Everyone Is On A Different Journey When Writing A Novel


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Everyone goes about developing and writing a novel in a different way. So, whenever someone seems a little too much of a perfectionist, or gets bent out of shape about something I say about such things, I simply drop the matter.

Some people do it one way, others another.

And I hate it when people tell me I suck, or that I’m “doing it wrong” when it comes to writing a novel, so I’m really in no place to do the same thing to other people. Whatever works — or doesn’t work — for them.

But the point is — to finish something.

It’s the people who work on a novel for ten years and STILL don’t produce anything that really bug the shit out of me. Even that can be excused if the person is working on some sort of high concept novel. But publish or perish is what I think.

I’ve been working on this novel for about three years and I’m damned if I’m going to wait a second longer than need be to wrap this baby up so I can either get it published, or self-publish then move on to the next thing.

Struggling With The ‘Float’ Of #alligorical #scifi #spy #thriller About The #Trump Era I’m Working On


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This weekend, I paused my writing on the novel to sketch out the scene summaries of the last few chapters of the first half of the novel. Now, however, I have to get back up to speed with the mental “float” of what’s going on with the novel at the moment.

Given how ambitious this novel is, that’s probably the most difficult part of writing it — “canon management.” I guess I could use a spreadsheet to figure out the float, but the float is so abstract and in flux right now that I actually have to finish the first draft before I can do that.

I may — may — break down and access to one of the various software programs available to manage development of your novel. But the system I have figured out with Google Docs is extremely flexible and I’m afraid buying such software would be too constraining for a first draft.

Maybe for the second draft when things are far more set in stone. But for the time being, I think I’m going to keep things in my mind as much as possible then between the first and second drafts do a lot of writing to make canon management of the second draft a lot easier.

The key thing is to just keep going forward and finish a first draft of some sort, any sort, so I can use that as the basis of a much, much better second draft that I will feel comfortable showing other people so they can be beta readers.

‘Canceling’ Breakfast At Tiffany’s — A Reassessment


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve come to the conclusion that, after the murders in Atlanta, that for Breakfast At Tiffany’s to be shown on TV, the Mikey Rooney character should be edited out altogether.

The character does nothing for the plot and it makes the movie significantly better to eliminate that particular weird subplot. It’s not like Song of The South where the problematic elements of the movie are existential — simply clipping the offensive scenes from the movie would be enough.

There’s no need for future generations to know that subplot even existed.

The movie really is The Perfect Movie and by editing it instead of “canceling” it altogether is a way to keep it culturally significant.

About To Finish The First Half Of The Novel & Cross Into The Second Half


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

After about three years of struggle, I’m finally on my way to finishing a first draft of my scifi spy thriller set in the waning days of the Trump Era just before the pandemic struck.

I haven’t gotten to the midpoint with my writing, but I have every other way. Though, to be honest, I have a massive amount of writing to do to flesh out my characters. That’s going to be tough because I’m going to have to go outside my comfort zone to do it.

But it’s got to be done.

Anyway, in general, I’m quite pleased with where things stand right now. A lot — and I mean A LOT — can still go wrong. But I am grateful for the position I’m in right now where I’m afforded the time and mindspace needed to finish up a first draft pretty quick (in relative terms.)

Once I do that, I will pause for a month, then turn around an re-write the whole novel again so I can have a beta version for people to read. Wish me luck

A Real Life ‘Inception’ & The Dangers Of A Secret Soft Singularity


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something occurred to me recently about the possibility of “digital telepathy.” Once you establish that Big Tech can read or minds (which is still in all honesty a dubious proposition) then you have to contemplate the idea that such technology might not be used just to sell us widgets better but it might be weaponized.

It might be reversed.

It might be a real-life “Inception.”

Why stop at just secretly reading people’s minds when you might do research to figure out how to implant ideas into people’s minds. It would take the usual subluminal ratfucking we all know about in the media to the next level. Actual concepts could be snuck into the audience of Tik-Tok, or Google or Facebook.

If you take this one step further, when fucking Mike Pompeo or Tom Cotton becomes president and we either have a civil war or an autocracy, I could imagine them using such technology to keep the masses docile.

But all that is really too surreal and Black Mirror or Halloween 3 for me.

That definitely seems more like stuff MI6 or the CIA might look into via DARPA. Being able to read people’s minds then use such technology to directly pop ideas into their heads is both deep and dangerous.

Yet, thankfully, that will never happen.

Right, right?

There’s A Lot Of Momentum With My Allegorical Scifi Spy Thriller About The Trump Era


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

After about three years of hard work, I’m now really in the zone when it comes to this novel I’m working on. I’m well on my way to — in a few months — wrapping up something akin to a (proto) first draft. It’s not something I would want to show anyone, but it’s a shit ton better than the novel I tried to work on about a decade ago that was pure crap.

Should I finish this first draft, it will be the first serious first draft I’ve ever written. Then I can give myself a month to read and think and then throw myself into a real, honest-to-God second draft that I can then turn around and show beta readers.

There are still a lot of things I don’t know.

Given that the Trump Era is over, will anyone want to read a novel which uses gauzy allegorical subtext to rant about the excesses of that fucked up era. I think they will because if I actually manage to sell this thing, by the time post-production is over Congress will be in Republican hands and we’re all going to be worried that MAGA is going to come roaring back in 2024.

Ta-da! Instant audience!

But, in general, I’m quite pleased with how strong this novel’s structure is. I still have a massive amount of reading to do to shore up the characters. Right now, too many of them are just place holder “moods” rather than fully developed people you want to hang out with.

I have managed to get this far this time around because I’ve simply worn myself out. I’ve managed to get to the point where I’m not nearly as demanding upon myself when it comes to this first draft. It’s just a first draft and no one is going to read it.

It’s the second draft I have to worry about.

Why We’re Going To Have A Second Civil War (Or Turn Into An Autocracy) In 2024-2025


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We’re doomed. Because of a number of very specific situations — the pandemic and Trump being a total ding-dong — the United States dodged a catastrophe in 2020. We won’t be as lucky in 2024. There is going to be severe political instability in the winter of 2024-2025. And either there’s a rolling political violence across the country that descends into something akin to a second civil war or we finally fall into Republican minority rule for the next 50 years or more. Here’s why.

FOX Fired Its Election Night State Caller
One of the subtle things that saved our asses was FOX News Election Desk called Arizona. That was a tipping point for the night. This will not happen in 2024. If Trump — or someone like Trump — is anywhere near winning on Election Night the crucial FOX News is going to be on the side of the bad guys, no questions asked. So it could be possible that the Right will never accept a Democrat winning, no matter what. So, either the 2024 election is stolen and we become an autocracy, or the country implodes.

The Macro Problems of the Last 40 Years Are Still There
The deep seated rot within the bowels of the American political system are still there. Republicans are hell bent on turning the United States into a white ethno state where white Christians tell everyone else what to do because they have no policies and all their political views are based on fear. So, in a sense, if it’s not 2024, it will be 2028 and so on. There is going to be a point when these different macro trends are going to come to a head one way or another. Either it will be a civil war or our zombie liberal democracy will finally just be dead.

The Republican Party Is A Fascist Party
Liberal democracy is simply a means to an end for the modern Republican Party. They see it as either a way to take power or keep power. Any form of compromise is weakness. A huge chunk of the Republican Party has slipped directly into such thuggishness that they’re willing to embrace the traditional fascist playbook to achieve their ends. So, once they take over Congress in 2022, that will be the setup a very brazen theft of the 2024 election one way or another. And, really, the issue is do the fascist Republicans bungle the strangling of our zombie liberal democracy and start a civil war or do they get away with it clean?

Known Unknowns
There are a number of things that may come out of the blue to change things so much in the next four years that what is obvious — that on a macro level the United States is fucked — doesn’t happen.

Elon Musk
Four years is a long time. It’s at least possible that on the technological front someone like Elon Musk might pull a rabbit out of a hat that throws everything up in the air. There are 3 million high paying blue collar jobs at risk should Musk perfect the automated semis he’s working on. It’s at least possible in the 2024 presidential cycle that something will happen whereby the far Right and the far Left merge into a new party that is opposed to “soft singularity” technology like automation. But that would be a lot more sooner than I would expect.

North Korea
This is an existential threat to the United States that if it flares up in the next four years could make a lot what I’m worried about very moot. If we have a major regional war the scares the shit out of us, then it’s possible the Biden – Harris Administration will quite easily win a second term.

The Inevitable
Neither Biden nor Trump is immortal and it’s at least possible that one — or both of them — may pull a Justice Scalia on us. If it’s Trump, then that opens up the flood gates for a number of young would-be autocrats to do a lot of shit that Trump wanted to do but was too big an idiot to pull off. If it’s, God forbit, Biden, then it’s possible a President Harris might have the spunk necessary to fight the macro forces that I think have us doomed at the moment.


The Secret, Soft Singularity: Real Talk About Tik-Tok (& Big Tech) & ‘Digital Telepathy’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about what might amount to a secret “Soft Singularity” being perpetrated upon us by Big Tech is if they are doing it they’re probably screwing themselves over in more ways than one.

First, if Big Tech can read our minds then couldn’t that technology be used for some sort of $1,200 “Mindcap” in the future? If they gradually grew consumers used to notion that such technology actually already existed — or was on its way — then they could roll out a Mindcap and start a $1 trillion industry.

Meanwhile, if they keep leaning on their ability to read our minds (if they can, in fact do this) then should the technology somehow become rather abruptly known, then, well, all bets are off. People could freak out at the notion of some sort of “mind rape” taking place on the general public at the hands of Big Tech and that, unto itself, could cause some sort of anti-technology “Neo-Luddite” movement to spring up. It might not be very pretty.

And this doesn’t even begin to address the national security aspect of all of this. If the Chinese government is rooting around the minds of American youth via its so-called “algorithms” that might give an astonishing amount of practical information about what’s going on in the United States.

It’s not too difficult to imagine someone related to NSA or CIA person using Tik-Tok and giving the Chinese government an eyepopping amount of information about the United States intelligence community via their minds.

That sounds bonkers, but something is fucking up with Tik-Tok. Not a day goes by now that I’m not pushed content by Tik-Tok on my For You Page that goes beyond just listening to me via my phone or even monitoring what I’m typing via my browser…it goes straight into fucking reading my mind.

It seems as though Tik-Tok thinks they can get away with reading our minds in part because they reference things we’re embarrassed to admit we’re thinking about. Let that sink in for a moment. If that isn’t a sly way of keeping people from talking publicly about any potential mind reading technology, I don’t know what is.

But let me be clear — 99% of the “spooky” things I’m being pushed can be explained in some way other than digital telepathy. But there is that 1% that simply can not be explained in no other way than something that is not easily explained.

And, yet, I have no proof that I could point to and get the New York Times to look into this idea. But all of this is very concerning to me for various reasons.

In 2024, The United States Either Becomes An Autocracy Or Has A Second Civil War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The first thing we have to keep an eye on is someone being shot on the floor of the House. This kind of shit happened all the time between 1830 and 1860 (according to The Field of Blood, a book I’m reading) and it seems inevitable it will happen between now and the winter of 2024.

Having said that, we are so fucked. So very very fucked.

The Republican Party, by definition, sees any policy or legislation on the part of Democrats as illegitimate. Unless, of course, they can claim credit for it so they can win votes and strangle our liberal democracy once and for all.

Anyway, the point is, when the next presidential election cycle rolls around, I just don’t see the American political system being able to withstand its passions. Either we, at last, become an autocracy or there’s a civil war. There are no other options.

We simply don’t have the political strength to punt this particular problem down the road another four years, much less the 20 or 30 years necessary so the browning of America can take place and we get over the hump.

All I can say is, at least my novel will be timely again by the time I try to sell it. And if I do somehow sell it, post-production will push it right into the sweet spot of all my ranting against extremism being very timely.

Another Spooky Tik-Tok Pushing of Strangely Relevant Content


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, I went to a restaurant today and had some tequila. Then, today, on my Tik-Tok “For You Page” what do I get, but an extremely relevant video about, you guessed it…tequlia.

I don’t know. I just don’t know. It seems as though I’m being really paranoid about this — which I probably am — and, yet…it’s spooky.