T-56 and counting

[truepenny]

Today: 1,017 words

YES. I SUCK.

In my defense, I also did the page-proofs for my story in So Fey and wrote 186 words of the world's crappiest synopsis.* Of Summerdown. Yes, the book I haven't finished yet. I blame the synopsis for leeching out my will to live like a big ol' psychic vampire.

I hate writing synopses. I swear, I know of no faster way to make myself feel stupider than to try to explain in plain English what one of my books is about. It gives me metaphysical hives.** (You'll observe this phenomenon if you ever ask me in person, So, what's your book about? You can practically hear the IQ points hitting the floor.)

Hence, today was all about the angst and woe and joyless procrastination and stuckness. Don't forget the stuckness. Tomorrow, I will be smarter. Tomorrow, I will not try to work on the synopsis until after I've made my quota. Plus the 600 words I didn't write today.

Excelsior.


---
*My publisher needs it. For publisher-things.

**Yes, I said metaphysical.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And I suppose you can't lie to the publisher. Because I advocate lying when people ask what your book is about. "The human condition," you can chirp blithely to some audiences (when really it is about rabbits), or, "How to make things explode really well before the invention of TNT," you can tell others, or, "Ninjas." "Ninjas" almost always works. How many people who ask you this question are going to check? The publisher, probably, but of the others, how many? And once they find there are no ninjas, how many will actually be disappointed?

[rustybitch.livejournal.com]

This is excellent advice.

[heresluck]

Well, I figure if I got through my job interviews without responding to all the "so tell us about your dissertation" prompts by cackling madly and saying "IT'S ABOUT BOOKS!!!", you can get through the synopsis.

But yeah, saving it until you've made the day's quota sounds like a good plan.

::supplies virtual apricot twists of support::

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Synopsis, query letters and outlines, the triad of evil. They suck my brain out through my ears, stomp on it, and run off laughing.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

The pygmy marmoset

frets on your behalf.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The pygmy marmoset is full of awesome!

Amen

[muneraven.livejournal.com]

Writing a synopsis is awful.

I think authors who write books with lots of internal or introverted action have a much harder time writing them, too. A synopsis is about WHAT HAPPENS and, sometimes, what happens is about feelings and wisdom and things that are much harder to summarize. I mean, it seems like the tool we call synopsis is weighted toward books with external action.

The synopsis is a tool of the patriarchy!

(Sorry...Wiscon gave me grad school flashbacks)

Anyway I don't like writing a synopsis either and they make me feel stupid too. But I think the fault lies with the form, not us. :-P

I hope I'm making sense...not enough coffee yet.

Thanks

[phoenix-alpha.livejournal.com]

Just doing my first synopsis for my first book.
You give me hope that it will...
...
...
get done. Yea that's the phrase I was looking for.

Synopsis=stupid

[(Anonymous)]

Don' fret so much hun'chil' (yes, I've been writing southern gothic agian; sue me). The fact is all synopsis/synopses/synopsises sound stupid. Because if you could tell the story in two sentences then you wouldn't have needed to write a book to tell it. An old (very old) editor of mine passed this advice along and it's gotten me over some of the ugly stuff. For your amusement, I present other great books and their synopisesses (as taken from a literary book and movie guide here by my desk):

How The West Was Won--Families go west

Taxi Driver--Cabbie unleashes rage

The High and The Mighty--Co-pilot tries to land crippled plane

Gone With the Wind--Southern Belle faces hardships during war

and one of my all-time favorites: Of Mice and Men--Two friends have adventured during dustbowl

Now ask yourself, does yours sound any dumber than that? Ah, if only the hands that feed us would figure out to just let us work without the interruptions. Make the copy-editors do the synops.

MKeaton

Re: Synopsis=stupid

[phoenix-alpha.livejournal.com]

Hmn... I like that.
Maybe... thanks.