Tag: Naomi Scott

I Have To Psych Myself Up For This New Phase Of The Novel’s Development

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh boy. Now we get into the part of the new version of the novel that may slow me down some. I’m going to have to cogitate about some meta elements of this novel when it comes to structure.

Naomi Scott as my heroine in the movie adaptation? A boy can dream.

And there’s a lot of rewriting to to do.

So, it’s possible that the relative breeze the first act has been is a thing of the past now that I’m getting into a part of the new version of the novel where I am going to have to rewrite things a lot.

And that doesn’t even begin to address the issue of once I finish the novel, I’m going to go through and read the thing all over again to ensure consistency. It also doesn’t help that I continue to do all of this totally by myself because I have no friends and no one likes me.

But I really do enjoy working on this novel and I’ve learned a lot that I can use with other novels down the road. The learning curve for other novels won’t be nearly as sharp.

From What I Understand Of Hollywood Actresses, They Will Really Like This Novel If It Ever Sells

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Hollywood actresses’ reasoning sometime seems to be totally different than everyone else, hence what Emma Stone was up to in the movie Poor Things. I guess I understand why many — but not all — Hollywood starlets are so eager to do spicy and or nude scenes in movies.

Naomi Scott would make a perfect heroine of the movie adaptation of my novel.

Well, this novel certainly has enough of those type of scenes in it for some ambitious starlet to get into. I did not mean it to be that way, but once I said, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if my heroine sometimes stripped?” the rest took care of itself.

Now, obviously, some people are turned off by spicy scenes in novels — especially mine! But I can’t help where the muse takes me and so here we are. I just have to be careful not to get too excited about the prospect of this or that actress playing a character in the film adaptation of this novel.

Just *getting a literary agent* given the various headwinds I face will be like winning the lottery. For the novel to get sold and to *essentially* be an instant success is yet another amazing thing that would have to happen.

So, at this point all this talk of Hollywood being interesting in this novel is just mental masturbation used to keep my creative juices flowing. I just want to finish something, anything, and get into the querying process…at last.

Hope To Get Some Writing Done On The Novel Starting This Saturday Afternoon

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve been zoning out for about a week now when it comes to my writing. I just haven’t been in the mood, primarily because I’m rewriting some scenes that I believe, in general, are good enough.

Naomi Scott as Union Pang, the heroine of my novel?

But I want to go for “good enough” to “great” so I’m rewriting them.

The novel is pretty interesting, all things considered, even if the one relative that I use as a “reader” couldn’t read the last version of it because it was “too spicy.” He had a point and I moped for about a year because of it.

But that wasn’t all that was wrong with it — the stakes of the novel just weren’t that high. The novel, at it’s heart, was a character study that simply established the universe for the other five novels in the project.

NOW, however, the stakes are a lot higher — there’s a murder mystery to be solved.

And, what’s more, an interesting dynamic between two women is established that will have a pay off in the fourth novel. (I’ve compressed the planned six novels down to four.)

Anyway, tomorrow afternoon (as I write this) I hope to really get back into working on the novel. I may even tinker around with the subsequent novels, as well, since I have some sense of what the first novel is ultimately going to be like.

It’s Comical How Little People Take Me Seriously When It Comes To These Novels I’m Working On

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have the worst luck when it comes to getting help from people to improve this first novel I’m working on. Some of it comes from the fact that the heroine is a part time stripper and some of it is that well, lulz, people just think I’m a kook.

Naomi Scott as my heroine, Union Pang?

And, you know, maybe I am.

I suppose the dream of every artist is to be judged on the merits of their work, huh.

It’s going to be really interesting to see if I can get any literary agents to take me seriously at all. You know what will happen, of course — they will do due diligence on me, find this Website and laugh and laugh and laugh at what a huge fucking kook I am.

I call this the “kook tax.”

I just can’t help that I’m…different. I’ve always been different, but it’s really disheartening that “serious” “normal” people can’t lower themselves to at least read my novel to help me improve it.

Fortunately, I have AI now. That is really helping me get a little further in the process of improving the novel because the AI doesn’t judge me, even if it locks up whenever I ask it about particularly “spicy” scenes.

I just want this novel to be interesting enough that people finish it and want more. I have two more novels set in the same town and universe. If I manage to miraculously sell these novels, the fifth novel will be set in Asia, I think.

I’ll be 70 years old by the time that one comes out, though. Ugh.

I hate being old. I wanna have fun. I sell my novel, it be a huge success and then run around New York City drinking too much, banging hot 24-year-olds and staying up all night partying.

But, alas, that’s just not in the cards I don’t think. Even though I could probably do those things still, the whole context would be different to the point that it would give me pause for thought. People would look down their nose at me and think I was a creepy weirdo.

Sigh, sigh, sigh.

Mulling The Other Three Novels In This Project

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

For a long, long time, I dreamed of writing six novels in the same universe, set in the same small town. But just recently I’ve managed to cut that down to four. But I’ve changed the first novel in the series so much that it’s going to be interesting to see what happens to the other three.

Naomi Scott would be perfect to play Union Pang, the heroine of my first novel in any movie adaptation.

I finally — finally? — have some sense of what happens in the first novel to the point that I can begin to game out the rest of the novels. I have the beginning of the second novel fleshed out in outline form, but for one thing — the hero, the son of Union Pang now grown up — is too passive.

But the premise of the novel — we see the daughter of the murder victim in the first novel try to escape a cult — is really fun and cool. I can do a lot with it. I imagine this young woman to be a Zendaya-type woman.

By the time I actually finish everything and it sells, however, I’m afraid Zendaya herself will have aged out. It’s going to be awhile before I get to the point where I can really take working on the other three novels in the series seriously. But it is fun to daydream, I suppose.

The last two novels in the project are the closest to being a direct homage to Stieg Larsson’s work. I worked and worked and worked on the two novels (which are one big story connected by a cliffhanger) for ages and then Trump lost the first time and I realized I had all this backstory I wanted to write about.

While Zendaya would be perfect to play my version of Lisbeth Salander, she’ll probably be too old by the time I actually finish and sell the novel.

That’s how I ended up writing a my first novel being set in the mid-90s. It otherwise would be a prequel, but I wanted to start at the very beginning of the life of my Lisbeth Salander-type figure. She’s meant to be an American Lisbeth Salander and the way I’m going about it, you, the reader, will get to see first hand what the weird life of the character was like.

Because the four novels are set over the course of 25 years, I can do some really interesting things with the characters on a macro basis.

The More I Think About It, Naomi Scott *Would* Be Perfect To Play The Heroine of My Novel In Any Movie Adaptation

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I think I may have written about this before — I vacillate wildly about who should play the heroine of my novel in any hypothetical movie adaptation — but I got followed by someone connected to Smile 2 (I think) on Twitter so I found myself thinking about it again.

Naomi Scott as my heroine, Union Pang?

I realized, again, that the protagonist of that movie, Naomi Scott, would be perfect to play Union Pang. I first remember seeing her in the most recent Charlie’s Angels movie and I, even then, thought she would be a good fit for Pang. She’s just about the right age, too, since Pang in the novel is 32 as it opens.

Anyway, this is all fantastical and a daydream. I keep being so fucking moody about writing that it’s probably going to be the spring querying season before I actually start to query. I would *prefer* to query starting Sept 1st, but I just don’t know.

I believe I have enough time to between now and September 1st to wrap up yet another version of the novel, but…I don’t know. There are too many variables for me to know for sure.

But, in general, if you want to know what Union Pang, the heroine of my novel looks like as I write it, she looks like Ms. Scott.

Pang has a 16-year-old son and that plays a big part of the novel. And Pang is a role I could see any number of actresses really wanting to play because she’s a very, very flawed woman. She’s a part-time sex worker (stripper) and also runs a alternative weekly.

She’s obsessed with buying a small town newspaper…then a murder happens and she is hell bent on discovering the truth.

I would be greatly helped if, like, people took me seriously. But I have no friends and no one likes me. So all I have is my gut. I just write what I think would make for a good novel in the context of The Girl Who Played With Fire as my “textbook.”