The Long and Creative Silence, or, How’s That Novel Coming Along?

Anna, my antagonist. Isn’t this a great painting or what? (painting by Konstantin Makovsky)

Long time no blog, my friends.

Happily, it hasn’t been long time no write.  On the contrary, I recently finished my first complete draft of a novel.

5-0-0-2-7 words!  Small novel, but a huge accomplishment for me.

(Can I get a wha-wha?)

I use the word “complete” rather loosely.  It’s “complete” in that I began at the beginning, worked my way through the middle, and ended at the end.  But, having followed the NaNoWriMo drafting model (i.e. “pantsing”), it’s consequently a bit pile of mush.

As Mr. Hemingway said, “The first draft of anything is shit.”

(Eloquent and succinct, he is.)

At the moment, my writing class is in-between phases:  we just finished our drafts, all glorious 50K words of each, for each of us, but in a mere few days we begin turning our piles of doo-doo into something resembling a coherent and cohesive story.  We will be writing our story synopsis.

What is a synopsis?  you might be asking.  A synopsis, long or short, is the short story form of the novel.  Most agents and editors want to see a synopsis before requesting a manuscript.  Many novelists dread writing synopses – who wants to turn their 100K work of liquid literary genius into 10 pages of short story?  No one.   Which is why our professor is making us write one.  She’s draconian like that.

Once I have a working synopsis, should I choose to rewrite the novel, I can do so from the synopsis.  What was doo-doo becomes much more, and better.

Thanks for bearing with my silence.  Believe me, it’s been anything but silent in my writing head.