I had a bit of a conundrum on my hands today about how I was going to proceed with the development of the third draft of this novel. I finally figured out what to do — I’m going to start from the very beginning of the second act.
Maybe I’ll write a break out hit novel and it’ll be adapted by Hollywood.
I’m going to go through and read everything and fill in those scenes that I have to fill in. This way, I have some sense of where the act is beginning and don’t have to risk getting waded down in the first act. I won’t waste a month trying to make the first act “just right” before working on the second act.
Anyway, I’m pleased with the plan I’ve come up with. I have to not think too much about the convergence of AI and XR technology that may make all my hard work on this novel….quaint and moot.
I think I have a pretty good chance of at least being able to query this novel before America either turns into an autocracy or has a civil war / revolution.
I usually make at least one person REALLY MAD randomly and by accident at least once a year. I’m overdue for someone to scream at me in a really personal way, as if they take personal offense to me being a listless daydreamer.
I assume whomever this person is, will be mad at me writing for years about a novel that I’m writing. That seems to be just the type of thing that some rando stranger who is paying attention to my life would get mad about.
And that doesn’t even begin to address what might happen if I magically somehow sell this novel I’m working on and I get even the barest amount of attention. There might be a LOT of people angry about my drunk ramblings. Or, maybe not.
Most of my drunk ramblings are center-Left in nature, so it’s probably going to be some drunk thing I did in Asia that ultimately destroys whatever success I might have because I wrote a novel that is as popular as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. (That’s a delusional dream at this point.)
And, yet, who knows.
Maybe, just maybe, it will all be a lulz and people will breeze past my colorful life in Asia.
I’m just about to sprint forward with the “Fun & Games” part of this novel. I’ve been doing a lot of constructive daydreaming the last few days in an effort to figure out how to game the rest of the story out. It’s been really, really tough.
But I do think if I just let this process play out that I should get to writing full time again pretty soon. I was kind of sweating it there for a moment until I realized what the problem was. There really wasn’t so much a problem as I needed to go into aggressive daydreaming mode so once I left it, I could throw myself back into writing again.
As all of this is going on, of course, I realize I need to do a lot more reading and watching of TV — and develop other projects. I don’t want to be left holding the back if someone — God forbid — should somehow steal a march on me story wise and I have to fall back to some other project from scratch.
I don’t know when everything is going to sort itself out, but it should be pretty soon. That’s the plan, at least.
So. If all goes according to plan, I’m going to start to query my novel in some capacity in late 2024, and MAYBE as late as early 2025. As such, I’m working on the assumption that the country will be stable enough for that to be a viable option.
So, I may write a lot about The End Times for the USA, but in a practical sense, I’m totally ignoring that possibility. I am doing this because, as I keep saying, all my “hysterical doom shit” is simply me trying to make my abstract fears concrete.
I just don’t know if The Fourth Turning is really going to happen. In fact, I generally don’t think it will. I do think that Trump is probably — at this point at least — win the 2024 election and 2025 could be mass chaos. And, yet, if enough smug Twitter liberals leave the country on their second passport…meh. Maybe that will mean people will be more interesting in read a novel that is part of a six novel project that is pretty much just one long screed against extremism (using subtext.)
Or not. Who knows. All I know is I’m pressing forward with this novel, even though there is definitely a part of me that is….concerned…about the next 18 months and beyond.
It has occurred to me that I have changed so much of the first act of the novel that I have to change the rest of the novel to accommodate those changes. As such, I am trying to give each of the investigators in the story that have a POV a “beat” that they cover.
This really helps clear things up a great deal and keeps the novel focused on a structural basis. But doing so means I pretty much have to start the Fun & Games portion of the novel (the first half of the second act) from scratch. I have some general ideas from the Second Draft, but the Third Draft is going to be, in some respects, radically different just because of all the changes I’ve made in the first act.
But, in general, I’m really pleased with what I’ve come up with in the transition from Second to Third Draft. Yet I do think I’m going to kind of chill out for a day or so to think about the exact nature of the Fun & Games part of the novel. I need to make this story a lot more clear, focused and engaging if I have any chance of pitching it to a literary agent.
At least I see the problems that exist, instead of making a fool out of myself when I try to query.
So. Here I am, well on my way to wrapping up an alpha release of the third draft of my first novel. As such, I really need to take the idea of querying my novel sometime in the fall of 2024 more seriously. There is a chance, of course, that it might be about a year from now before I query for various reasons, but I hope things don’t come to that.
But it’s really nerve wracking having to think about the nuts and bolts of querying my first novel. It sure would help if I had some quirky “in’ to the industry that allowed me to speed the process up. Yet, at the moment that is just a daydream on my part.
The entire system of trying to get into ANY form of showbiz is designed specifically so you can’t get into it. That’s why having a connection to the showbiz industry you’re interested in can be crucial. And, of course, there is the fact that I’m 100% extroverted and I often get drunk while I’m using the Internet.
It’s not like I can go back in time and change things. I am who I am and I am WELL AWARE that anyone literary agent doing due diligence on me might be dismayed by what the find. My experience with manuscript consultants was a real eye-opener — some of them wouldn’t even give me the time of day because they thought I was below them in some way.
And, yet, I have wanted to query a novel from the very beginning of this years-long process. And, so, here we are — there is going to come a point when I have to leave the delusional phase of this novel and enter a new, more serious and fact-based part of the project.
It’s going to suck.
To make myself feel better, I’m probably going to look into having a few backup, second track stories for Just In Case. My goal, my dream is to be a professional creative writer from here on out, for the rest of my life. But sooooooo much can go wrong as I try to make that dream a reality.
I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do about literary agent due diligence on my sorry ass when I start to query. The thing about querying is people who don’t give a shit about you are going to become aware of your existence. And if you’re a fucking drunk kook crank like me, then, oh boy, their evaluation could be pretty brutal.
But, lulz, what am I going to do about it now?
I suppose there are a few things on the edges I could do to mitigate how bad things might be seen from the point of view of a literary agent. And, yet, fuck it, I refuse to change who I am. Let the chips fall where they may.
But I definitely need to psych myself up. It’s going to be very disheartening about a year from now to see people who are clearly literary agents poking around this blog. I understand that to someone who doesn’t have the time to have a conversation with me to find out my story that…I can come across as an eccentric.
And I will admit that I’m kind of bonkers. Maybe a lot bonkers.
But I will note that there are plenty of famous people who are just as bonkers as I am who are called “colorful” rather than nuts. Anyway. There’s nothing I can do about it now. Wish me luck.
Because I don’t really even read any modern books in my genre, I think I’m going to turn to AI to find out what current books I should read that I can “comp” to a book that is a homage to Stieg Larsson’s stuff.
My novel is so…different…that I struggle to think that I will be able to find a novel that is clearly something I can “comp.” But I’m going to have to figure out something. That’s what they pay me the big bucks for.
I’m going to have to take this whole process a lot more seriously. Anything to do with querying means I can just daydream and be delusional anymore. I really, really, really don’t want to self publish. That’s just not my scene. I would have to be really fucking desperate — at least at this point — to self publish.
I would rather go down in a blaze of glory a monumental failure than limit myself by self-publishing. That’s just my vision at the moment. I have nothing against people who self publishing, but I just don’t wanna do that.
My heroine, in my mind, looks something like this woman above. I started reading a novel that was clearly meant to be something along the lines of a homage to Stieg Larsson’s stuff but something about it left me cold. It seemed to hone in on what the author thought made Lisbeth Salander so popular — her vigilante streak.
To me, that’s just a part of her personality. She was far more complex than that. I hope to force myself to actually read that damn book simply so I won’t feel so self-conscious about not reading fiction. But only time will tell.
I love to write. Writing is like shedding skin for me. I do it a lot without even thinking about it. And, for years now, I’m been VERY delusional about what’s going on with my first novel. I’ve allowed myself this luxury because I knew it was the only way I would ever actually finish anythiing.
And, yet, now that it’s clear that I’ve finally figured out the beginning of the third draft of this novel and I’m going to — hopefully — wrap it up by, say, around April 1st, I have to put on my big boy pants
I have to start thinking about querying.
The reason why this scares the shit out of me is multifold. One is, well, I’m a drunk crank who doesn’t always follow the media narrative on social media. I retweet a lot — A LOT — of pictures of hot chicks. I get drunk and rant about the importance of heteronormative monoculture. And I have been known to say I fucking hate the Bechdel Test. AND, WHAT’s MORE, my novel could easily be reduced to the logline of smelly CIS white male spends 140,000 words to depict a “sex worker solving a murder mystery.”
I retweet a lot of pictures of hot chicks on Twitter. None of those things endear me to the liberal women who often are literary agents. But I refuse to change anything. I’m going to accept the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, come what may.
I have a lot to consider going forward. I have to think about how I’m going to pay for a manuscript consultant to look over my copy. I have to buy AND READ a series of novels that I can “comp” my novel to, even though it’s a real struggle to consume anyone else’s content — and I’m a storytelling snob.
AND, all of this is happening the context of the rise of AI, the potential for a “Fourth Turning” in late 2024, early 2025 AND the very real possibility that my entire life could be thrown up in the air because of known unknowns.
I dig shit like this. And, yet, the whole point of starting a novel in the first place was to get outside my comfort zone and to see how far I could get in the process before it became absolutely, 100% clear that I would have to — gulp — self-publish.
But I would only consider that after a good bit of fighting to get published traditionally. And I might even be so stubborn that I simply but the finished novel aside until I can get something ELSE published traditionally and use the leverage that gives me to get my first novel published.
What am I going to do about my status as a fucking drunk crank. Ugh. I just refuse to change who I am. Take me or leave me. I get my freaky weirdo writing on this blog and on social media in general could be a…lability. But it’s not like I ever do what I’m supposed to do.
It’s too late. Fuck it.
I’m going to be sex-positive and write about a “sex worker who solves a murder mystery” and see what happens. That’s just my nature. I always do whatever the fuck I want to (within reason.)
It definitely will be interesting to see literary agents in my Webstats a year from now when I begin to query. I just can’t help who I am. If I was 30 years younger then, lulz, maybe I would do what was necessary to make myself more palatable to “normal” literary agents with money and careers.
But…lulz.
I’m different. Always have been. But I can tell a good to great story. And that should be all that matters.
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