There are many things I should have been doing this evening, one of which could have been making some money to help pay the bills this month, but just as I couldn't face that task this morning, I couldn't face it this evening, so I did something else that desperately needed doing... I wrote the first draft of Sarah's synopsis.

The full manuscript has been off to an agent for several months now, without a reply, so it's long past time to send it on to other people, but before I could do that I needed a synopsis.

I'd written a synopsis long ago, for the second draft of the book, but the beginning of the book changed so dramatically that I needed a new synopsis.

I've been putting off this task forever because I have only vague clues about what editors and agents are looking for in a synopsis.  I've asked fellow authors, and they've graciously answered me, but I've yet to be able to translate what they say into terms and actions that I understand.

But tonight I did the hard part.  I dug up the motivation and kept my butt in the chair long enough to put together a reasonable synopsis.  Over the next couple days, I'll pass it by a couple people, but after some minor editing I think it's good enough.

Whether it's good enough to help sell the book, well, we'll see, won't we?

The really cool thing about doing the synopsis is that it's made me want to read the book again.  So I'm about to get up and find a copy and take it to bed with me.  To me, that's the test of if I did good or not... can I read it a year later and think "damn! that's a good story."  :-)