October 2007 - Posts
Having written a thousand words of a five hundred word synopsis ot 'Horse Painters' I was just wondering how to cut it by half , when I had a road to Damascus experience. Let somebody else do it!
Without much trouble I found a professional synopsis writer who will prepare a complete Agent query package for the cost of a pub lunch for two. The package will be a query letter to an Agent, a synopsis and a one paragraph blurb. I just have to adapt the query letter as needed for whichever Agent I query. It is a huge relief. The next step is to find somebody to write my next novel!
I see that Anne Enright, the author of the Man Booker Prize winning book 'The Gathering' is yet another Man Booker winning graduate of the University of East Anglia. I start one of their courses after Christmas, so I do hope something rubs off.
Another of my stories is appearing in the November issue of 'Dimdima Magazine'; with the Christmas story they have now accepted five this year. I must be doing something right.
I have never been to a writer's retreat. I cannot see why one has to fly Easy Jet to Tuscany for the same result as sitting in Starbucks with a regularAmericano, writing the Great British Novel to the cheery sound of screaming children. I know someone who goes on a writer's retreat every year. She writes nothing for the rest of the year, as far as I know, and not very much when she gets there. Maybe it is just so that she can wear sandals and a knitted cardi without looking conspicuous.
'Horse Painters' is with the copy editor, so it could be described as finished (probably). Eighteen month's work will soon be toddling out into the wide world on its chubby little legs hoping for the best. St Jude needs to really get his act together if this one is going to succeed.
I am cracking on with my twenty book reading list. I am reading William Faulkner downstairs, Virginia Woolf upstairs and have good old James Joyce in the car for delays on the M25. I rate William Faulkner two lengths ahead of James Joyce with Virginia Woolf a distant third and about to be pulled up.
There I was in my bedroom in France looking for a postcard when I heard a noise followed by a shadow on the wall. It was a bat, not a tiny (though perfectly formed and innofensive) pipistrelle but an enormous French bat, the size of a blackbird, doing an impression of Ice Man chasing a MIG. I was confident, however, that as it had more navigational aids than an F16, it would check out the room with radar then fly calmly out of the open window. Not so. This idiot bat made low level passes, high level passes, one man formation flying and general showing off while going straight past the window with every circuit. I tried to open another window opposite, the window partly came off its hinges and stuck. The bat ignored all my efforts and having reduced me to a gibbering wreck found the original window and flew away. My relief was immense and the bat was probably happy too.
'Horse Painters' will be copy edited by 30 October. I have been failing miserably to write a killer synopsis to send to agents. It is a lot more difficult than it would first appear.
I managed to write a Christmas story and it had a very enthusiastic reception from my editor. So somehow we did it. Maybe St Jude had a hand in it.
I have decided to work through the twenty book reading list, but ticking off those I have read recently, as there's no point in reading them twice. My definition of 'recent' may expand if the going gets tough. I thought that as I'm normally reading something I may as well structure the whole thing and do the list.
'Horse Painters' is about to go to a copy editor, I just have to finish the final read through. I have forty pages to go.
Last week I called into the Fitzroy Tavern in London. There was no evidence of the Dylan Thomas connection there at all. Just one picture of Virginia Wolf (who lived in Fitzroy Square) and one of George Orwell. Other than that a lot about Augustas John the painter.