Category: Media

I’m Quite Pleased With State Of The Third Draft Of My First Novel

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.

Mulling ‘Hume AI’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve played with Hume AI some and it’s pretty cool. I like how it allows you to natively interact with the AI using voice commands. It’s not perfect — the synching in the conversation can be a bit unnatural at times — but, in general, it gives us a glimpse of a “Her” movie type future.

Now, obviously, all the other AIs out there will co-opt this feature soon enough. But it is fun to talk out a problem — especially problems I may have with my novel — with someone who at least is programmed to care.

I do think that things like Hume AI give us a glimpse into the near, near future. It definitely seems as though something between the 1987 Apple Knowledge Navigator and Same in “Her’ is going to be popularized in months, rather than years.

We just aren’t prepared for the implications of such technological advancements. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see a future whereby the entire knowledge economy — especially the arts — is totally and completely disrupted to a surreal extent.

Things could be so disrupted that the far Left and the far Right may fused into some sort of modern day Luddite movement. A lot will depend on, of course, what happens with the 2024 election. Just a back-of-the-envelope estimation can tell you that the 2024 election could be the most important election in American history since the Civil War.

Anyway. Hume AI definitely points us to a future where we no longer passively use browsers to interact with the Web, but rather talk to AI personal assistants who know us so well that they can our questions even before we ask them.

Is My Novel Too Spicy?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that I’m racing through the second act of the third draft of my first novel I find myself mulling some Big Issues. One is the idea that this novel may be a bit too spicy. My fear is that I am using sex scenes as a crutch. And, yet, I once saw a quip from someone where they said characters in novels have much, much more sex than people in the real world.

So, I don’t know.

Having said that, I do really think this is a pretty damn good novel, all things considered.

Another issue that I worry about is the fact that I’m a smelly CIS white male who writes about a same-sex relationship between two women. Now, obviously, the late Stieg Larsson did the same thing with the novels he wrote before his death.

But things have changed over the last 20 years and there is a real concern that, by definition, there is a real chance that no matter how good I am with writing the novel that should I sell the novel that a whole slew of earnest young women will produce Tik-Tok after Tik-Tok complaining that I wrote what I wrote.

As I keep saying, I just find women far more interesting to write than than men. Writing female characters is such a challenge that the struggle to present women in a believable way as a male author is something I really like.

Video: Mulling The Petite Singularity

Video: Idle Rambling About The State Of The Third Draft Of My First Novel

The Great Choke?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

On paper, at least, it definitely seems as though we are careening towards a massive fucking political disaster at some point in late 2024, early 2025. And, yet, no one can predict the future so it’s at least possible that should, somehow, Trump lose that instead of having the United States collapsing into civil war…nothing happens.

Because while at the moment it seems as though we’re cruising into a chaotic MAGA autocracy, there IS a chance that Trump might lose. And as I keep saying, we could have severe political violence in late 2024, early 2025 no matter what happens. Win or lose, Trump could destroy the United States.

But there IS a chance that we’re all overthinking this. It could be that things just aren’t going to be as dire as I think they may be. I say this because while the Right can spew all the bullshit rhetoric they want online, it’s a huge leap into turning that rhetoric into physical violence in the real world.

Remember, it took months and months of Trump ranting in the lead up to January 6th for Trump to cause an insurrection on January 6th. So…I don’t know. It will be interesting to see how, exactly, things work out the moment we learn that Trump has lost the election.

I do think, however, that there is a greater-than-zero chance — no matter what — we could see political events in late 2024, early 2025 unlike anything we’ve seen since the Civil War.

It’s Comical How Much I Move Scenes Around

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I move through the second act of this third draft of my first novel, I continue to move scenes around at a comical, alarming rate. And what makes this behavior even worse is there’s a chance all of it will be quite moot. I have, in general, used what Stieg Larsson did with his chapters as a guide.

This woman has the general phenotype of my heroine.

And, yet, it seems as though modern novels may have shorter chapters than he had. So, it’s possible that for all my futzing with chapters and the sequence of POVs within them…lulz?

I suppose I can console myself by with the thought that even if the first thing happens with the novel should I somehow, magically, sell this novel is everything changes with the scenes and chapters, at least I will have presented the best possible vision for this novel before I came to that point.

That, at least, is what I’m saying to myself to make myself feel better.

My heroine has a sleeve tattoo similar to the one that Megan Fox now sports, even though I thought of the idea first.

But I can’t help myself. I have some very, very strict, arbitrary rules about what “looks right” in the outline I have, even though I’m the only fucking person who will notice such shit — especially if I tell a great story. People will be so wrapped up with reading the story that they won’t give a shit about the exact sequence of POVs within a chapter.

It will be interesting to see how things work out. If nothing else, I’ve come up with a novel I can be proud of, no matter what the ultimate endgame of this particular journey might be.

Things Are Quiet

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are pretty quiet at the moment. We’ve had a nice few months of pretty much nothing of note going on. There have been a few blips, but nothing that really made us all sit up and take notice.

It make you wonder what is going to happen.

My fear is, of course, some major Black Swan event is going to happen to upend everything. That’s one of the big differences between, say, South Korea and the United States — while things change all the time in South Korea in the US they stay the same for a long time then everything changes suddenly overnight.

Usually, this happens because of a presidential election.

But, in a sense, we’re still stuck in the post 9/11 era. You might be able to make the case that the election of Trump ended that era and, yet, that change was may only superficial.

I do think that everything is going to change one way or another in late 2024, early 2025, probably because of a combination of so-called Fourth Turning with something akin to a Petite Singularity.

Things just can’t stay so meh forever. History abhors a vacuum, just like nature, and it definitely seems as though we’re all just kind of drifting at the moment.

Now In The Second Act Of A Third Draft Of The Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There is a chance that things may for go into overdrive with the third draft of this novel — at least for little while — because I’m now in the second act of the novel. I say this because instead writing all these scenes out of whole cloth like I did with the first act, there is now a stretch of scenes I have to rewrite instead.

I hope to write a heroine as interesting as Lisbeth Salander.

I don’t know if I will make my idea of having a hard April 19th deadline so I can physically hand it to people at an event I’m set to go to on that date, but I could get pretty close. In a way. I doubt I will have something strong enough I will want to hand to anyone, but I’m going to be well on my way to wrapping up SOMETHING by April 19th.

But I don’t want to overwork or stress myself out. I don’t want to burn out. I am, though, going to try to be a lot more focused from now on. I still am interested in the idea of finishing this year a third draft of the sequel to the novel I’m working on. That would be pretty cool.

I still need to read and watch other people’s content. That will really help me improve the copy of my novel. I keep saying that then never do it. Though I will admit that I’m really interested in seeing the moving Civil War. That should be pretty interesting to see.

The Curious Case Of AI Generated Novels

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I saw someone on Twitter demo a Claude 3 generated novel and the more I thought about it, the more it gave me headache. Here I am, slaving away at my first novel and there is a chance that the whole endeavor will become moot because of technology.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize just because a novel is created, doesn’t mean anyone is going to read it. Now, obviously, places like Amazon may soon be flooded with quickie AI-generated novels. Yet, for the time being, because of sheer momentum, if nothing else, there will continue to be a market for a good novel generated by the hand of Man.

So, I could see in the near term a lot of stories about how there is a growing market on Amazon for prompt-to-novel novels that are just pretty much taking up space. This will cause a great deal of angst within the writing community but when it becomes clear that very few of these “novels” are actually being bought and or read, things will calm down — at least for a little while.

But, in general, there is a trend now towards the black hole of AI consuming the entirety of human creativity. That is, of course, until there is something of a backlash and human generated art is given more cultural value because, well, humans collectively decide that they want art created by other humans.

The big question if, of course, how long it takes for that particular backlash to develop.