Tag: novel

My Anti-MAGA Rage Compels Me To Write


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I can begin to feel the old white hot rage against MAGA from the early days of this writing project begin to creep into my soul again. I’m livid and powerless. So, not being a violent man, I’m throwing myself back into working on my art. The first two books of this four book series are not overtly anti-MAGA and while the last two books are pointedly anti-MAGA, hopefully they won’t come across as too terribly preachy.

At the moment, I’m taken aback by how smooth things are going with the first draft of this first book in the series. I’m just trucking along, following the outline and, really, the only issue at the moment I have to worry about is keeping myself entertained. I don’t have the challenge that the struggle of the first act has associated with it.

The past….and the future?

All I have to do is, as they say, “just write.”

Of late, I’ve been jumping ahead as I work on this first novel, trying to nail down the outline of the second book. I’m really going to try to force myself to have no more than maybe 120 scenes at 1,000 average words. The first book is way too close to 200 scenes for my liking, but that’s just the first draft. I can always always trim that down some in the first draft.

You can’t edit a blank page, as they say.

And I continue to have a lingering insecurity about writing all four novels at once. I mean, I guess I could just try to get the first novel published and see how that pans out. And, yet, if Stieg Larsson can write and sell three novels, I can write and sell four novels. I have a huge ego and thinking like that is just the jitters associated with being an aspiring novelist.

Also, all four of these novels tell a compelling story. I’m going to keep going until something concrete prevents me from doing so. While it’s very possible that someone is going to steal a creative march on me and I’ll have to piviot to some other concept, you have make decisions on what you know, not on what you don’t know.

You can’t live your life in fear.

Or, as my father would say, “No one ever got anywhere in this world without taking a risk.”

Watch Me Be Paranoid


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a very, very, VERY active imagination. As such, I often spin tales using very little information that often, or should I say, almost always, turn out to be total bullshit.

But I will note something interesting.

Last night, I talked to someone on the phone about the novels I’m working on. What’s of note about this is we went back and forth between me talking to her about the novels and my lingering existential dread about the United States having a civil war or slipping peacefully into autocracy at some point between now at 2025.

I looked at my Webstats this morning and…someone from D.C. seemed to have searched for something to do with my novel? I don’t know what they were searching for, but they landed on a specific link on this site where I talked at length about my vision for the novels I’m working on.

At first, I didn’t think much about it. But, gradually, over the course of the day, I began to imagine a scenario where, I don’t know, the fucking NSA or something, noticed my use of certain watchlist keywords and they started to listen directly to the conversation.

Then…they found what I was saying about the novels interesting enough that they — or someone they talked to — later decided to check me out on their home PC.

Like I said, I have a very active imagination. But it is an interesting little fairy tale.

Let’s Talk ‘Gender Essentialism’ in Storytelling


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Once upon a time, the idea of “gender essentialism” being a critique of an audience favorite like Aliens would have enraged me. Not that it isn’t a legitimate criticism, but because, as a storyteller, it would be yet ANOTHER nit-picky thing I would have to weigh in my mind.

But, thankfully, I’ve mellowed out enough that after being annoyed with the idea that Ana Marie Cox would suggest such a thing about the beloved Aliens, I’ve moved on.

And, yet, it is an interesting thing to address given that the first novel in the four thriller series I’m working on is awash in this so-called idea of “gender essentialism.” In fact, the basic motivation of the first book’s protagonist is, pretty much the gender essentialist concept of a mother’s love — or, the gender essentialist idea of the Ur mother who loves another woman’s child as her own.

The idea that someone might deduct points from an otherwise beloved movie like Aliens because….a woman loves a young child and wants to protect her? That’s somehow bad? I would admit that instead of using the fancy point-headed term “gender essentialism,” you might use the far more pedestrian term “shmaltzy.” But that would be used if that particular plot point was poorly implemented.

But if you get too wrapped up in all the Leftist attacks on traditional heteronormative storytelling you give up and just stare at the celling in a dark room because you’re male and white and CIS and, therefore, impossible for you to tell any story at all because you’re a member of the patriarchy and why don’t you just drop dead?

So, fuck that. I just going to tell the story I want to tell and let the chips fall where they may.

Full Speed Ahead With The Novel(s)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve finally gotten into the part of the first novel of this four novel series that is called the “fun and games” part of the story. It’s the beginning of the second act and it’s the reason why you buy the book in the first place. Everything is going well — and the actual writing of the novel is speeding up greatly — but for one thing: I’m having some existential angst about word count.

The rule of thumb about first novels is the sweet spot is in the 80,000 – 110,000 word range for various reasons. The biggest reason is far more practical than you might realize — if you’re a new, untested author, for the publisher to be willing to physically print anything beyond that is something of a risk.

I’ve been using Stieg Larsson’s work as a guide, but it’s beginning to dawn on me that there were specific things relative to his books that aren’t applicable to what I’m up against. One, it’s my understanding he was an established journalist in Sweden at the time he got four longish books published. And the books were originally for the Swedish market nearly 20 years ago, so that also may have given him the ability to write longer as a first-time novelist.

But I’ve gotten this far with this first book — pretty much all I have to do is just follow my outline at this point — that I’m just going to just that. This is just the first draft and no one is going to read it. I do find it annoying that I’ve spent all this time laying out an outline with a certain length, only for it to occur to me this late in the process that I’ve probably designed outlines of novels, on an existential basis, that are just too long.

And, yet, given that I’m writing four novels at once, I think I can probably be ok if I shorten the first two novels some and keep the last two novels about the same length as they’ve always been. I’m completely clueless of the dynamic associated with trying to sell four novels as a first-time novelist instead of just one, so I’m hoping that this will be ok.

I still have a lot of work to do. But it will be nice, for my ego, if nothing else, when I complete a longish first draft of the first book. Then I can take a deep breath and start to work on the second book’s first draft.

The Naming Of Names


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m obsessed with picking just the right name for the characters in this four novel thriller series I’m working on. At the moment, I’m quite pleased with what I’ve managed to come up with. I love some of the names I’ve come up with, I’m extremely paranoid that someone will steal a march on me and use similar names to what I have, forcing me to find new names.

This is a very real possibility, but at the same time, as I keep saying to myself, make decisions on what you do know, not on what you don’t know.

Some of the better names I’ve seen in fiction include Don Draper, Shiv Roy and, of course, Lisbeth Salander.

The name “Don Draper” is so very, very good because it tells you exactly what to expect from the character. “Don” evokes Don Juan while “Draper” evokes “drape her.” What more can you ask for in a name?

I don’t know anything about her character or the show she’s featured on “Succession,” but I love, love, love the name “Shiv Roy.” That’s great name. It’s loaded in such a way that you can play with the audience’s expectations a great deal. Nearly anything the character does, or doesn’t do, will be loaded because of her name.

Meanwhile, “Lisbeth Salander” is so great because “Salander” is very similar to “salamander.” You get the sense that this is a small person who is nearly impossible to kill, just like the animal her name suggests.

Anyway. The thing about character names is while one can come to love them, they’re also fairly easily to replace with some thought. So, if the worst happens, I can always go back to the drawing board and think up new names for whichever characters I feel I’ve been forced to rename.

‘But Why 4 Novels?’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, this four novel series began as one novel that was started because of my personal white hot rage against the Trump Era. This morphed into two books because the story was just too big to be told in one novel. And then something happened that I totally did not expect — Trump lost.

As such, there came a point when I realized I needed to recalibrate the project. I was on the couch, just about asleep, when I realized something: I had a huge backstory in my mind for the two novels I was working on. So big, in fact, that I could write two novel-length stories about how we got to the opening of the first book in the two-book story.

My creative past…and future?

That’s when I realized that a great way to “fix” the problem of Trump losing was to go backwards in time and tell those two “prequel” stories, then come back refreshed and with new eyes on the two modern-era books I was working on.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done.

Much to my delight, this plan has worked out quite well. I do have a lot of insecurity every once in a while about such a thing project, but the two additional prequel stories I’m working on are really strong and really compelling and so there you go.

The whole thing won’t make any sense until the whole project is finished and you can read the four novels all the way through and see my entire vision as a whole. But that comes with the territory of having a vision, I suppose. You have to have “paper” that people can read before most people are willing to accept that you know what you’re talking about.

It definitely would have helped if I had had a “muse” in my life to help guide me through this process. But, I guess, there’s just as much a chance that any woman in my life would have discouraged me from starting this whole thing to begin with. It has helped a lot, in some ways, that I have not had anyone to tell me “no.”

Scenes Written, Not Word Count, Are My Metric When It Comes To This Thriller Series


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m just about to get past the sixth chapter in this first novel in the four novel series I’m working on. Once that happens, I think — think — things should move a lot quicker at least until I hit the midpoint.

In the past, I’ve had a lot of problems with the story falling apart at the midpoint. But I’ve mapped out this novel so tightly this go around that I think I’m pretty safe.

I hope.

I’m hoping to wrap up these four novels and try to sell them to a publishing house no later than maybe 18 months from now.

But what gets me is how some other writers get so worked up about how many words they’ve written when that’s not the metric I use. I use scenes written. Since each scene is supposed to be somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 words, I find myself writing a lot more than if I was strictly obsessed with word count.

Everyone’s different, but I like using scene count as opposed to word count because it’s a whole lot easier to keep track of using my system of development and there’s a far greater sense of accomplishment.

Anyway, I’m really pleased with how things are going at the moment. I’m really beginning to get the sense that, at last, I’m going to actually finish a novel. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.

A Creative Conundrum



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I find developing and writing female characters a lot more fun because of how much of a challenge it is to do so as a man. I often also populate my work with POC including American Asians, etc. This is all well and good, but for the fact that at same time this thing that I’m told is expected in a modern writer is also, in itself, something that can cause problems.

‘Double dees, double deeze”

Because I’m a white “CIS” male.

So, there is something of a paradox. I’m suppose to have representation in my work, which I find myself doing anyway, and, yet, because I’m a white man, that, by definition, is a problem.

It can make the whole act of creation rather frustrating. All these rules I have to follow — which often have contradictory expectations — can cause you to grow angry at them. As an aside, I will note one of these rules that makes me seethe is the Bechdel Test, which I’ve heard described as originally proposed as a “half joke” in a fucking comic of all things.

So here I am, slaving away to write the best four novel series that I hope might be popular — especially with women readers — and I’m expected to have representation, but if I do have representation then it’s bad because I’m a white man writing from a female, or POC point of view.

What’s more, it’s now a fairly ridged ideology among some that these works also have to feature two women talking about something other than a man. I call bullshit.

The point is for me to tell the best story possible that entertain the audience for hours using only their imagination.

As such, you, as the writer, in my opinion, need to follow your truth north. If you’re a white “CIS” male, you just can’t win with some people. By definition, they don’t like you and don’t like anything you produce. It’s enough to make me want to write under an assumed identity or something. I’m only half-joking, as it were.

Anyway. All I can do is try my best to flesh out my vision on the page and see what happens.

‘Write Drunk, Edit Sober’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve finally gotten past the first three chapters of the first novel in this four novel thriller series. For weeks, I felt like I was spinning my wheels trying to write those first three chapters.

But, now, at last, I’ve gotten in the point in the story beyond the inciting incident. At the moment, I’m at a very unique moment in my life where I can write as much as I like. Unfortunately, I just don’t see this ideal situation continuing forever.

So, I’m going to use it as wisely as I can.

If things go as well as I hope, I should be able to simply follow the outline I have written and things will go really smoothly. A lot — and I mean a lot — could still go wrong to throw everything out of whack and slow things down considerably.

But you have to have hope. That’s part of the point of writing these four novels in the first place, to give myself hope.

I Have My Eye On You, Mr. Bond



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I saw the latest James Bond film, “No Time To Die,” today, and for once I didn’t walk out of a movie. There were a few time I rolled my eyes and a few times when I checked my watch. But, overall, it was a great movie and highly recommend it.

They definitely updated the character some by giving him some heart. I’m a life-long Bond fan and some of the additions to the character were long, long over due.

But having said that, I will also note that I got a significant amount of inspiration from watching the movie. The four book thriller series already has a lot of Bond-like touches to it and I realized something important about the Bond franchise when I watched No Time To Die.

My series about an a American, female James Bond-type person was missing something and I didn’t even realize it. But now that’s fixed and the series, once done, will be a mixture of James Bond, Stieg Larsson’s stuff and Mare of Easttown, if that makes any sense.

I will note in closing that it’s a testament to how much cultural self-confidence Americans have that No Time To Die would pick us so much and we just don’t care. It’s a lulz.