Writing? No, No! Anything But That!

You know you want it. C'mon, just a taste. You won't get hooked. I guarantee it. Just sniff it a little. C'mon, it's safe to do. All your friends have done it. Why not you?

That's it. Just take that #92 Bright/20 lb piece of paper and hold it up to your nose. That clean chemical scent does something to you, don't it?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

What's that? You say you want more? But...but...but...well...okay. Here you go.

Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh.

Guess what my friend, I lied. You are, for all intents and purposes, hooked.

What? You say you're not hooked? That you can walk away from it and go back to being a normal non-self absorbed person?

Tell you what, if you can sit all the way through what I'm about to say without interrupting, then I will tell everyone that I was mistaken and you're not hooked. But if you do interrupt, you are hooked and there is nothing that you or anyone else can do about it.
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So, here I sit one month later, with the first draft of my synopsis for Line 21 and I'm having a heck of time trying to figure out how to trim the fat and reduce it from 10 pages to something more manageable. I found another article that was linked from QueryTracker and its a lot clearer than the one that I printed out back in August (also from QueryTracker), so hopefully by the time you read this, I can give an update in the comment section of the post.

This thing was a major pain in the ass to write to begin with and between writing it out by hand and typing out the rest of it on the computer, I was ready to tear out my hair with a pair of tweezers. However, I will say this about that: if they ask for an outline, I can write that in nothing flat. Bullet points I can do. Summarizing, I can't.

What's that? You say you have some pointers on how I could trim the fat? But you want me to post it first?

Are you mad? The damn thing is 10 pages long and even I wouldn't torture my readers with something that long. No sir, you'll just have to wait just like everyone else to find out what the book is about in greater detail.

shakes his head in disappointment

As for my other writing project that I put aside while I was doing multiple rounds of editing Line 21, that has hit a major league snag. About two weeks ago, I decided to apply the notes I'd written on the hard copy to the disk copy, so that when I finally decided to get back to it in earnest, it would be up to date. I figure that this was the very least I could do since I once again wrote myself into a small corner with the story. However, that isn't the major league snag I hit.

This is.

While I was transcribing my notes, I came across a very small paragraph of a internal explanation that one of the minor characters had thought, which basically stated what the intended plot of the story was to be. Problem is that's not what I originally envisioned the end result of the story to be.

The basic plot is this: a hybrid woman in exile from her home planet is told that the current ruler of the planet wants to possess her human husband and will do whatever it takes to acquire him. So I basically stayed within that plot line for about 67 pages, and expanding on it only when I felt it was necessary. Early on I decided to write it from two different points of view: the hybrid woman who is trying to hang onto her husband and the other hybrid who is trying to take him away.

But like I said, its that one small paragraph that is giving me grief. The more I think about it, the less I'm liking it. The less I like it, the more disinclined I am to continue writing the story. And thus, my current dilemma with the story.

sigh

I can see that my original statement about you still stands. You are indeed hooked and there is no escaping the fact that you are hooked. Oh sure, you can try to DENY that you're hooked, but really, can you say that denial with a straight face after just churning out a few thousand words while also spending a few hours editing a story until it screams for mercy?

I didn't think so.

Since your addiction has taken over your soul 100%, I might as well give your daily fix, which as you know from reading this blog, is in the form of a question.

"Have you ever experienced the problem that I've just expounded on with a story? And if so, how did you come to satisfactory resolution?"