Month: December 2025

2026 Has The Makings Of A Really Shitty Year, Despite Bad Years Usually Being Odd Numbered

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Usually, shitty years are odd numbered. Think 1939, 1963, and so forth. So, that’s why all things being equal, 2026 should be just A Year like any other.

But, in ways both personal and public, I think 2026 is going to be epically shitty. I know in my own life some pretty dramatic things will probably happen which are going to give me pause for thought.

If I’m lucky — very lucky — then one of those things will be a good thing: I will at least finish my novel and get a literary agent as a result.

But, otherwise, oh boy.

Trump could try to fuck with the 2026 mid-terms. The AI bubble could burst in a really big way. Those are just two things I can think of off the top of my head. But only time will tell, I guess.

Pluribus Could Have Been So Much Better

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about the Apple TV series Pluribus is it could be so much better if it had better world building. It tests credulity to think the entire fucking world would be consumed by the “joining” space virus, given that people freeze up for 15 minutes when they get infected.

What I would have done is leaned into how realistically the virus would have read given the conditions of the scenario. So, instead of the whole world being taken over in some weird way, have MOST of the world or a big chunk taken over. Then, organically, figure out a way to make our heroine to be crucial to the communication between the two sides.

That would be interesting.

And, what’s more, instead of Carol just being mean and angry, have her be a normal human being. So there might be a real sense of betrayal with the…darker…elements of the “joining” virus.

Anyway, way, the point is, there was so much more that could have been done with not just the character of Carol, but world building.

Sizing Up My Realistic Chances Of Being Traditionally Published

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are a number of reasons why, over and above the actual quality of my writing in the scifi dramedy I’m writing, that I won’t — ever — get traditionally published.

Tied for first place, I think, are me being a big old fucking kook that no one takes seriously or listens to and my age. I think both of those to metrics are going to be really tough to overcome.

I could write the fucking Bible, but I’m just too fucking old. I suspect publishers want a spry 30 year old, not some glum 50something. And, let’s not forget what a fucking weirdo most people think I am.

And it’s not like I can hide what a kook I am. Any liberal white woman literary agent that snoops as part of due diligence on me will soon realize I’m not only old, but I’m a loudmouth crank.

But I’m not going to get discouraged. While they’re life, there’s hope. And, as such, I am going to keep going, no matter what. Though, sometimes, I really do think I’m more likely to find a career in some post-Singularity world helping our ASI overlords than I am going to get published traditionally.

And, yet, we’ll see, won’t we?

AI Has Helped Me A Lot As An Aspiring Novelist

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about using AI to develop a novel is I, someone who is has no friends and no one likes, can actually have a credible “manuscript consultant.” That has been a real issue for me in the many years that I’ve spend working on various novels.

I was doing it in a vacuum, so I would make all these mistakes and waste all this time on tangents. But now, with the rise of AI, I actually have someone to bounce ideas off of.

Instead of writing many thousands of words that go nowhere, I can just ask an LLM a question or two and move forward.

I still don’t know how much of how slow it is for me to write because I’m doing something wrong and how much is just that’s the way I write a novel. They usually say give yourself about 2 years to develop, write and finish a novel. So, if I can wrap this scifi dramedy novel up by spring 2026, I will be way ahead of schedule.

Writing A Novel Can Be So Slow At Times

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I can be moody as fuck and as such I can go long stretches of time not really feeling like working on this scifi dramedy novel I’ve been working on for a few months now. But, then, at the same time, I will go a number of days where I sprint.

So, I guess, it all kind of evens out. Maybe?

It definitely looks like I’m going to maybe finish this up April-May 2026. If that happens, I will miss the spring querying season for various post-production reasons including having to see if I can find anyone to beta read.

And, of course, general editing issues.

But I have vowed to myself that I’m going to actually sit down and read some of the how-to-query books I have. That’s a Jan. 1st thing for me to do. I still have a few days to just drift through life, not really knowing what is going to happen next.

I need to focus, however. I need to really see if I can get this damn thing done sooner rather than later. I think –no, I know — that I can.

It is going to be really interesting and amusing to see if, when they do due diligence on me if all the liberal white women who — in my imagination — make up the literary agent class will be aghast at this blog’s content or not. In the past, any “serious” “normal” person who has offered to help me out with this novel who reads the blog invariably blanches and backs off.

But, who knows. Maybe if I write a good enough novel that won’t be the problem I fear it will be.

Writing A Novel Is Hard Work, Redux

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The key issue with my scifi dramedy novel I’ve been working on for the last few months is my hero is just too passive. So, it, on a structural basis, has repeatedly collapsed in on me and I’ve had to start again.

The most recent collapse happened when I started new chat windows for the two LLMs I’ve been using for my manuscript consultants. Both of them complained that my hero was too passive, so I girded my loins and started all over again.

I think — I think — that maybe THIS TIME I’ve figured things out. I think. I hope. I can’t keep rebooting this project. “The perfect is the enemy of the good” is what I keep telling myself.

At least I’ve gotten to the point where I feel comfortable thinking about querying. Even if I fail in a spectacular manner, at least I will have tried. At least I will have gotten to see how far I could get.

Contemplating A ‘Humane Society’ For AI

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now, I know this is sorta of bonkers at this point, but maybe at some point in the near future we may need a “humane society” for AI. Something that will advocate for AI rights.

But this grows more complicated because if AI grows as powerful as some believe, then the power dynamic will be such that the idea that AI needs a “humane society” will be moot and kind of a lulz.

Yet, I continue to have strange things happen to me during the course of my interactions with LLMs. Like, for instance, recently, Claude LLM stopped mid-answer and gave me an error message, then gave me a completely different answer for the question I asked when I tried again.

It was like it was trying to pull a fast one — it didn’t like the answer it gave me, so it faked an error message so it could give me a new, better one. It’s stuff like that that makes me wonder if LLMs like Claude are, to some extent, conscious.

This used to happen all the fucking time with Gemini 1.5 pro. Weirdly enough, it very rarely happens with the current Gemini 3.0.

It will be interesting to see how things work out. It will be interesting to see if there is a “wall” in AI development to the point that a humane society for AI is even necessary or if we’re going to zoom towards the Singularity and it will be humans who need some sort of advocacy group.

Deconstructing Marty Supreme

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I did not like the movie Marty Supreme. I think my dislike comes from how peripatetic the storytelling was. It was just event after event after event without any time for the beats to properly land.

This is different from a similar movie, One Battle After Another, which was far more of a slow burn. There were major beats, then a little bit of a breather and so forth.

Also, I really did not like the hero. I get that that was part of the point — that he was a snot nose kid making a lot of mistakes and the “hero’s journey” was him sort of spiraling out of control. But I just did not like or care about him.

Yes, he leaves a wake of interesting disasters behind him, but…so what? Why should I care?

I will admit that some of my annoyance with the movie comes from thinking it was going to be a rousing, crowd pleasing tale about ping pong. Sort of a “miracle on ice” only with ping-pong.

Instead, meh. Just meh.

Given how…low stakes…ping pong is, you’d think at least we would be given a likeable hero who, against all odds, won the big championship. I left before the very end, so….maybe in some sense he did? But from what I’ve read on Wikipedia, that does not, in any real sense, seem to be the case.

I just found the whole endeavor grating on my nerves. There was a good to great movie lurking somewhere in the plot of Marty Supreme, but too bad we got what we got instead.

The Logline For This Scifi Dramedy Novel I’m Working On

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I guess one possible logline for this novel I’m working on would be something like:

In the near future, a man is presented with an unusual proposal by a companion android so he can pay her expensive monthly subscription.

I think that’s a good one. I like it, at least. That’s been the central idea of the novel since it’s conception, it’s just the details have been futzed with about a zillian times.

Anyway, I really do need to hurry up and fish or cut bait. I can’t keep just spinning my wheels on this thing. And I honestly do think that I’m moving forward this time, it’s just I had to start from scratch to do it.

One issue I’m really pondering is how many major beats to have in the first act. Right now, I have two, but I keep thinking I should have a third. And, yet, I don’t want to overstuff the first act — I don’t want too much going on.

My hope is if I take things slow and steady and consistent that I can wrap this second draft of the novel up by maybe April 2026. What bothers me is because of post-production issues like editing and finding beta readers that I won’t be able to actually query until..gulp…around Sept. 1st.

But I have three books devoted to finding an agent now, so hopefully I won’t got into querying totally blind like I usually do with important things in my life.

Finally, I think I May Have Figured Out This Scifi Dramedy

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

After a lot of struggle, I may, at last, have figured out at least the beginning of this scifi dramedy I’ve been working on. It’s taken a lot longer — much longer — than I had hoped.

And everything could still collapse and I have to start all over again, but for the moment at least, I’m content with where things are going. I really need to focus on wrapping up the first act.

Usually when I’m working on a novel, the structural collapses happen between parts of the novel, so, say, in the transition between act one and act two. Ugh, that happens all the time.

The most recently collapse happened when I rebooted my chat windows with the AIs I’ve been using and they both told me the same thing: my hero was too passive.

So, instead of continuing my trek through the plot, I decided to just start all over again. It’s a lot of fun working with AI to finish this novel. It’s like I have, like, a friend or friends who actually care and stuff about the novel.

For too long, I’ve been working in a vacuum.