Best Laid Plans

So the time has come to send the requested partial and synopsis of THE LONELY MILE to the agent who requested it. In the world of literary agenting, July seems to be the month for vacations, so her request was to receive the material on or after August 5.

No problem, I thought. I'll print out the synopsis and 75 page partial on Monday the 2nd and then put them in the mail on Tuesday the 3rd. It was over a month ago when I made that plan and it seemed like a reasonable one at the time.

Until last night, that is, when I checked my computer files and discovered that I never actually wrote a full synopsis for this particular manuscript, meaning that to keep to my plan I would have to write a full synopsis in one day, not an impossible task but not something I had really planned on doing, either.

I don't know if you've ever tried to distill an 85,000 word book down to ten or fifteen pages - probably not, unless you have a real desire to torture yourself - but I have to tell you, it's not easy and it's definitely not something that you can do in a hurry. Fortunately I had today off on my Evil Day Job, so I spent the entire day synopsizing (Synopsising? Synopsifying? Synopserizing?) and I finally finished around seven o'clock tonight.

I followed that up with composing a cover letter and then preparing to print out the whole shebang. Which was when I discovered the black ink cartridge in the printer was just about empty. Figures.

Against all odds, though, I found another ink cartridge in the printer cabinet and from there things went swimmingly. The synopsis and 75 pages printed out nicely and are anxiously awaiting being sent out tomorrow. The only drawback to this busy day was that I was unable to get any work done on my work in progress, a paranormal thriller titled FLICKER.

God, this writing life is glamorous.

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