I have to write a synopsis. Actually, I have to write two. There is the chapter breakdown and then there is the shorter summary synopsis.
The reason for this is that a kind friend in America said he might wave them in the way of a literary agent or two over there and see if they bite.

I started it yesterday and went through each chapter and tried to write down the salient points. It sounded flat and lukewarm.

Now, I should have started several weeks ago when he first made the offer but my first attempt was ripped apart so badly (by somebody else) I can't say I prioritised it. Which is stupid. What a wuss.
So I had it hanging over me and thought I should get started. By Chapter Four of insipid prose I was checking ICanHasCheezeburger every five minutes. Ooh! A new kitteh!
Then I checked the weather, the latest news (Gail Trimble's team were disqualified? No!) and the various brands of white tea sold at Sainsburys.
All very interesting stuff.

It is far harder to write a good synopsis than a novel. This is your opportunity to really 'sell' your book and without it your shining novel will never reach anyone. But I can't sell!

And then there is the fear that this is an opportunity I could completely stuff up!
American literary agents want things presented a little diferently than British aagents, who mostly want a one-page synopsis described as a 'book jacket blurb with an ending'. In face, quite a few of these do actually end up as the book jacket.
But Americans want a full chapter breakdown as well as the snappier bit, which apparently can't sound anything like a book jacket blurb with an ending. It has to fully describe the book and the action. I suppose one reason for the difference is that British agents (all sounds a bit 007) also ask for the first three chapters usually whereas the Americans don't let you get that far unless they've been hooked by the synopsis.

And my half-finished synopsis currently isn't good enough to use as toilet paper.

Then this morning I remembered the online writers' community I joined a few months ago, WriteWords. You do have to pay to join but at least there are some friendly souls there who will quite happily give you feedback. It's a good place to start. If they rip my synopsis to shreds then I can have a second chance, something that certainly won't happen if a literary agent uses it to line the kitty litter box.

So maybe I should stop chatting and get on with the f@+$ing thing?

Read Full Post

Right, I’m trying to be a proper author, so I’ve put up an extract of Kill-Grief on my website. I’m also doing a couple of later scenes as sound files, and will add those soon if I can record them without sounding like I’m 12 years old and without the dog bursting in and shaking her ears in the middle of it ...

Read Full Post

The cover proofs for my novel arrived yesterday. I stuck one onto a copy of Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now (hoping that some of the bestsellerliness would rub off, perhaps, but mainly because the spine width was about right...sorry, Meg Rosoff, I shall restore your book to it's full glory when I've had my fun)...

Read Full Post

Well, my 500th post here slipped by without me noticing and, as a result, with nothing to mark it, which is kind of a shame. 500 posts, eh? Two and a half years. Yikes. Where did that go - and how much has happened in that time? Lots and lots.


***


I was really, really pleased to hear that three of the members in my writing group have had poems accepted by W Terry Fox and his editorial team for the Homeage to Cheshire anthology; so huge congrats to Jenny, Betty and Sandy - thoroughly deserved.

Read Full Post

My children , ages 12 and 14, wrote a song the other day. It was a great song, very catchy, and I told them so. What I didn’t have the heart to tell them was that it was , more or less, The Passenger, by Iggy Pop. Yes, different lyrics, slightly different melody, but it was unintentional plagiarism, possibly caused by unintentionally listening to an Iggy Pop Greatest Hits CD, my current washing the dishes music.

This innocent tune pinching got me into a rather jaded, ageing rock chick frame of mind: all the great pop songs have already been written, that my budding brother- sister act would really have nothing to add to rock’s rich tapestry except some rehashed perfect Pop, capital P, and they should hang up their guitar and keyboards and get into, I dunno, chartered accountancy.

Then I realised my two little leaves have not fallen so far from this old tree. I got to thinking that all the great and important books about the thing I want to write about-bereavement- have already been written, and that I should pack in my proposal.. Whatever I had to add, which at this over- read point, was nothing, would be surplus to requirements.



Read Full Post

Today I'm delving into a subject I briefly touched on in my first blog - the journalist writing fiction. It's easy to make the error of believing that a piece of fiction is simply a newspaper article lengthened. In reality the two are as different as zebras and leopards.

Read Full Post

This has been a bad month. 11,500 words. Way below my target.

My main excuse is my lap top, which keeps freezing up, making it impossible to write on the thing...

Read Full Post

Today I shaved. The beard is gone. The kids didn't want me to shave it off, but it's my face, after all, not theirs. If they want a beard, they can grow one themselves. That's the problem with kids these days. They expect everything to be done for them.

It was the soup at lunchtime that decided it. Too much got filtered out on the way to my mouth. Also, I hated the feeling of moisture on my moustache when I had a drink of water in the night. Somehow it was worse in the night. In the darkness. I could feel the water sitting their on my whiskers, tempting me to lap it. Like some animal licking its fur.

Read Full Post

I was on Strictly Writing the other day talking about how embarrassingly un-British is it to have to go out and plug my own book. But that’s tough – the alternative is to sit around and whinge that it’s someone else’s fault when it doesn’t sell, so I have to publicise it as much as possible and hope that if people don’t like it, they won’t find out until after they have paid money. That’s why I’m in two minds about whether to put an excerpt on my website.

Lots of author websites have a taster of the book, but I wonder whether or not it’s a good idea. For everyone who says “ooh, that sounds great, I’ll get me to Amazon right now,” there are probably ten who think “what a load of crap,” when they might otherwise have taken a punt on it.



Read Full Post

As writers, we naturally like to think of ourselves as imaginative people. People who can weave a story out of thin air, pull sparkling and arresting characters from the ether, create Machievellian twists and turns of plot with audacious creative flair. We follow the whims of fancy, allowing them to take us where they wish, until at the end of it, we have a story or a novel – hopefully original, possibly unique, but definitely MADE UP.

Well, unfortunately, our friends and family are unlikely to see it the same way. In some little corner of their minds, no matter how unacknowledged, they will be harbouring a conviction. Oh, you might tell them that your novel is based on nothing but your own imagination, but they know the truth. They know that, really, it’s all about you. It’s an autobiography, thinly disguised as fiction, and by reading it, they are going to discover all your deepest darkest secrets. Let the hunt commence!


Read Full Post