Tag: novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

My life is still turbulent to the point that I’m struggling to get any writing done. But here’s where things stand: I am at the beginning of the second act in one novel and I’m just beginning a new scifi novel.

The scifi novel is…problematic because I’ve been using AI to speed up the writing process. But I refuse to write the whole thing using AI, so I’m going to sit down and use what AI has written as a guide for scene summaries. That seems to be the best way to go about things. That way, I kind of get the best of both worlds — I can speed up the process of writing the novel while still keeping it grounded in my own writing style and abilities.

My nightmare is I get lazy and write an entire novel using AI and, lulz, I have to defend the fact that I used the AI to rewrite what I wrote. I’m just not going to do that. Ever.

Meanwhile, the other novel is a real struggle. I have two thirds of a novel to rewrite and I’ve been struggling to figure out how to do it. I just have to hunker down and be prepared for it to be as late as spring before I can finish anything.

I have to be prepared to be nearly 60 before I’m a published author. That is very discouraging. But if the Singularity comes I suppose I might be able to live a lot longer and as such it won’t be as big a deal that I try to publish a novel as a person who would be considered nearly elderly in the Before Times.

Anyway, I have to buckle down. I can’t keep drifting towards my goal. That’s what got me in this predicament to begin with.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m feeling kind of meh these days — mixed in with some bad jeu-jeu — but at least I’ve managed to nail down a backup novel to work on. It’s a scifi novel about AI and I really, really like it.

But I need to do something, anything, rather than just stare out into space and feeling bad for myself.

So, I’ve used AI to do the initial development of a scifi novel that is really cool and timely. But I really need to do something with it soon because the Singularity might happen and make it all moot. (Make all my writing moot.)

But I’m going to keep working on the other novel as well, the one I’ve been thinking about and working on for a long, long time.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems as though I may have something akin to a “reader” at last, but I have some problems. I only gave her the first chapter and the second chapter is when things get spicy.

Even if she is ok with the spicy material, I’ve decided to totally rewrite much of the second act so…the clock is ticking. I’m going to have to hurry up. I can’t keep dawdling like I have been for so long.

I actually need to focus so I can give her something to read if she is still interested by the time she reaches the second act.

I’m a little nervous about her thinking I’m some sort of creepy weirdo when she reads the second chapter — the scenes in question are kind of spicy! But she’s young, so, who knows. She may be cool with it.

She was surprised when I mentioned that my heroine would go back to stripping again in the novel, so that makes me uneasy. But I guess I just have to power through and see what happens.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh boy. It’s time to wade into the “fun and games” part of the novel now and it’s going to require a lot — A LOT — of rewriting. So, I’m just going to chill out for a little bit today before I get into it.

It’s been about a year or more since I looked at this copy and my storytelling ability has improved so much that I keep thinking up ways to rewrite the text. And that September 1st deadline is looking less and less likely.

It definitely seems like more like February or March will be when I actually wrap this thing up. And I should be working on a backup story, just in case. But I still can’t bring myself to do it for some reason.

Ugh.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If I actually manage to finish this novel and successfully query it, it’s definitely going to be something of a miracle. I just hem-and-haw about some pretty important elements of this novel all the time.

One thing I’m struggling with right now is how the beginning of the second act seems more structured as if it’s the end of the first act. I could very easily lop off maybe 30,000 words and re-arrange things that way.

And, yet, I’m not quite prepared to do that because I don’t know how many words the entire thing is. So, I think I’m just going to wade through the entire new version of the novel, rewriting a lot as I go along, then look at the word count and THEN decide what I’m going to do.

I think my near-term deadline is July 4th weekend. That is a “take stock” deadline. If I’m anywhere near wrapping up things, then I know I’m ready to query this fall instead of the spring.

And, as always, I continue to idly think about all these scifi novels I want to work on. And now that I’ve finally solved The Impossible Scenario, even that is an option as to a potential novel.

Anyway. I need to stop staring out into space and actually get some work done.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I know a guy who writes plays all the time and also novels and he has YET to sell a novel after years of trying. This gives me pause for thought because he’s a journalist who is a far better writer than I am.

And, yet, I have to be comfortable with the right to fail in a rather spectacular fashion. And the further I get into querying then that is experience that maybe I can use that to get a little further in the next attempt.

Anyway. I still am struggling with the overall structure of the novel. I keep being tempted to lop off a huge chunk of the first act, and, yet, there is value in what I depict in the first act.

I just don’t know.

I’m going to continue to wallow in the first part of the second act in an effort to tighten the novel up in some way. But I guess the trigger to cutting a lot will be when I finish the novel and it turns out to be 160,000 words.

If it is that long then I definitely will start to lop off words here and there to see if I can get closer to 100,000 words.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a structural problem with this novel that I don’t know what to do about. I now have a strong first act, and, yet, the case could be made that it takes too damn long to get to something happening.

So, my goal now is to reread the first half of the second act and see about how I can rewrite or edit it to be better. I think what I’m going to do is go all the way through the novel and if it’s just too long, THEN I will lop off a big chunk of the first act of the novel and restructure the rest of it.

But given the weird structure of The Girl Who Played With Fire, it’s not impossible for a unconventional structure to be a success.

Yet I continue to be uneasy about word count. I continue to worry that maybe this novel is just too long and I’m really going to have to tighten things up some.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m getting into crunch time now. If I don’t focus it will be a year from now and I’ll still be spinning my wheels at exactly the same point in the novel I am now.

So, I’m hoping to focus on rewriting the novel a lot more in a more focused way in the coming days. I’m going to — hopefully — buckle down and actually get myself where I need to be ASAP.

I just want the opportunity to fail in querying, I guess. I want to flame out and then piviot to working on some of the scifi novels I’m been brooding on for some time now.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

My dream of being a published author started officially about a decade ago now. But the specifics of that dream were very, very different back then. I wanted to write a scifi novel using elements of what I called “the Impossible Scenario.”

But in fits and starts, over the course of the decade, I finally settled on something totally different.

The actual novel I’m working on right now is set in late 1994, early 1995 and is meant to be the first of a four novel project.

Anyway. The point is — being an author is a lifestyle. Just because I haven’t managed to get into the querying process just yet doesn’t mean I’m not an actual author.

It’s part of my identity now.