A Little More Stressful Than I Thought

One would think that writing a story would be the hard part of the writing equation, but its not.  For me, writing the story was the easy part, it was the query letter and synopsis that frustrated the hell out of me. 

When you submit a story to a publisher, they require a query letter and a synopsis.  A query letter is the cover letter for your submission.  Your person info, story descriptions, and plus a simple break down of your story.  The query letter isn't as bad as the synopsis but still stressful.  A query letter is only suppose to be one page long, so in this case short and sweet is what they are looking for.

The synopsis, oh how I hate you.  A synopsis is a break down of all your hard work into roughly three to four pages.  Sometimes even less if required by publisher.  Imagine you just wrote a twenty-five thousand word story and now you have to break it all down to the bare bones.  It can be a little frustrating.  I read that when you write a synopsis act as if your explaining it to a six year old.  The trick is to write a short and to the point synopsis and still make it entertaining to an editor.  Editors are busy people and don't have a lot of time to spend on long drawn out synopsises.

Me being me, I thought about it to much.  I couldn't decide what to leave out of the synopsis.  Its your work and you want them to see it all.  So with my first submission I wrote that darn synopsis over and over a lot.  Finally I was happy with it.  Stressful!!

I'm still learning as I go and still have a lot to learn, but I'm committed to my writing.  Therefore I don't have it in me to give up.

That Went Over Well

The short story I wrote got posted to the Long and Short of It website today, I was really excited.  I had some shocked family and friends, but they were all real supportive.  My choice of topic to write about is a little hard for some to understand, but at least I didn't get any hate mail, or at least not yet.

For me, getting a short story posted on that website was a pretty big deal.  It said not just my husband and sister liked it.  Now granted I don't think The Luck of the Irish is the best thing I've ever read, but when writing a story with a word limit you cant really develop the characters the way you want to.  That being said for my first writing project to be put on a website for others to read was a big deal to me.  It gives me hope.

Right now I'm working on a longer story that I would classify as a sweet and funny love story.  I'm big fan of the contemporary genre, so I write more towards that angle.  I'm actually working on three writing projects right now.  The question is still there will I ever get published?  I don't know, I hope, but even if i don't writing is a good outlet for me. 

Trying My Hand at Writing

My name is Angie and this is me on my quest to become a writer.  I loved to read and one day I woke up and realized I wanted to write.  I always wanted to but never had the courage to try.  I'm sure everyone has the same doubts and fears at one time or another.  For me it was can I tell a good story?  Will people like what I write?  Can I stand the pressure of not getting published?  This is all the crap that went through my mind.

I have always been an avid reader but in the last four years it has become my life.  I actually have books all over my house and when my husband downloaded a amazon kindle to my laptop I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  So to say the least reading for me is an obsession.

In January I was on the Internet and came across a website that would allow people to apply to review books.  Sounded good to me, read for free and then review the book.  I thought I can do this.  So I have every since about the middle of January.  At first I was nervous because here I was reading some of my favorite authors and then I had to write a review for them.  Talk about pressure.  But now I have really come to enjoy it.  The ladies over at the Long and the Short of It are awesome, they are helpful and give you suggestion on how to make your reviews better.  I love it.  The more I got comfortable with doing the reviews I saw that on the Long and  the Short of It you can submit short stories.  I started thinking this could be a real good learning lesson for me.  So that night I came up with a St. Patrick's Day themed story and the next day I put my thoughts into words and wrote The Luck of the Irish.  I sent into the Long and the Short of It and they are going to publish it on St. Patrick's Day in the there Thursday free  read section.  To say I was excited was an understatement.

My choice of writing is a little hard for my husband to grasp.  I like to write about relationships involving two men.  To me its intriguing.  My whole life I read traditional romances between a man and a woman, so when I stumbled across romance books involving men its like a door open up in my mind.  I just like the dynamics that involve gay men relationships.  I cant explain it but to me its beautiful. 

I hope one day my writings do get publish but it they don't at least I can say I tried that's all any of us can say.  But I do like to write and talk, so this blog should be something fun for me to do.