class” that they miss the bigger problem — MAGA Nazis use trans rights as a way to push people who should know better into the arms of tyranny.
I’m all for trans rights because I know that they are the political canary in the coalmine — if they end up in some Trump branded concentration camp, I will be right there with them because I’m a loud mouth crank who won’t shut up about what a fucking piece of shit Trump is.
I still believe that most of the controversy about trans people comes more from the Right trolling the Left because of how touchy the subject is to them than any real anger on the average American.
I often find the online “writing community” very tiresome. It seems full of people who are more concerned with preening than actually writing. And, all things being equal, I would go dark online while I work on this third draft of my first novel.
But I’m an extrovert.
As such, I just can’t help myself. And, sometimes, I need an outlet to let off steam, so I participate in the online writing community even though it often aggravates me.
I can’t help but notice how so many other writers have a totally different relationship to the craft than I do. I love to write and it comes really easy to me — most of the time. I will admit that I can be extremely moody at times and just don’t feel like writing.
I generally have to believe in what I’m writing and, as such, sometimes I just need to stare out into space for a little bit before I know what my next move is. Because I know I can write really fast and don’t want to waste a lot of time with copy that I will later abandon, I spend a lot of time thinking through what I’m going to write.
Now, obviously, I don’t have a MFA or anything and generally no one cares about me or my novel and I do it all in a vacuum…but I do think I have come up with a compelling story that some literary agent at some point between now and early 2025 might like enough to give me a chance.
The Beta Draft of this novel clocked in at about 80,000 words. I was taken aback by this because I had give myself 100,000 words and, according to the scene count I had in my outline, it seemed I would reach that. After a moment’s reflection, I realized in my rush to finish the novel that the second draft had a lot of short scenes which accounted for relatively low word count.
This time around with the third draft, however, I am really concerned that I will blow past the 100,000 word sweetspot. If I can keep the novel down to about 140,000 words I will be pleased. The novel is really engaging and tells a coherent story, but if it’s 140,000 words I worry that I won’t be able to pitch it.
My worry about this is so severe that I continue to be interested in a scifi concept I have rolling around in my mind. I’ve developed it some, but the main novel has so consumed my life that it’s difficult for me to figure out how to pull my attention away from it.
It will be interesting to see how things work out.
Because of pure human greed, I do believe that there is a real risk that Hollywood as we know it may be about to be totally disrupted by generative AI. A lot of people seem blinded to the potential capability of generative AI while at the same time being so blinded by their love of human Hollywood that they miss how severe the disruption is about to be.
I can’t predict the future, so I don’t know for sure, but I do think that at some point in the future the very idea of a “movie” will change to the point that rather than one version of a movie that everyone watches, there may be millions of slightly different movies generated by AI.
Throw in the rise of VR and there’s a chance that we’ll all “play” our movies like video games in immersive environments.
I continue to believe that the key issue is how fast all of this is going to happen. It could boil down to just one severe recession. And I think there will be a lot of calls for carve outs to protect human jobs.
What’s more, in the end, the live experience will gain a huge amount of cultural value to the point that there will be a huge surge of interest in sports, live theatre and music concerts. There is even a chance that instead of going to Hollywood, young starlets will try to make it big on Broadway.
Given the generative nature of AI these days, it would make a lot of sense if the first AI generated movie was a historical drama. All you would have to do is feed a bunch of photos from the 1860s into the AI and ta-da, you could bring those photos to life in the context of a movie.
At least, that’s what I would do.
I could totally see such an AI-generated drama being the Toy Story of the post-human Hollywood age. And the more modern the timeframe you wanted to depict, the more accurate you could make your movie.
I continue to believe that anyone who doesn’t think Hollywood is about to be disrupted in a severe, significant manner is a fool. It definitely seems as though it’s just a matter of time at the moment. The Toy Story of generative AI is going to come out soon enough and change everything.
Remember, I believe that soon enough the whole notion of movies will change because we will each get a personalized version of a movie generated by an our personal digital assistant who knows our every quirk really, really well.
One of the many signs that the bolts are popping off the United States as we careen towards the 2024 presidential election is the clear radicalization of the otherwise principled Traditionalists in my life. Traditionalists are the backbone of any stable democracy and the idea that they would go full MAGA because of “vibes” is very disturbing.
What I mean by “vibes” is the fact that a lot of Traditionalists don’t have a problem with gay people or abortion, but they feel these things should be done in private and with shame attached. In other words, they just don’t want to have to think about it or talk about it. They know being gay or having an abortion exists, but they see them as a “personal problem” that should be treated as personal disaster.
That’s why Traditionalists in principle are against being gay or having an abortion but they would be cool with it if someone in their family turned out to be gay or if they had to have an abortion. Now, I think this means they’re big ol hypocrites, but lulz, America may have a civil war soon because of these “vibe” issues.
The Traditionalist in my family — who I love dearly — have grown so radicalized that their ONLY red line when it comes to MAGA and Trump is the personal. At the moment, they are willing to give up their American birthright of democracy willfully and with a bit of glee if it means abortion is illegal and trans people magically vanish from any form of public discourse.
When I bring up the idea that Trump may go full tyrant on us if he’s re-elected, they dismiss the idea that such a thing is possible because he was all talk the first time, so it makes sense to them that he would be all talk the second go around. And the, in general, support Trump rounding up undocumented people and putting them in camps….even as they just give you a blank stare when you try to tell them the nitty-gritty of such a plan.
“I just want to be left alone,” is their mantra to the point that they don’t give you a yes-or-no answer when you ask them if they would support a National Divorce should Trump lose the 2024 election.
All of this is very personal to me because I *do* think Trump will go full tyrant if he’s re-elected and, as such, there’s every reason to believe that if Trump builds out the infrastructure round up undocumented people he might throw loud mouth cranks like me into the mix as well.
Then and ONLY THEN, will principled Traditionalists take notice. When I get snatched off the street because I won’t stop calling Trump a fucking cocksucker no matter what, THEN they will begin to have second thoughts about their support of Tyrant Trump.
If that is in fact the case, the specter of Trump potentially being deposed in some way begins to become a viable scenario. Talk about bonkers! But, wait, it gets worse — if Trump is deposed in some sort of Blue Glorious Revolution, then, of course, Red States would probably leave the Union in protest.
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