Stuffing an Elephant into a Bird Cage or How to Cram an Entire Novel into a Synopsis and Not Go Crazy

A few weeks ago I chatted with my agent on the phone for nearly an hour. It was a good talk. She had attended the big book fairs during the spring and it was good to finally catch up with her. I was thrilled to find out she is currently reading The Tale of the Vampire Bride. We discussed the book and its sequel at length. She feels strongly that this is my next book that we should pitch and I agree. I especially enjoyed it when she laid out what she felt were the strong points of the character, plot and the narrative. It validated what I already felt about this particular book.

"Is there a second book?" she asked.

I told her there was a second and possibly up to three more after that.

Then she said the words I feared, "Send me a synopsis for the second book."

EEK!

"Okay," I said, my mind whirling. "Uh...but I don't know how it ends."

"Write what you know," she answered.

Crap!

Happily, the next day I had a "Matrix" moment and it was as if my entire novel was downloaded into my brain in a second. I suddenly had all of it, beginning to end. But I still had no idea how to shove that entire story into a synopsis.

I put off the synopsis for nearly a week as I cruised the Internet for advice on how to write one. I have failed utterly in writing a synopsis before. I just couldn't imagine successfully writing one this time. In fact, this task seemed more daunting than even writing a book. It felt like I had been asked to stuff an elephant into a small birdcage. How the heck was I going to compress an entire book into ten pages or less?

Finally, I hit on the blog of Karen Harbaugh. Part of the way down the page (as you scroll) is a section called "Karen Harbaugh's Index Card Method of Writing Synopses." Reading over the post, it utterly made sense to me. I broke out my hot pink index cards and a purple sharpie and started scribbling.

After two days of furious typing, I had my synopsis. I didn't even fill the cards out all the way before I knew exactly what I wanted to write. I sent it off to my test readers, tweaked some things per their suggestion (adding time frame, explaining a plot point a bit better) and sent it off my agent.

What did I hear back? She liked it! She thought it had some really great stuff in it. Yay!!

So now I'm working on the next synopsis I owe her. I'm using the exact same method, but also utilizing yWriter as well this time. I'm writing a summary for each chapter in yWriter in the chapter tab. When I'm done, I'll just export the synopsis using these chapter summaries (I love yWriter) and revise from there.

Have I conquered the Synopsis Monster? Not yet, but I have a better handle on what I'm doing now.

I Have Zombie Brain!!!

The last few weeks have been a bit crazy.

First, there was the whole drama of getting As The World Dies: Fighting to Survive available for purchase.

Then Spring Break arrived and we had my nephew visiting for most of it.

And finally, this week just sucked. If I was hard pressed to explain why it sucked, I probably couldn't come up with a very good explanation. It just seemed really hard to get through. Anyone watching my Twitter knows I was pretty grumpy.

This weekend I hope to get a lot of Siege tucked away and work on a few other writing projects. We'll see how it all flows.

Sales this month have been through the roof, so thank you for your support! I will probably be commissioning the new artwork for Siege in April (since I can pay for it) and see where we are at by the end of April. I'll keep you posted as to when we anticipate As The World Dies: Siege going on sale.

Possible Delay in Publication

There is a "small" formatting error in the proof copy of As The World Dies: Fighting to Survive. Half the people in my office said it wouldn't bother them, half said it would bug them if it were THEIR book.

It bugs me.

A lot.

I need to talk to my husband and a friend in the publishing world.

Basically, I want to put out the BEST version of this book possible.

UGH!!! I Hate It When Things Go Wrong

As The World Dies: The First Days was part of some weird glitch yesterday that resulted in books being listed as Unavailable for sale even though they really were. This did not just affect my novel, but the novels of quite a few other Independent Authors. I estimate As The World Dies: The First Days was not for sale up to 18 hours. I have to admit being a bit gutted over the whole fiasco.

Sales were really good all last week and yesterday was proving to be the best day of all. Then abruptly sales just stopped. Usually the last book of the day sells sometime in the late evening. This was mid-day. So I checked my listing on Amazon.com and found it was not available. I freaked. Panicked. Fired off an email to tech support. Then calmed down enough to start looking at some of the community boards I'm part of. I found out I was part of a big fuck-up going on with Amazon.com.

So, As The World Dies: The First Days fell in its sales rank and this has altered how it comes up in the Amazon.com search. *sighs* It's like having my kid being punished for something she didn't do! I want to go slug someone at Amazon and yell at them for being mean to her. Of course, my more sensible side is telling me to chill out and not worry about it.

Meanwhile, the Kindle sales are way up and doing great. I'm not going to complain there.
It's latest stats look like this:

Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

#31 in	Kindle Store > Kindle Books > Fiction > Action & Adventure
#49 in	Kindle Store > Kindle Books > Fiction > Horror

I think what got me so crazed about the mess up with Amazon.com is that with this uncertain economy, I would like to hope I could fall back on my book sales for a little financial support if anything were to happen at my job. Not that I think I'm going anywhere, but the consistency of sales was rather reassuring.

Right now I haven't sold a paperback book in 24 hours. It is unnerving. At least my Kindle sales are there to keep me calmer.

Gawd, I'm such a piece of work.

Anyway, enough grousing. I got edits to work on. I got a book to get out.

< insert scream here >

The new chapter for the Lenore/Ken story vanished! UGH! I don't know where it went or what I did to it, but its gone. I was not feeling well on Sunday when I was working on it and I must have done something really stupid before closing out the program.

*headdesk*

I have to restart.

*sigh*

Synopsis Are Evil

I thought writing a novel from beginning to end was hard. Try condensing all that hard work into a two page synopsis that makes sense. Not only make sense, but inspire the person reading it at a publishing house to want to read it. I'm at one and a half pages and feeling frustrated. I deliberately gave up writing the synposis until the book's completion was three months behind me. But its time to get this show on the road so I can watch the rejection notices roll in. Of course, it would be nice if I didn't get any of those at all, but I'm not going to fool myself.

It's all about timing and finding just the write person who believes in what you have written. When I was younger I used to fear rejection, took it as a personal reflection on my very soul, but not anymore.

Corey aka the fiance read over the synopsis and was frustrated by it. He hates that I have to condense all my hard work into two pages. He feels it unfair. I guess he's seen me work so hard at this story it bugs him that some editor won't just sit down and read it and love it.

Anyway, I'm listening to the soundtrack to "The Fountain" one of my fav movies and trying to make this work for me.

Maybe I should pop open a bottle of wine. Hrmmmm....

Anyway, I need to finish this up and buy the new Writer's Market this week. The beginning of Spring seems like a good time to try and get my first novel published.

And for you As The World Dies fans, just a heads up that already I see some differences forming in the plotline. More Jenni, for your fans of her, and some things made a bit clearer.

Enough putting off this synposis trial. Back to work...