Update From The Trenches
It’s time to start marketing. We’re going to do a push for the Science Novel, and we’re actually really excited about it.
Except, ugh. Marketing.
The pitch is crafted, or at least 95% of the way there. Some really helpful material at Writer’s Digest University, and some excellent feedback from our critique-group cronies, and now it needs to simmer for a bit whilst we work on the synopsis.
Double ugh.
At least we do have an existing draft of a synopsis to work from. Two, actually, because after crafting something we liked at about 1200 words, we slashed it down to 500 and still liked it reasonably well.
Fear of rejection is the classic stereotypical reason writers procrastinate about marketing their fiction (e.g., blogging about it when they should be doing it). Maybe for some that’s apt, but not for Jen and Kent. The bigger rub is that the query package entails writing of such a different type than the actual product we’re trying to sell. It’s easy to find contradictory advice about how to construct a synopsis. It’s hard as hell to condense a novel down to one page, which is what most agents seem to want.
At least here in the writing cave there are two of us, so we each get a shoulder to lean on while we trudge onward. Discussing potential edits in real time is especially helpful with the ultra-compact prose needed for a query.
How do you shift into Marketing Gear? What do you consider most annoying about it?
I do my best to look at the material, and think about the material as if I was not the person who wrote it… easier said than done!
Hmmm. What’s most annoying about queries and synopses and submissions? (Oh my!) Man, that’s a really tough question… I don’t have an answer… I think I am blocking the memory of the last time I did this. Which is not great, because soon I shall be doing this again. Although, you are right that with a collaborator, the burden is shared which makes it much easier…
(*sidenote: any editors or agents reading this here blog who receives the above mentioned query and synopsis really needs to request the full. Because the Rune Skelley Science novel is brilliant.)
And anyone at all who is reading here should go buy Reggie’s book: Haunted
You will be amaze!