TQ

Today I had the luxury of writing a vast majority of the day. What a pleasure. I decided to dedicate Thursdays as Query day. (TQ) Because... how the hell can you get published and paid to write if you don't submit to agents.

Yeah I tell people all the time I'm happy with just getting the damn thing, the voices of characters, scenes out of my head. But in my secret little spot where I hide dreams and desires I would loveeeeeeeeeeeee to be paid to write all day about them.

So today I researched agents and found three and all required a synopsis of 1-2 pages. Well, what in the sam hill is that? Now a query letter is not enough? So I got on that lovely thing called the internet and found some fabulous advice and outlines and started in on it. I'm pretty damn positive that all of life's answers and solutions can be found on the web with a big of digging.

I was sidetracked by Miss Snarky's blog (now defunct). Years ago she offered to let aspiring authors send her their synopsis and then she critiqued them, she was a successful literary agent at one point and new her stuff. They were hysterical and out of the 100 I read, only two I found intriguing and well written enough to understand what in the hell was going on for their book idea. Even funnier were her comments in red. (WTF? Alien Alert! were some of my favorites.)

Anyway... I learned quite a bit and a bunch of acronyms as well and got started on my own MS-JOT for Curador. By far the best I found was for my official chosen genre contemporary fiction. I have posted some of it below.  (This is very condensed and hacked for my own use.)

Publishers and agents require a synopsis of your novel before you submit the MS (that’s 'manuscript' – might as well learn the jargon now). The synopsis is your most powerful, in fact your only, selling tool. Your cover letter is less important, and I'll cover it in a future article, but what you are selling is your novel, and your novel's representative is your synopsis.

Before I get started, I want to quote a wise editor I know, who said that, to the author, writing the synposis was writing the story's obituary. The story is done, the characters are gone from you. It is over, and now you are summarising them in what you hope is an honest and compelling way. 

Stage one: go through your MS and jot down what happens in each scene. A usual novel has between 60 and 80 scenes, grouped into chapters. Ignore the chapters. 


Stage two is the condensation of your jottings into a summary.  

Stage Three is the paring down.

 
Stage Four: the enrichment. This is where you very gently add a touch of flavour, a touch of story-telling, into that pared-down skeleton. Not too much: you don’t want to inflate the word-count, but just enough to give the agent or publisher a sense that you can write. Not a sense of how the story is written, its tone of voice, but a sense of your own skills  

The synopsis should mirror the genre of the story. If it is a limpid romance, it should flow like a romance, delivering its unfolding love story in a charming, beguiling way. For a mystery mystery, it must become more tense and even thrilling as it goes. While still summarising and giving the action with a few tiny 'colour' touches, you can make it exciting. Yes, you give away the ending, because you must tell all the action, but you can do so in a way that the agent or publisher finishes it saying, 'Wow!'

Stage Five. Yes, you have a bit more work to do. This is your sense-check, your last read-through of the synopsis. You must judge whether you think it is an accurate and honest representation of your novel’s action, whether it delivers an emotional impact as well, and whether it is, in and of itself, a good read. As this is the only reading experience the agent or publisher will have of you, it has to be a good one. If your synopsis tells a good story, if it IS a good story, then they will trust that the novel itself will be a good story, too.

Afternote: don't forget to put your name, contact details, and word-count in the top right-hand corner of your synopsis. This makes it safe to detach and hand around, and you want that to happen in a literary agency or publishing house. 

Copyright Caro Clarke

 

Yesterday

I was cleaning my cluttered dusty office yesterday and came across a copy of a book I wrote titled "American Babes in Ireland." It is a big thick chunk of writing. I forgot that I had printed it you know. I sat down on the floor and stared into the first couple of pages, reading it and it made me smile. It wasn't actually to bad. It is first person and a story of me and my sister in Ireland (first trip). I got up from the floor again and went to my laptop and checked to see if I had a copy of it on file. I did, so I tossed that whole printed copy into the recycle bin.

I was surprised though by the thought that wow I have actually started writing many books. This one is one of the firsts though, a first that got really far. Why does this surprise me?

...Because you forget all the failed attempts when you were trying to find your voice.
 
I have copies and snippet of books or scenes I have wrote down  that I have kept...from back to my youth (Separate from my journals). Sometimes I come across them and I'm embarrassed but yesterday in the summer rain I thought, wow.. besides wanting to be an architect all my life.. I sure wrote a lot my entire life... maybe I really did always want to be a writer, i just didn't know it.

This morning I'm filled with regret about it throwing it away and dig it back out of the paper bag and the summer rain is still here from yesterday with rolling thunder in the back ground and all I want to do with this day is curl up in warm clothes, a cup of tea at my side and be someplace else in my head creating and writing. I have left all the windows open at Nick's request. That is one of the perks of summer rain, you can listen to the entire rain symphony. The rain increases in increments from small pings on a tin roof to a roaring, pouring waterworks. I love it, the rain is filling me with joy and excitement. I kind of want to be in Ireland. Tears of God is set in Ireland and calling me to work on it.

I walk into my office and it is clean and organized and soothing. I'm in a place where I can do all things. Does that make sense? I'm comfortable, happy and secure and able to balance love, work, writing and painting. I'm doing it all when I need too at just the right moments and I'm oozing with creativity. Whipped out two new paintings last week and two more the week before and have taken a new series of pictures for future paintings. I write when I'm not working or painting. I still manage to make a good meal and work in the garden. I have a sexy man in my life that I adore that loves all these traits. He may tease me, but I know when I walk into a room filled with people he will have told them I was writing, cooking or painting and he likes that about me.

Sometimes, it feels like my writing is my oldest, dearest friend.  It’s a constant companion, more true than many lovers, never judgmental, always waiting.  Me and the page, always in relationship.   If I nourish that relationship by giving it time and free moments and don’t always drive it really hard trying to make something happen out there in the world, it is a deeply satisfying pursuit. ~ Barbara O'Neal

Summer Rain

Delicate petals hit softly with a light spatter of rain. Their soft scents released into the sultry air mixing with cut grass and soil to make a perfume that you can only get in a summer rain. One of my all time favorite scents.

Framing the mind

After an incredible run of three and a half years, I'm soon to be changing from nights to mornings. It is more than safe to say I'm not a morning person. But I'm excited about this change. That is what I love about Amazon it is always changing and changing to mornings will make big changes in my life.


Creativity and time to embrace it, is something that I cannot live without. For the last year I have struggled to make the time to be creative daily. I believe I have got set in a rut with the same consistent schedule and having worked the same schedule for nearly two years and nights for over three. A change is well over due.

I will have the freedom of evenings. I hope to embrace them and not sit on my ass watching television. I hope to cook, write and paint more. I hope to attend evening local events with authors, musicians and travel logs. I have joined a writers group and very thrilled to have them receptive to my schedule changes.

I will still have time in my morning to work out and have tea with the girls. Which is where I must walk off to at this moment. Heading out into the summer sun and wind blown alleys to have an iced tea, pick up my mail and converse with my compadres.

Independence Day Weekend

                                                

Lovely was the time.

Treaure Chest

My backyard is a graveyard to local history. Every morning that the yard is not covered in snow I walk through it. Meandering on the new trails that we have been building in it. What I find shocking is the amount of glass that grows and seemingly appears where it was not before. I can pick up all sizes and colors of glass one day. The next come out to find it replaced by different breeds.

It's somewhat like finding glass at a beach. It's pretty sometimes.  I save the good pieces and have been incorporating them into my rock steps.

This past weekend we were lucky enough to have a neighbor bring a petite backhoe over and pull out some stumps that were a nuisance. The starpad is gone and this side of the yard is filled with new debris that has been unearthed. Yesterday while going through the dirt I found one of those weights that is a pulley for old wooden windows.

Most of the stuff is garbage and is tossed, but once in a while a treasure is found. The shit grows out there overnight. The other day I was digging and unearthed a big metal bracket. How after month after month of digging in the same place did it get there?

One of our favorite finds, the coal cart tag. A brass tag numbered 689 and also stamped with NWI (Northwestern Improvement Company). The bigwig company back in the old mining days.