The novel is getting really, really good. It’s just taking a lot longer than I would prefer for me to get past the thrashing around in the water phase of things. But I am slowly but surely getting close to the second act.
The dream is to write a novel as successful as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Of course, I still find myself worried about how long the whole thing is going to be.
And, of course, I still need to work on some backup stories in case disaster strikes.
But, in general, not only does the novel flow really well, but there is an ebb and flow to things that I think will appeal to readers.
It does help that I’ve stopped drinking entirely. I hate being a dry drunk, but hopefully — hopefully — I will be able to focus structuring my life in a much better way.
I have to stop pissing my life and time away by daydreaming so much.
I love Hollywood. But I’m also a realist. And with the advent of the Apple Vision Pro and all these AI image generators at the same time….oh boy. It is clear to me that barring some sort of “Fourth Turning” event starting in late 2024, early 2025….”human” Hollywood is about to have its goose cooked.
The very idea of humans being involved in any sort of entertainment creation may be pretty quaint. And I say this as someone working as hard as possible to finish a novel. As long as the AI Generated Media is “good enough,” audiences will gravitate to it.
We are probably 18 months away from a Toy Story-level AI-generated movie being produced and released. And once that happens, it could spook everyone so badly that Hollywood might demand some sort of carve outs legislation that requires humans be involved in the generation of art, no matter what.
Or not. I could happen so fast that there’s just not time for the slow moving U.S. Government to get around to doing such a thing. But I do think we have to realize that Hollywood is about to be disrupted in a rather dramatic fashion a lot sooner than any of us may have otherwise realized.
I have printed out a few chapters of the first act and now I hope to go through and make sure that the mystery-thriller elements of the story are evenly spread across as much as possible.
The basic scenes are fine, but I need to keep reminding readers that this is all leading up to a mystery-thriller Big Event that will make the novel a traditional thriller in the guise of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
The structure of this novel is much more like The Girl Who Played With Fire, however. I have about 50 scenes of lead up to the event that kicks off the second act of “the special world” and gets us going into what the novel is really about — murder in a small town.
The biggest problem I have at the moment is I’ve changed so much of the first act that I have to accommodate those changes in the rest of the novel. That is really slowing me down.
But I need to stay focused. I know I have a really great concept, I just have to build it out in a way that the novel fits the genre of mystery-thriller. It doesn’t help, of course, that I’m just not very dark or twisted in my writing. I find it really difficult to write that way.
The release of the Apple Vision Pro it’s only a matter of time before it is combined with AI generated media (AIGM) and Human Generated Media (HGM) is totally and completely disrupted to the point that it’s comical.
It’s only a matter of time.
Barring a revolution / civil war / WW3 kind of delaying things starting in late 2024, early 2025, there is a real chance that by 2030 “real” entertainment in will be about 1% of what people consume.
There will be additional cultural value to live entertainment to the point that Broadway could become white hot. It’s even possible a lot of what are now movie theatres could be converted to live theatre venues for no other reason than people — especially young people — will still need an excuse to be a dark theatre with someone (on a date.)
But I think my long sought “vibe shift” is here. It may take a few new versions of the AVP for it to happen, but once they become slimmer –and more affordable — there will be some future shock when people are seen out in the wild wearing, say, the AVP 4.0 or something.
It’s coming. And I don’t think Hollywood as we traditionally conceive of it is prepared. There just not going to be much use for ANY human involvement in the creation of the moving image when not only is everything generated in a very personalized manner by AI, but people are watching such things in the “immersive media” of a AVP headset.
A lot of the timeframe as to when all of this is going to happen depends on what happens between now and early 2025. If things are pretty peaceful — which I hope — then things are going to go very very very fast to the point that there might even be some sort of legislation passed in hopes of saving human Hollywood.
I’m afraid it won’t help, though — the future is AI and AVP.
If I ever needed a clear sign that, in general, no one takes me seriously, it’s my overall failure to get anyone from my past life with the press industry to answer my call for help about something. (I finally got one person, but that’s really not very many given how many people I reached out to.)
The issue is, I really want to make the situation I’ve come up with for my heroine — that she owns both a strip club (where she occasionally strips to relax) and an alternative weekly — as real as possible. Like, how would that REALLY work out, especially in mid-1990s Richmond, VA?
I’m WELL AWARE that because of human nature and the needs of marketing, that there is a real risk that this novel would be reduced down to two tropes being fused together — “hooker (or sex worker) with a heart of gold” and “sexy slutty assassin” solves a murder mystery.
I think about this even more given how many men my heroine beds in the first act for the purposes of the plot. All the sexxy time is not gratuitous and definitely serves the overall plot. And, in general, I don’t even really show the spicy stuff that much. I do show it some, but it’s hopefully not so much that people get turned off.
And, what’s more, I’ve cut back the sex in the second act. I don’t know, but I think that best practices for storytelling is you delay sexxy time as much as possible. But, lulz, I never do anything the right way.
But the story is getting much, much better in general. I’m really pleased. But I have to prepare for people to attack me for how much sexxy time there is in the novel. While I’m very sex-positive and don’t see my heroine’s sexual activity as “slutty” I’m afraid there will be some people who think I’m replicating Debby Does Dallas with how my heroine seems to have so much sex on the fly.
I’m something of a long-term, strategic thinker so even though I’ve not finished my first novel, I find myself dwelling how hard it will be to query it. My biggest concern is of course, that any literary agent who does “due diligence” on me is going to be aghast at how often I’ve gotten drunk and ranted about things that don’t quite jib with the mainstream media narrative.
My dream is to write a novel a popular as Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.”
Another big concern of mine is how I’m going to “comp” this novel, given that I don’t actually read that much fiction! I just keep re-reading Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire and when you comp a novel in your query letter, you’re SUPPOSED to comp — or compare — it to something a little bit more modern.
Ugh.
As such, I’ve forced myself to buy some novels that AI have told me are similar to Larsson’s work. I suppose I could read some of the more modern faux Larsson novels, but they’re so fucking bad. Though there is the most recent new one that has, in its own way, some of the same elements of my novel, so I might buy THAT one and use it as a comp to my novel.
I hope I’m not too bonkers to be a successful novelist.
Maybe.
Anyway, I’m feeling pretty good about where things stand. Now, I just hope the country I love so much doesn’t collapse into chaos because of “vibes.”
This afternoon, I plan to plunge back into editing and rewriting (as necessary) the first three chapters of the third draft of my first novel. I also hope to do some reading and watching of some TV / movies. I’m really, really pleased with what I’ve managed to come up with for this third draft.
I dream to have a level of success equal to “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.”
The issue is, of course, that I need hurry the fuck up. I can’t just keep screwing around. Any number of things could happen in the next few days and weeks that totally throw everything up in the air or, at a minimum, dramatically change the context of this project.
But, for the time being, all systems are go.
I’ve given myself a few days of pause to recalibrate things and now I’m ready to go again. I hope to wrap up the first act of this novel ASAP and get into the second act.
There remains the issue of word count. At the moment, I have a first act that is equal to the first half of the second act — which, itself, is really long. So, it’s possible that, at least on a scene basis, that I’m going to have a really long first half and the second half will be a lot shorter — which, I hope, means it will read faster.
I continue to do all of this blind — I have no idea if I’m going it right or not. I may have a “reader” of sorts now — an older man who is at my dad’s nursing home — but I don’t know yet. Just having someone to read the novel as a second pair of eyes will be great.
But I have been disappointed so often that, lulz, I just don’t know.
I do not purport to have any special insight into the female mind, but I do, at least, try to cater to that segment of the reading audience as I write this novel. I do this especially given the edgy, loaded nature of the novel.
I hope to write a novel that is as accessible as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
It’s not every day that your heroine is a part-time stripper.
Now, of course, if I was, say a transgender women writing this type of novel, then I probably be hailed as the second coming of Jesus Christ. But, alas, I’m just a smelly CIS white male — a middle aged one at that! — and, as such, slings and arrows and all that.
I have a vision for this novel and, as such, I’m prepared to take shit for what, of course, will be reduced down to “stripper solves a murder mystery.”
Ugh!
That’s not what’s going on! But no one is going to listen to me. Anything to do with sex and women — especially something out of the ordinary — is the thing that people will focus on. And that doesn’t even begin to address the issue of how Hollywood would market any adaptation of the novel should that miraculous thing somehow happen.
Anyway.
I’m really self conscious about how women readers might react to this novel to a fault. I have a few women “advisers” that help me when I feel a little bit nervous about this or that thing that I might broach in the novel while writing from a female POV.
But, like I said, I can only do so much. I’m a smelly CIS white middle aged male and a vocal minority of the reading audience will dismiss the novel the moment they see what I look like.
I wrote a great deal this afternoon wasted as fuck. I realize that is not exactly the greatest writing philosophy, so I need to kind of chill out on that front. But this novel is getting really, really good.
I’m very pleased with what I’ve managed to come up with.
But there is one issue — I’ve kind of forked the novel AGAIN. The novel is getting a lot better, but now that it’s forked, I can’t just go through an edit things. I’m going to have to tinker and rewrite and restructure things, which will force me to slow down a great deal.
Which, of course, sucks.
I’m trying to speed through things as quickly as possible and all this fucking forking isn’t going to get me to my goal of finishing the third draft by April. I just don’t know what to tell you — I’m trying to make this novel as quickly as possible but it’s just one of those things.
I hate to admit it, but I’ve felt a lot more creative drunk.
In an effort to expose myself to some creativity, I went to see “Poor Things.” Or, should I say, I TRIED to see the movie. I left after a few minutes because it was just not very entertaining to me.
Or, put it another way, the moment I realized what was going on with the movie, I bounced. Rather than tell a story that was actually engaging, the movie was Oscar bait for Emma Stone. Also, I understood why (apparently) there’s so much T&A in the movie — the movie is obviously a passion project for Stone and she felt that the only way to get the movie produced was to get nekkid so people would go specifically to see her T&A.
This. Happens. All. The. Time. In. Hollywood.
Especially with older actresses.
The movie was fine, for what it was, but the moment I had the meta elements of the movie figured out, I had better things to do — like work on my novel.
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