I'm doing it. Really I am. Honest. Here I go...

Well, I'm really doing it.

Soon.

Kinda.

No, really, I am.

Soon.

I'm talking about writing and finishing the synopsis to my novel and sending that out into the world of agents, so I can become part of the rejected writer's nation.

Let me back up, give those of you not in the world of writing a couple of definitions.

First, the novel. You all know what that is – a book-length work of fiction. I completed my novel, revised, edited, had it read over by some writer acquaintances of mine who tore it to shr—I mean offered some insightful, valuable suggestions. (Okay, no on actually tore it to shreds, but I did get an enormous amount of truly helpful suggestions).

I've had the novel finished, ready to go – at least as ready to go as I know how to make it – for a long time. Months.

I spent time on the query letter. In the world of traditional publishing a writer with a completed manuscript tries to land a literary agent. Most of the large publishing houses won't give the time of day to a would-be writer unless his or her manuscript is submitted by an agent.

Agents get paid on commission. Your work sells, they make money. Your work doesn't sell, they don't get paid. So agents aren't in a position to spend a lot time reading over every novel that comes their way, nor are they going to take too many chances. They understand what books work in what genres, what books might appeal to what publishers, and you have to fit your work inside those parameters, as well as write well and tell an engaging story, and that's what the query letter is for.

It's a brief letter that tells the agent what your story is about, what genre it might fit, names two or three recent novels that appeal to the same readership and why, tells the agent how your learned of him or her and why you've chosen to submit your work to them, as well as tell a bit about yourself, the writer.

All in one page. Agents read the query to weed out most of the slush pile of submissions to save time, progressing to actually reading the synopsis, and hopefully the full novel, afterward. The vast majority of submissions do not make it past the query-reading stage.

I have had what I hope is a fairly decent query letter ready to go for a couple of months.

The big hold-up is the synopsis. This document is roughly 500 to 800 words that gives the nuts and bolts of the novel – introduces the characters and who they are, what they're up against, supporting or significant minor characters, then gives a bit of a blow-by-blow of how the story develops and ultimately ends.

Think of the query as the sales pitch, the jacket copy on the back of a book meant to entice readers to buy. The synopsis is the blueprint, a work document tracing the development of the story to its end.

More than anything, this is the one that scares me. My novel is nearly 76,000 words, a tad over 300 pages. The idea of condensing that to two pages, relying on such a short document to communicate the story in a way that makes an agent not only interested, but believing that publishers and readers will want this too, is more than a bit daunting.

I've spent a good bit of the year putting it off – something else is always more important, or I'm too tired, or I'll get it done tomorrow (or next week) and here we are, the end of summer and I'm still sitting on this thing.

No more.

Yesterday I dove in, reading several guides to synopsis writing, listening to podcasts of literary agents talking about the documents. To take a break, I spent time researching specific agents who take this genre – learning what they want, how they want to receive the submission, as much as I can. Some agents want a query, ten sample pages and a synopsis, others just want a few pages and query, still others want several chapters and a query. Eventually, they all want to see the synopsis, so doing the work is inevitable.

Today I've spent time building the basic outline of the synopsis, and this week I'm going to spend time every day and get at least the first clean draft done and ready to review, so I can get this book out. I've already got the next one ready to write, and quite frankly the two after that as well.

I just have to get this synopsis thing done first.

And I will, This week.

Really, I will.

The End of Things

It's arrived.

Finally.

The end.

Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic, and not entirely accurate.

A view of our garden, shot a couple of weeks ago. The big brown empty spot is where we harvested the potatoes a couple of weeks ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I'm talking about the end of summer. As I publish this, a glance at the calendar will tell you we have another 32 days of summer, according to the Gregorian calendar. (I've read that meteorologists actually consider Sept. 1 the start of autumn, but maybe we'll talk about that another time).

Every year, usually some time in the first half of August, we get a day where the whether feels just a little autumn-like. Maybe it's a breeze that's cooler than typical summer wind; perhaps it's the hint of a chill in the night; or even on a hot day the air feels less humid, crisper, more like a warm day in fall rather than a sweltering summer day.

Whenever that first day comes, it's suddenly as if summer is winding down, that autumn with its changing leaves and cool nights and smoky air from burning leaf and brush piles is about to commence.

Oftentimes after that first day or two of autumn hinting at its arrival, summer comes back with a vengeance – the days grow humid again, the nights don't cool off much, and you find yourself wanting that fall-like weather even more.

As I write this it's been nine days since those first hints of fall crept into the air-- it was a Sunday, my wife and I had just returned from our bi-weekly torture march through the grocery store loading up a fortnight's worth food and stuff, and after unloading all the groceries I just stood outside for a while, enjoying the feel of the air. Later that evening we spent an hour or so sitting outside as the sun set and the day faded into night.

I generally say autumn is my favorite time of year. I love the feel of the air, the cool of the nights, the colors – yes, even the brown colors of the dead leaves once they begin falling to the ground. And Halloween is one of my favorite holidays even though, I suppose, it's not an official holiday.

But this year I'm not so sure I'm ready.

As I grow older, I can't help but see summer winding down as the first steps toward winter, when the world is cold and dead and occasionally a bit dreary. There are all sorts of poems and stories and essays likening the autumn to the final years of middle age for people, with the cold hard winter of one's final years just around the corner, so I won't try to say the same thing here.

What I will say is my reticence to welcome fall is far more practical.

My wife and I enjoy gardening, and we have for years done the usual fare – tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and squash, along with decorative gourds and even a few pumpkins. Some years we try a few cantaloupes or watermelons.

Last year, we experimented a little bit. We grew some kale, a few carrots, cauliflower, Swiss chard, and late in the summer we planted some lettuce and spinach, along with a few turnips and rutabagas.

They were great. Stephanie, my wife (better described as The Chief, the Household CEO, or Head Honcho) wasn't so fond of the cauliflower, so we dumped that from this year's garden plans, but we decided to try a few new items this year.

We scrapped the gourds and pumpkins, cut back a bit on the tomatoes, peppers, and vining plants, and went hog wild with lettuce, kale, arugula, and Swiss chard. We put most of those in raised bed gardens this year. For the main portion of the garden, to give the soil a break from the usual plants, we sowed black beans, white Cannellini beans, corn (that was a bit of an accident), some peas, and on a last-minute lark, some potatoes, along with a half-dozen purple cabbage plants.

The corn we had no intention of growing, but a seed company accidentally sent those to us (and didn't want them back once I told them), so we squared off a corner of the garden and put those in.

Three days ago, we realized some of those corn plants were ready – we ended up with nearly three dozen full, thick ears of super-sweet corn, and nearly that much still growing.

Earlier this summer we pulled nearly 40 pounds of potatoes from the ground, the harvest from about 9 pounds of seed potatoes. I've since read that's not necessarily a great yield, but we bought them on a spur of the moment decision, threw them in the ground and didn't do any feeding or fertilizing. So I'm happy with that yield and hopefully we can do better next year.

We're still a few weeks away from harvesting the beans.

All of this brings me back to my point of not necessarily being ready for autumn to set in. What we learned last year is there's plenty of late-season plants to put in the garden in August. I've put out turnips and rutabagas, Stephanie pulled up the old dying vine plants and has replaced them with new cucumber and zucchini seeds. We've also done a second planting for lettuce and spinach and peas.

And that's what brings me back around to saying I'm not so sure I'm ready for autumn to kick in just yet. I'd like a little more summer-weather growing season. Turns out, even here in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, with its short growing season, you can still get two full plantings in – one for summer harvest and another for fall harvest, if you just switch things up a bit, if you're willing to try new things and work a little longer into the autumn, you can pack a lot more plants into the same little plot of land. And some of those fall crops will store up a lot longer through the winter than the more fragile summer plants.

I suppose that could almost be a metaphor for life. Autumn might very well be the final years of middle age and the first glimpse into the geezer years, but if you're willing to try new things, slip outside your comfort zone, could be the autumn years just might be the best of all.