WRITE FIGHT

Still working on that novel. Well, not even the novel, now I’m trying to write the necessary BS that comes with trying to sell a novel. Namely, the cover letter and synopsis.

This is critical. A good cover letter and synopsis are just as important as a good book, if you goal is to get published. The reason being that no matter how awesome your novel is, if your cover letter is shitty the agent/publisher is going to chuck it into the trash, unread. And the reason for that is that there’s a lot of wannabe writers (myself included) and all of them are sending submissions.

So you have to grab their attention right away, get them interested enough so they actually read the sample pages you’ve sent. And I think I’ve finally written a pretty decent cover letter.

But the synopsis has been kicking my ass.

It’s no easy task… my book is 74,000 words long. I need to express the entire plot in two double-spaced pages… about 600 words. And it needs to be exciting and engaging. When I first sat down to do it, I thought “Good Lord, how can I ever do that in two pages?”

But I did finally manage to bang out a synopsis, even if it was twice as long as it should be. Re-reading it just now, I see that it’s terrible… a lot of and then this happened, and then this happened, etc. It seemed insurmountable.

But then I came to my senses.

“What the fuck?” I thought to myself. “You do this shit EVERY FUCKING DAY!” And it’s true. As an advertising writer, I am forever being told to condense a three-page specifications sheet into a two line benefit statement. Or expresses the entire concept of a three-month multi-platform advertising campaign into a quick sound bite. I do this all the time, and I’m good at it. So what’s my problem now?

Truth is, it shouldn’t be a problem. And it’s not going to. I am going to bang this damn thing out, tonight if I can. That is, if I can stop blogging for a minute and get to work.

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