the whys and what-nots

I am a writer, because writers write, and I do. I am not yet a published, look-they-paid-me, writer, but that's what this blog is all about. Well, I don't know if it's ABOUT that, but hopefully at some point somebody will pay me for being a writer, and this blog will document the journey.

The journey at the moment is rather interesting. I have/had a completed-ish middle-grade fantasy. Last September I started going to a writing class/workshop and got very favorable feedback. The instructor was very anxious for me to get my manuscript out, so when I had finished workshopping the first three chapters, he had me start working on a synopsis (which I cannot write) and a query letter (which I cannot write). There was great frustration in the class/my psyche (I actually gave myself a headache from banging my head on the table during class after yet another 'this is not a synopsis' moment). There is still frustration happening in my psyche, but the class has gotten better because I have gone back to workshopping my manuscript and have given up on the synopsis and the query letter for the moment.

It seems that the query letter (which I cannot write) is one of the all-time most important pieces of writing I can ever do in my whole life. The query letter has to be so succinct, so gripping, give the essence, the feeling, the voice and the over-all wonderfulness of my novel in one miraculous page. The synopsis has to do the same thing all over again in more than just one page, but far, far less than the pages of the novel. (The actual number of pages for a synopsis is still a mystery to me, leading to the problem of me being able to write one.) Since the query letter is the first thing an agent and/or editor will ever see of my writing ability and my book, it has to win them over immediately.

Right.

At this point let me say that I write novels because there are more words in them than there are in short stories. Quite frankly, my novel is really good. If it were possible for an agent/editor to read the whole thing in ten seconds, they would love it (if they were looking for a novel about siblings, dragons and magic, at least). I CAN do short, but I leave a lot of things out when I do, which, again, is why I wrote a novel (and not a query letter or synopsis). I still have not figured out how to write the cotton-pickin' query letter, which means that I have not sent anything out to any agents or editors yet, but other things came along to distract me from query letters for the moment.

For Valentine's Day my lovely husband upgraded my computer, which had been giving me fits for months and months. In the process of saving all of my writing in My Documents folder, my manuscript did not get saved, becuase, apparently, when I saved the document which was my manuscript, I did not save it in My Documents. Yes, I have issues with computers. More to the point, I have issues that I didn't know I had. From now on I will be making sure that all of my documents are in My Documents.

All was not lost, however, as one of my annoying computer habits is saving different versions of things in different ways. I had originally finished this story a few years ago. After putting it on the shelf for a while, I sent it out to Stacy Whitman, who at the time was at Mirrorstone. She sent me a very nice rejection with some very helpful suggestions, which caused me to make some changes to the story. Those changes, along with editing from the class I've been going to, were in the document that didn't make it through the computer upgrade. I did still have the original document from years ago, and print outs of (most of) the workshopping done in class.

That's where I am. I need to add the new beginning to the old story, plus make the changes suggested in workshopping, along with any other bright ideas that come to me along the way. It is frustrating, and sometimes tedious, but actually quite enjoyable.

Last weekend I went to Life, the Universe, and Everything, the BYU science fiction and fantasy symposium. I've been going for years (nearly two decades), with the thought always in the back of my mind that someday I would be one of the authors sitting up on a panel. This year was no different in that respect, but the daydream seemed a little closer to reality than it has been in the past. Stacy Whitman now lives here in Utah and is giving a seminar this month for YA fantasy writers. I am hoping to go. The instructor of my writing class has put together a writers' conference for next month that I am excited to go to. I found out about, and signed up for, Dave Farland's Kick in the Pants. James Dashner is doing an author's visit at my kids' school on Tuesday. I'm going to go just to see what he does.

All of these things surrounding me with writing. Hopefully it won't be too long before I'm doing an author's visit myself.