by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Just because I’ve been working on this novel — or some variation of it — for about a decade now, doesn’t mean it won’t suck. Sigh. One problem I have to this day is my dialogue is too on-the-nose.
But, I believe in this novel. All I want to do is see how far I can get with it. I want to finish this version, which is a murder-in-a-small-town and then query it. There is a lot going on with this novel and there’s a lot to juggle. It even has an element of scifi to it, which I’m really going to have to prepare the reader for.
And the entire third — at least at the moment — is a complete disaster. It’s a mess and I’m going to have to give it a lot of thought. It helps that it’s been years since I’ve looked at it (I put it aside to work on a different novel in the same universe that I fused back with a version I cut it from. (I hope that makes sense.)
Anyway, I’m feeling pretty good about this novel. I have very, very, very low expectations. As soon as I start to query, I think that’s when I start to shift through the different scifi novel ideas I have and see which one is good enough to devote my entire attention to.
Of course, it’s possible that I’ll get sucked into the second novel in the same universe as this thriller I’ve been working on, even knowing it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever sell it.
One of the advantages of having no friends and no one liking me is I have no one to tell me “no.” I can just keep working on this novel long after anyone else would have been pressured into giving up by a wife or a girlfriend.
But, in all fairness, I’ve actually finished at least one novel, about a year ago. And there have been different “eras” of this project which is what has really slowed me down.
