Be The Power
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
My life is on the cusp of changing dramatically. To the point that the context of my ability to work on this novel may change rather significantly. So, I need to buckle down and get to it.
I feel like I have magic in a bottle with this novel. It’s really good. Of course, the issue of how good my native writing ability is something about. The premise can be as great as I want it to be, but if my writing just plain old sucks, then…lulz?
Anyway.
Wish me luck.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
According to my AI friends, wink, the first act of this scifi dramedy I’m working on is good to go. I just have to fill in some holes currently occupied by scene summaries and I can move into the second act.
Yet, I have to admit that I’m a little nervous that all of this is moot because of innate ageism in the publishing business. I’m older than Stieg Larsson was when he got published (and promptly died) and from what I can tell, the circumstances surrounding him getting published were somewhat unique.
But, at the same time, no one ever go anywhere in this world without taking a risk, as my dad used to say. So, I’m going to continue to work on this novel, hoping I can query early next year while I’m still in my “early” 50s.
Of course, because of the nature of publishing post-production even if I stick the landing I could definitely be closer to my *late* 50s by the time this novel hits bookshelves. And that’s if I stick the landing. If I don’t stick the landing and linger in querying hell then, well, you know.
I may never get published. Or if I do, I’ll definitely be too old to enjoy the rewards that may come with it. I already know that, baring anti-aging technology associated with the Singularity being developed, I’m just not going to run around New York City banging 24 year old women. Grin.
That is just never going to happen. And, really, it’s extremely doubtful I will make any money of note from this novel, even if everything goes according to plan. But, you, know, this novel, if nothing else, gives me hope.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
There are times — like these –when feel pretty insecure about my age and my looming querying of this scifi dramedy novel I’ve been working on. While I’m still in my early 50s, that’s way older than most people when they try to sell their first novel.
I’ve wasted so much of my life brooding over a failed magazine for expats in Seoul. And now I have to live with the consequences. There’s just no going back, I’m afraid.
I have to make do with where I am in life.
My only hope, I suppose, is the technological Singularity happens and instead of being mid-middle aged I will be a spring chicken as we all get to live to be 500 or whatever.
But I have my doubts.
And my age is just one of numerous other headwinds I face when querying. I’m something of a conspicuous kook. Enough of one to potentially scare off your typical liberal white woman literary agent.
And there’s the issue of my native, innate writing ability. I could just suck. And there is the lingering problem of political instability in the United States. It could be that, lulz, a civil war will break out and I won’t be able to survive, much less successfully query a novel.
Only time will tell, I suppose.
I’ve wrapped the first act of my sci-fi dramedy’s second draft. The milestone feels significant enough to warrant stepping back before plunging into Act Two’s deeper complications.
My plan is straightforward: read through the complete outline, then review what I’ve actually written. This should give me the perspective I need to tackle the rest of the novel with clarity rather than momentum alone.
I’m also considering character studies for the major players. It’s foundational work that often gets skipped in favor of forward motion, but might be exactly what this story needs.
The pause brings up familiar anxieties about craft. I can construct a solid narrative, but there’s a persistent sense that I’m missing something—some technique or insight that separates competent storytelling from compelling work. It’s the kind of self-doubt that either paralyzes or motivates, depending on how you channel it.
I’ll use these few days for broader reading too. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a project is step away from it entirely and let different voices and perspectives shake up your creative approach.
The timeline is loose but intentional: back to full-time writing by late September, possibly early October if the reflection period proves more valuable than expected. The key is recognizing when the pause has served its purpose rather than letting it drift into procrastination.
Sometimes the work requires working. Sometimes it requires not working. Learning to distinguish between the two might be more important than any particular writing technique.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I don’t know what to tell you. Not only am I demonstrably bonkers, I’m old and I don’t handle stress well. So, here I am, contemplating the prospect of querying this scifi dramedy novel I’m hard at work on.
I am going to go into the querying process totally blind. I am going to try to read as many books as I can, but, lulz, that isn’t really going to prepare me for the real thing.
The whole point of working on a novel all these years has been to see how far I could get in the process before it became clear I just wasn’t good enough to get published traditionally.
Looking back at how I got into this specific situation of being, for all intents and purposes, too fucking old to do any of this and one thing is clear — I think I would have wrapped up a novel worthy of querying had I had a wife or girlfriend in my life.
A wife or girlfriend not only might have been a “reader,” she might have also kind of told me “publish or parish.” As it was, I just kind of drifting year after year towards my goal. Then, I actually finished a thriller novel, only to real it just was not good enough to query.
But now, with the rise of AI, I think, no I KNOW, that this novel is going to be good enough to query. And, yet, there are some pretty significant headwinds. I’m old. I’m bonkers. And I can’t promise you that everything I’ve done online will pass the “smell test” of your typical liberal white woman who probably makes up the vast majority of your literary agents.
And, yet, this novel is not nearly as “spicy” as my previous attempt to write a good enough to query. Although, of course, it is kind of white, which is something I worked so hard to prevent with my previous efforts at a novel.
It’s kind of ironic.
Anyway. Wish me luck, I guess.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I continue to zoom through the outline for the first act of the second draft of this scifi dramedy I’ve been working on. The novel itself is pretty good. At least in my opinion.
As I keep saying, I’m something of an “AI first” novelist in the sense that I use AI to help me with development. I’m doing everything in my power to not use AI to actually write anything, especially now that I’m in the second draft.
I’m so paranoid about people thinking AI has written *any* of this novel that I may give the novel a final once over before I turn it over to Beta Readers to make sure that there is absolutely no reason to believe that I didn’t write everything.
I will admit that I use AI to help me with scene summaries. But that’s it. I kind of learned my lesson with the first draft. It was too easy to just defer to AI to actually write the narrative, given that the first draft was intended to be a “vomit draft” that no one but me would see.
But the second draft is different. I intend to actually show other people it once I finish it. And the last thing I need is people dismissing me as “one of those people” who is too lazy to do the hard work of actually writing the fucking novel.
Anyway, like I said, I’m really pleased with how things are going with the novel overall. I hope to enter the second act of the novel pretty soon. Maybe by the end of the week, early next week?
Maybe. It all depends on my mind. I can be a moody motherfucker when it comes to actually sitting down and doing the work of writing.
The strange irony of this novel—at least right now—is just how white it is. After years of laboring over a thriller where I bent over backwards to make the cast as inclusive as possible, somehow I’ve landed here.
I keep turning it over in my head, asking myself if there’s a character I could reimagine as non-white. But the nature of the story itself makes that a minefield. It’s not that I don’t want to go there; it’s that the themes I’m playing with are already volatile. If I layered race onto them, that might overwhelm everything else. Instead of engaging with the questions I want readers to wrestle with, the conversation could easily veer into a very different debate.
So I’m in this odd place: tackling heavy issues with a lighthearted touch, but deliberately leaving race out of it—not because it’s unimportant, but because it would dominate in ways that could drown out the other signals I’m trying to send. Is that the perfect solution? Probably not. But for now, it’s the one I can live with.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
In a move that I *hope* Emily Ratajkowski won’t think is creepy, I’m using her as my muse and pretty much basing the female romantic lead of this novel on her. She’s long been a celebrity crush of my mine and as I was developing this novel, I realized I knew enough about her details of her life that I could scramble things around a little bit and use her as the basis of my female romantic lead.
Emrata
After a bit of spinning in place the last few days, things are again beginning to move forward at a nice little clip.
My dream is that this novel will evoke the same vibe as The Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind meets, say, Ex Machina with a dabble of Annie Hall. I hope. That’s the dream.
I still seem to be on course to wrapping this baby up by the end of the year. Maybe. It’s possible. Not probable. If I do, however, then I can use the first part of 2026 to sort of sort things out with beta readers and such.
As I’ve said before, if I was 25 years younger, I would be in LA right now, writing this thing as a screenplay. I love movies and as an adult, I’ve found that watching movies has inspired me more than any novels I’ve read.
I kind of hate that about myself. I used to read fiction like crazy when I was a kid, but something happened once I got older. And I know they say if you have time to write you have time to read.
It’s just…a real struggle.
But, if I was to compare the vibe of this novel, it would be with The Martian or Project Hail Mary. Those are two really influential novels for me.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Things are going quite well with this scifi dramedy novel I’m working on. I’m zooming through the outline for the second draft I’ve written at quite a nice clip. Today, however, I have also been a little moody.
I’ve got a fair amount of writing done, but I should do a lot more before the day’s over and I’m not so sure I want to. I just want to stare out into space and daydream.
And, yet, I also know that this…unique moment in my life is probably going to wrap up pretty soon and I need to squeeze every moment of writing out of it.
Ideally, I will finish the second draft of the novel no later than…maybe the end of the year? Being “AI First” is really speeding the process up because I often will ask the AI insecure questions that in the past would have led me to go on a creative wild goose chase that would have tired me out and wasted a lot of time.
If I do finish this novel’s second draft by the end of the year, that would put me in a position to query it sometime in the spring. I just want this thing to be good enough to query.
That’s all I want.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m breezing through the first act of the second draft of this scifi dramedy I’ve been working on. It continues to breathe some. The detail of scenes get changed and moved around a little bit.
But, in general, things are moving at a nice little clip.
I continue to worry that my life is going to collapse and either I’ll have to pause writing or the context all of this effort will be so different as to make me not nearly as happy with it as I am now.
And I know I’m not getting any younger. Because of how post-production works, even if I sell this dang thing, I could be in my late 50s before it actually hits bookstores. And that doesn’t even begin to address how the fucking Singularity might happen between now and then, making all of this very, very moot.
Anyway.
The biggest problem I have now is I’m just moody. I often find myself wanting to write, but not really feeling it. But, then, to make up for it, I will have the spurts of writing where I get a lot of scenes done in one big burst of energy.
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