Be The Power
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Apparently, if you call Trump a fascist you get put on some sort of list of “terrorists.” Really? Is that what we’re going with these days? Ugh.
This is particularly amusing — and grating — since the incoming mayor of New York City called Trump a fascist in the Oval Office. (Essentially.) And Trump was cool with it.
But Trump is a fascist.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I use AI as my manuscript consultant, since I can’t apparently get anyone to either listen to me or take me seriously. But at the same time, I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure that the actual writing is mine.
But that isn’t enough to not make me insecure when people read, say, the first chapter of the novel and say how great and wonderful it is. I worry that everyone is going to think my writing hasn’t improved, I’ve just been using AI.
So, like I said, I’m going to really work as hard as possible to make the actual writing of the novel my own work. But also, as I keep saying, I kind of use AI like an enhanced spell checker.
I’m a horrible speller and I probably wouldn’t ever have had any writing gigs without the ability to lean into the advantages of a spell checker.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I was talking to a relative recently and, they, obviously fed up with my talking about a novel without any discernable product said, “why not just write a short story.”
No more discouraging words can be said to me in the English language, I fear.
I would rather fail writing a novel in a monumentally spectacular manner than waste my time on a piddly short story. I probably would spend six months to a year on a short story anyway and that’s six months to a year I could spend working on a novel.
But I get it, if you just hear me talking about writing a novel for years and year and nothing comes of it, it makes a lot of sense to just get frustrated and tell me to write a short story.
Fuck that. I have said from the beginning that I just want to see how far I can get with this process. And if I don’t succeed with this novel (which would mean first writing something good enough to query then being a published author) then I try again with something else.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
America is a very unserious country at the moment. We don’t want to be governed, we want to be entertained. As such, I think the only sure-fire way for Blues to gain power again is through someone like Stephen Colbert being their candidate.
But I would be stunned if he was willing to do it. And that’s kind of the crux of the Blue dilemma going forward. Blues just can’t accept that what people want is a policy-free “vibe” candidate like Trump.
They don’t want serious policy-wonk candidates who will actually have a vision as to how to make their lives better. So, especially in the context of us being in a luminal space when it comes to be a democracy at al….I just think we should accept that we’re going to be governed by idiot MAGA people for the foreseeable future.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I am not a Democrat. But I fly pretty close to that political sun, so I listen to a lot of center-Left podcasts and when former Obama era Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was on Pod Save America, I found myself nodding in agreement a lot.
The core problem for Blues is what people want — an infotainment figure who makes politics “fun” and a blood sport, comes exclusively from the center-Right. The only person who comes close on the center-Left who could be a Trump-like figure for Blues is Stephen Colbert and he just won’t do it.
So, as such, Blues have to hunker down on good policy.
And I think Emanuel’s policy views are pretty good. Things like telling Democrats to de-emphasize “project trans kids” and also pass legislation that would bar under 16 children from using social media makes a lot of sense to me.
But we will have a long ways to go. A very long ways. We still don’t know if we’re even enough of a democracy still to ever have free-and-fair elections.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
What the fuck is going on with Crooked Media’s Jon Lovett. He seems…cranky. He seems like he’s not very happy with his position at the organization. It seems, if you reverse engineer things, that he keeps demanding in-house side projects for some reason.
He’s currently got a Bravo in-house side project that I assume he was given to placate him for some reason.
I just get the sense that a lot more is going on with Lovett at Crooked Media than we’re being told. It’s just it’s such low stakes that it’s not like Page Six gives enough of a shit to investigate exactly what’s going on.
And while we’re on the topic of Crooked Media, those guys keep reminding me that I think they’ve jumped the shark. They’ve grown kind of full of themselves and they’re not longer the plucky upstart outsiders to the Democratic Establishement.
They ARE the Democratic Establishment (or at least the center-Left Establishment) and, as such, some of their policy views are pretty self-defeating. Especially when it comes to trans Rights.
Let me be clear again — I support trans rights, I just think the whole “protect trans kids” (because there are so few “trans kids” in reality) is kind of self-defeating and hands a loaded gun to fucking MAGA fascists who swoop up and collect “normal” people who feel aliened by such rhetoric.
Anyway. It will be interesting to see what happens with Lovett and Crooked Media in 2026.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I don’t know what to make of Dave Chappelle these days. He’s still the GOAT as they say, but…is he MAGA now? Or at least MAGA adjacent? I’ve been viewing his latest Netflix special in dribs and drabs on Tik-Tok and…I’m not impressed.
He seems to make up a lot excuses for performing in Saudi Arabia when he should have just stuck to the truth: he did it for the money.
And he shouldn’t give any mealy mouth “whataboutism” answers to questions about why he did it, or whatever. Just admit he has a lot less principles that we thought he had and he did a gig in a country ruled by a murderous thug for cold hard cash.
Anyway. No on listens to me.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
This is just about the nadir of winter because it’s not Christmas Eve, but it also is when you can feel the world grind to a halt. The next week or so is just going to be a bunch of static I suspect.
Unless something big and unexpected happens.
I tried to play the lottery in hopes of a Christmas miracle, but the damn machine simply could not, world not work. So, I think I’ve wasted enough money on that particular fantastical dream.
I rarely play the lottery, but when it gets up there, I grow weak and actually dabble in that particular “sin.”
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Just as I was celebrating being at the mid-point of the second draft of the scifi dramedy novel I’m working on, I rebooted my chat windows with the AIs I’m using and the panned much of the novel because the hero is “too passive.”
So.
I’ve decided to go through the entirety of the novel to see how I can improve the agency of my hero as much as possible. I’ve totally revamped the beginning of the novel because of that.
But I’m hoping that I can save at least much of the first act. The first half of the second act “the fun and games” part of the novel, may not be as lucky.
Which, of course, is going to slow me down a great deal. But if the over all effect is that the novel is better, then huzzah.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m cruising towards the midpoint of the scifi dramedy novel I’m writing. And, I have to admit, the speed I’ve had doing all of this comes in no small part to being “AI First.”
I’m doing a lot — A LOT — of work, but I am amplifying and enhancing all that hard work with AI. I continue to do most, if not all, of the actual writing, but on a structural basis AI has really helped.
And that doesn’t even begin to account for the fact that I’m going to make one last pass on the second draft to make sure absolutely as much as possible of the actual written text of the novel is mine and now AI.
I’m already feeling a little insecure from everyone who’s read the first chapter saying how great it is. Usually, people either don’t tell me what they think or say it sucks. But, like I said, I am actually doing all the heavy lifting and AI is more like an enhance spell checker than anything else.
I think very soon, once Christmas is actually here, I’m probably going to be in neutral for a few days then bounce back into writing again. But I really am going to have to work hard in the second half of the novel — the second half is not nearly as actually written out as the first.
So that is going to slow me down.
I still hope to wrap the beta draft of the novel up by spring 2026, and, yet, even if I do that, because of post-production issues, it could be Sept 1st, 2026 before I actually start to query.
That will suck, but, lulz. I just want to see how far I can get in the querying process.
You must be logged in to post a comment.