Tag: novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So. About a year ago, I finished an actual novel-length-novel about a woman named Union Pang obsessed with owning a small-town newspaper. But a few things happened that made me feel that I couldn’t query it.

One was, the people I gave to read it thought it sucked. The second was, at about the same time, I realized the stakes were just too low. So the heroine wanted to buy a small town newspaper — so what?

So, for about a year, I moped. I felt the cold hand of time turning the clock and I just didn’t believe in my writing. But, gradually, since about New Year’s, I’ve started to feel that familiar itch.

What I decided to do was to cherry pick the best bits of the novel I finished and turn that into the first act of a novel fused with the second draft of another novel in the same universe. Or, put another way, I had a second draft that was a murder-in-a-small-town in the same universe, got frustrated and decided to write a novel that was sort of a set up for a six novel series.

That “setup novel” was the novel I realized I couldn’t query and so now I’m putting the two novels back together again, in a sense.

It’s a long story.

Anyway, the cherry picking of the old novel to make a first act worked really well. But I’m in the second act now, and whoa buddy. The two just don’t jibe very well. I have an entire character from the first act that….just at the moment has nothing to do.

And, what’s more, the first half of the second act is already way too long at about 60 scenes. (The first act is also about that length.)

I might be forced to trim a few scenes simply so the novel isn’t 200,000 words. But at the same time, I have to shoe horn something for the character I love from the new first act to do.

But the game is afoot. It may take me a little while, but I still think I’m on track to query this new novel no later than starting around September 1st. It may be closer to October 1, but that’s getting a little too close to the “we don’t do anything because it’s the holidays” part of the year for the infotainment industrial complex.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are a lot of reasons to give up when it comes to this novel. It’s shaping up to be a little long relative to the 100,000 sweetspot. I’m too big a kook. No one –especially literary types — takes me seriously.

And, yet, I continue to believe this novel is existential for my mental well being. So, I continue to believe. I continue to rewrite things. It will be interesting to see how all of this will work out.

I have high hopes for it all, but, then I had high hopes for the version completed version of this novel and that was a complete disaster. But I’m hoping this version, because it’s a traditional “murder in a small town” will be more engaging to the average reader.

I say the first completed version of the novel was a “complete disaster” because I gave it to a few people — including a male relative to reads a lot of thrillers — and I was told it sucked. My relative said it was too spicy. Meanwhile, there was a would-be beta reader who pretty much was aghast that I would write such a novel in the first place.

I will admit that the novel — even this new version of it — is kind of spicy, but it’s not smut. It’s just, for some reason, I thought up a lot of — what I think are — interesting sex scenes that move the plot along.

Anyway.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So. I’m finally forcing myself to rewrite some scenes that ostensibly are fine, but clearly need to be rewritten. And this is only going to get worse as I get closer to the full-blown solve-a-mystery part of the novel. That part of the novel I haven’t been writing and rewriting for a few years.

And it doesn’t sync up with the first part of the novel because of story drift.

I still really want to work on a scifi novel, but I’m so obsessed with this novel and I can (hopefully) wrap it up in a few months and actually query, so I am allowing myself to work on it instead.

Anyway. I hope to get a lot of rewriting done this weekend.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Your protagonist is supposed to be really pro-active, their actions are supposed to push the plot along. But I have a really crucial plot point where I think I’m going to have the male romantic lead do some stuff simply because it serves the purposes of the plot for the heroine to be…indisposed.

This is where using more than one POV comes in really handy. I just have to be careful not to have too much given to the male romantic lead. So, for the moment at least, I’m kind of pondering what I’m going to do.

I may go for a walk and brood on how I’m going to thread this particular needle.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I gave the very first scene of the novel to two readers and they said, effectively, that there was just too much going on.

Sigh.

So. I guess I will split the scene into two and try to flesh these two new scenes out in a way that doesn’t throw too much at the reader. I really like the first scene as-is, but for two readers to tell me I’m throwing too much at them is enough to give me pause for thought.

I don’t know quite when I will really do this, though. I will probably wait until I’ve stabilized the entire novel first. That’s the most pressing thing at the moment — to get a novel that hangs together.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The outside world is slowly beginning to rattle my cage to the point that I’m too distracted to do anything but stare out into space. But I’m not quite there yet — I still can concentrate enough to work on my novel.

As such, I’m now in the second act of the latest iteration of the novel. What I think I’m going to do is try to slowly go through the rest of the novel, but not worry too much about totally rewriting everything.

Then, once the new version of the novel is really stabilized, I will make one last pass through of the entire thing before I query. I have to think of some way whereby I don’t just continue to drift towards my goal.

I’ve set a pretty tight deadline — September 1st. That’s when I hope to begin to actively query this novel.

Now, obviously, a lot — A LOT — could go wrong between now and then that would either slow me down or dramatically change the context of it all. But you have to believe, you know.

You just have to believe.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am going through the new fused-together version of the novel at a pretty nice clip, rewriting scenes as necessary. I should be rewriting the whole thing, but some of the old scenes are just too good and I can’t bring myself to re-invent the wheel.

At the moment, I’m still stuck in the first act, but soon I will be officially in the second act and that’s when things probably will slow done considerably. There’s just too much to re-write.

But I’m overall pretty pleased with the new direction the novel is taking. And I’ve managed to cut the number of novels down from a proposed six to now a proposed four. And I did it by just adding a few hundred words here and there explaining something as different than what I first imagined.

The real world will be when I complete this draft and have to go through and bevel off all the edges by making everything consistent. Right now, it’s pretty easy to move things around because each scene is almost independent of all the other scenes.

But once I officially lock everything down, I’m going to have to give the novel a level of flow that it doesn’t have at the moment.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I got my haircut today and the person who cut my hair is someone I’ve in the past given a version of my thriller novel to. She gave me some feedback on what she read.

First, she said she didn’t finish it “because she didn’t have time.” But she did read about half of it, which makes me worry the novel may be too long. Yet you could also look at it as it just needs to be more engaging — she did read half of it, afterall.

The other issue she mentioned was my heroine having a “non Southside Virginia” name, ie: it’s Asian. I really like my heroine’s name, even though there are some contrived elements to her having it.

I guess I see her name as existential in its own way. Though, if an editor told me I absolutely had to change it, I guess I would.

I’m very pleased the young woman read at least half the novel. She also said that she didn’t think the novel’s spicy scenes were “smut,” which really made me feel good. I was kind of worried that’s how they would come across to her.

Anyway. I have a lot — A LOT — of rewriting to do.