The reasons for this blog: 1. To provide basic author information for students, teachers, librarians, etc. (Please see sidebar) 2. I think out loud a lot as I work through writing projects, and I'm trying to dump most of those thoughts here rather than on my friends.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Worked on other writing-related stuff this morning, then pulled up dystopian work and tried to put a synopsis together. Didn't get very far. It takes me forever to try to write something like that. I am putting it aside and asking fellow writers for advice to keep me focused next time I pick it up.

It has taken me years to be able to even answer the question "So, what's your book about?" for any of my novels. Now I can usually answer with a one-liner--but only because I figure nobody really cares what it's about anyway. It doesn't matter if the answer is accurate or not, or whether it gets across any of the things I think the book is really about. The stuff that interests me is usually not what interests anybody else.

So when I try to tell what this dystopian ms is about, I immediately get off into backstory and world-building, because to me the story doesn't make sense without it. But I guess what I need to do is think of it more as catalog or flap copy, because otherwise I'll go on for pages and all the conflicts that drive the story will be buried in piles of boring blah-blah-blah.