Ever prayed for a synopsis?

For a week or two now, off and on, I've been wrestling with a synopsis--a six-page summary of a novel, written in present tense, for my agent to use in selling the book. Sounds easy enough, except I was also revising the whole manuscript, so the synopsis kept changing. Once the plot finally stopped changing, you'd think it wouldn't be hard to wrap up the synopsis.

Wrong. Even after the plot was solid in my chapter outlines and in my head, the synopsis stank. It was too detailed, too busy, too confusing. It was bad.

But yesterday after church, my friend Jerry walked up to me and said he wanted to pray for me and my writing. I wasn't going to argue with that. So Jerry prayed, briefly. I went home and didn't even look at the danged synopsis. But I woke up this morning knowing how to start the thing in a different vein. Same plot, just a different way of tackling it. By 10:30 this morning, when I was scheduled to have a phone conference with one of my critique partners, I had a brand-new synopsis to e-mail to her, and she loved it. (She's so sweet. She hadn't wanted to tell me the old version of the synopsis smelled to high heaven, so she said it much more tactfully than that.)

So, there you have it. Prayer works wonders. Even on a stinky synopsis. Thank You, Lord. And thanks, Jerry, for praying.

Revisions and Amy's chocolate

You want to know why I haven't been blogging lately? Okay, maybe you don't care but I'll tell you anyway: Because I've been revising like mad. I took a manuscript that was around 70,000 words and added all kinds of good stuff to it. Now it's at 85,000 words and I'm much, much happier with it.

I'm not done yet. I still have to go through, chapter by chapter, and make sure I'm adding all the little details that I made notes about, and keeping my "facts" straight--yes, it's fiction, but there are still plenty of facts to worry about--and making sure I know why, exactly, I included each scene, because a scene without a good reason for existence shouldn't exist. (I also have to check for run-on sentences like that one.)

It feels very, very good to be at this stage. Another week or two, and I should be done with the thing and moving on. And maybe taking a little time to blog more often. By the way, whether you're a reader or a writer or you just plain like chocolate, check out Amy Wallace's website at www.amywallace.com. She's a friend of mine who just sold some novels to Multnomah, so you'll see her name soon at your friendly neighborhood bookstore and on Amazon. Meanwhile, get to know her online. She's a lot of fun. Her pictures of chocolate are nice, too, except they make me hungry.

Scattered

Yesterday was one of those scattered-in-all-directions days. I really wanted to be writing, especially because I'd figured out a major plot change for one of the novels I'm revising and so I wanted to dig into it. Immediately. But it was our night to host a home-group Bible study, so I had to clean the house, never a small task. I wasn't staying for home group, though, because I planned to attend the first meeting of a local chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers. Fortunately, our home group doesn't deal in guilt. As a matter of fact, we're studying Romans, where Paul says there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, even if they play hooky from Bible studies once in a while. (Okay, I added that last bit.)

So I was running around, cleaning the house and also doing laundry, because that's a task that never ends. I set up my laptop on the dining room table, close to the laundry room so I would hear the dryer buzz and wouldn't fry any clothes in the real world while I was revising my imaginary world in bits and pieces. Clean a bathroom, write a paragraph. Fold a load of clothes, write a paragraph. Run to the grocery store, write a paragraph. That's how my day went.

About the time I was getting aggravated with interruptions and mundane chores, my husband walked in and said he'd spotted a pair of bluebirds in the back yard, and some daffodils--daffodils we didn't know we had, because we didn't live here last spring. But there they were. Unexpected gifts. Bright yellow flowers, bright blue birds, and a big grin on my husband's face as he set about finding our old bluebird house and hanging it on the fence.

No, I didn't make much progress on my revisions, but God scattered some nice surprises across my scattered day, and I'm thankful.