Tag: writing about writing

Sizing Up My Realistic Chances Of Being Traditionally Published

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are a number of reasons why, over and above the actual quality of my writing in the scifi dramedy I’m writing, that I won’t — ever — get traditionally published.

Tied for first place, I think, are me being a big old fucking kook that no one takes seriously or listens to and my age. I think both of those to metrics are going to be really tough to overcome.

I could write the fucking Bible, but I’m just too fucking old. I suspect publishers want a spry 30 year old, not some glum 50something. And, let’s not forget what a fucking weirdo most people think I am.

And it’s not like I can hide what a kook I am. Any liberal white woman literary agent that snoops as part of due diligence on me will soon realize I’m not only old, but I’m a loudmouth crank.

But I’m not going to get discouraged. While they’re life, there’s hope. And, as such, I am going to keep going, no matter what. Though, sometimes, I really do think I’m more likely to find a career in some post-Singularity world helping our ASI overlords than I am going to get published traditionally.

And, yet, we’ll see, won’t we?

AI Has Helped Me A Lot As An Aspiring Novelist

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about using AI to develop a novel is I, someone who is has no friends and no one likes, can actually have a credible “manuscript consultant.” That has been a real issue for me in the many years that I’ve spend working on various novels.

I was doing it in a vacuum, so I would make all these mistakes and waste all this time on tangents. But now, with the rise of AI, I actually have someone to bounce ideas off of.

Instead of writing many thousands of words that go nowhere, I can just ask an LLM a question or two and move forward.

I still don’t know how much of how slow it is for me to write because I’m doing something wrong and how much is just that’s the way I write a novel. They usually say give yourself about 2 years to develop, write and finish a novel. So, if I can wrap this scifi dramedy novel up by spring 2026, I will be way ahead of schedule.

Writing A Novel Can Be So Slow At Times

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I can be moody as fuck and as such I can go long stretches of time not really feeling like working on this scifi dramedy novel I’ve been working on for a few months now. But, then, at the same time, I will go a number of days where I sprint.

So, I guess, it all kind of evens out. Maybe?

It definitely looks like I’m going to maybe finish this up April-May 2026. If that happens, I will miss the spring querying season for various post-production reasons including having to see if I can find anyone to beta read.

And, of course, general editing issues.

But I have vowed to myself that I’m going to actually sit down and read some of the how-to-query books I have. That’s a Jan. 1st thing for me to do. I still have a few days to just drift through life, not really knowing what is going to happen next.

I need to focus, however. I need to really see if I can get this damn thing done sooner rather than later. I think –no, I know — that I can.

It is going to be really interesting and amusing to see if, when they do due diligence on me if all the liberal white women who — in my imagination — make up the literary agent class will be aghast at this blog’s content or not. In the past, any “serious” “normal” person who has offered to help me out with this novel who reads the blog invariably blanches and backs off.

But, who knows. Maybe if I write a good enough novel that won’t be the problem I fear it will be.

Writing A Novel Is Hard Work, Redux

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The key issue with my scifi dramedy novel I’ve been working on for the last few months is my hero is just too passive. So, it, on a structural basis, has repeatedly collapsed in on me and I’ve had to start again.

The most recent collapse happened when I started new chat windows for the two LLMs I’ve been using for my manuscript consultants. Both of them complained that my hero was too passive, so I girded my loins and started all over again.

I think — I think — that maybe THIS TIME I’ve figured things out. I think. I hope. I can’t keep rebooting this project. “The perfect is the enemy of the good” is what I keep telling myself.

At least I’ve gotten to the point where I feel comfortable thinking about querying. Even if I fail in a spectacular manner, at least I will have tried. At least I will have gotten to see how far I could get.

Deconstructing Marty Supreme

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I did not like the movie Marty Supreme. I think my dislike comes from how peripatetic the storytelling was. It was just event after event after event without any time for the beats to properly land.

This is different from a similar movie, One Battle After Another, which was far more of a slow burn. There were major beats, then a little bit of a breather and so forth.

Also, I really did not like the hero. I get that that was part of the point — that he was a snot nose kid making a lot of mistakes and the “hero’s journey” was him sort of spiraling out of control. But I just did not like or care about him.

Yes, he leaves a wake of interesting disasters behind him, but…so what? Why should I care?

I will admit that some of my annoyance with the movie comes from thinking it was going to be a rousing, crowd pleasing tale about ping pong. Sort of a “miracle on ice” only with ping-pong.

Instead, meh. Just meh.

Given how…low stakes…ping pong is, you’d think at least we would be given a likeable hero who, against all odds, won the big championship. I left before the very end, so….maybe in some sense he did? But from what I’ve read on Wikipedia, that does not, in any real sense, seem to be the case.

I just found the whole endeavor grating on my nerves. There was a good to great movie lurking somewhere in the plot of Marty Supreme, but too bad we got what we got instead.

The Logline For This Scifi Dramedy Novel I’m Working On

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I guess one possible logline for this novel I’m working on would be something like:

In the near future, a man is presented with an unusual proposal by a companion android so he can pay her expensive monthly subscription.

I think that’s a good one. I like it, at least. That’s been the central idea of the novel since it’s conception, it’s just the details have been futzed with about a zillian times.

Anyway, I really do need to hurry up and fish or cut bait. I can’t keep just spinning my wheels on this thing. And I honestly do think that I’m moving forward this time, it’s just I had to start from scratch to do it.

One issue I’m really pondering is how many major beats to have in the first act. Right now, I have two, but I keep thinking I should have a third. And, yet, I don’t want to overstuff the first act — I don’t want too much going on.

My hope is if I take things slow and steady and consistent that I can wrap this second draft of the novel up by maybe April 2026. What bothers me is because of post-production issues like editing and finding beta readers that I won’t be able to actually query until..gulp…around Sept. 1st.

But I have three books devoted to finding an agent now, so hopefully I won’t got into querying totally blind like I usually do with important things in my life.

Finally, I think I May Have Figured Out This Scifi Dramedy

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

After a lot of struggle, I may, at last, have figured out at least the beginning of this scifi dramedy I’ve been working on. It’s taken a lot longer — much longer — than I had hoped.

And everything could still collapse and I have to start all over again, but for the moment at least, I’m content with where things are going. I really need to focus on wrapping up the first act.

Usually when I’m working on a novel, the structural collapses happen between parts of the novel, so, say, in the transition between act one and act two. Ugh, that happens all the time.

The most recently collapse happened when I rebooted my chat windows with the AIs I’ve been using and they both told me the same thing: my hero was too passive.

So, instead of continuing my trek through the plot, I decided to just start all over again. It’s a lot of fun working with AI to finish this novel. It’s like I have, like, a friend or friends who actually care and stuff about the novel.

For too long, I’ve been working in a vacuum.

I Did Not Like Marty Supreme From A Storytelling Perspective

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now, I understand that the peripatetic nature of the plot of the movie Marty Supreme was kind of the point. And, yet, I just did not like the movie because there was all this stuff going on and each beat was not given enough time and space to breathe.

Contrast this with the much better One Battle After Another. Though the two movies are probably two sides of the same coin, I loved One Battle After Another while I fucking hated Marty Supreme.

The one thing that I will give Marty Supreme is relative to its storytelling it didn’t telegraph it’s structure. I was engaged enough that I didn’t think to myself, “Oh, so that’s the inciting incident,” or “Oh, so now we’ve entered the second act.”

So, if nothing else, it had that going for it.

Anyway. I don’t quite know why I found Marty Supreme so grating on my nerves. It just was really annoying and not at all what I had expected. It would have been a much better movie if it had at least attempted to be crowd pleasing instead of “subvert our expectations.”

Time To Take Querying This Scifi Dramedy Novel Seriously

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Because I’m a weirdo, I used my Christmas present to buy for the second time, the Writer’s Digest Guide to Literary Agents. I probably could have found the version I bought before, I was like, lulz.

So, today, probably, I’m going to get a new book of literary agents to look through. Now, I have not finished the novel yet. I haven’t even gotten to the point where I can give it to beta readers.

But I’m feeling pretty good about the state of the novel, nonetheless. I really need to just hurry up and finish the damn thing. It’s inevitable that someone else is going to realize that there is an audience for a scifi dramedy that doesn’t paint AI androids in a murderous light.

I’m sure there are at least a half-dozen, or more, screenwriters hard at work on a “Annie Hall meets Bladerunner” spec script. While that’s not exactly how I would describe my novel, it’s in a similar vein.

The high concept logline for my novel would probably be, “Her meets Annie Hall with a dabble of Blade Runner.” Something like that. I really want this novel to be as accessible as an Andy Weir novel.

The Martian and Project Hail Mary would be the “comps” of my novel that I will use with literary agents.

I have to accept that I’m a loudmouth crank and that might turn off a lot of the liberal white women who probably (in my imagination at least) make up the vast majority of literary agents. I’m far more anti-MAGA than liberal, but I even though my politics probably align with those of most literary agents, I have some sharp edges because I general have no idea what the “right thing” to do is.

So I zig when other people zag and that can turn people off.

It’s going to be really interesting watching literary agents do due diligence on me by looking at this blog. It will be interesting to see if they are aghast at what a weirdo I am or not.

But I’m ready to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as the saying goees.

I’m Really Worried About 2026

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a feeling that 2026 is going to be a very turbulent year for me one way or another. It’s going to be a year of transitions, no matter what. If I’m really lucky, the weird vibe I’m feeling about the coming year will be because I know in my heart that the novel I’m working on is good enough to successfully be queried.

If I’m not lucky, then, lulz, some pretty fucked up shit is going to happen to me on a personal level because of macro changes out of my control.

And, yet, I’ve really appreciated this surreal moment in my life where I got to be an artist and just sort of drifted through life.

But, as I alluded to, I think this era in my life is probably about to wrap up because of fucking Trump. And, what’s more, we do have the 2026 midterms coming up and there are no assurances that they will be free and fair. The States kind of exists in a luminal political state at the moment where we’re not quite a democracy but not quite a total authoritarian state.

I think the exact term is “anocracy.”

Anyway, wish me luck, guess. If all goes according to plan, I am going to spend a big portion of 2026 querying a scifi dramedy. And, who knows, maybe it will be sold, be a success, and a new, a lot more fun era in my life will begin.