Gardening turned out to be a good, post-workshop thing to do. It was a beautiful, peaceful Spring day, and as I yanked out the triffid-weeds, I cringed at the memory of my synopsis (it was deemed crap, but I already knew that) and mulled over how to make it better. I also pondered the critiquing of my MS and considered solutions. Overall, I realise that the book needs a massive structural rewrite – the passing of (too much?) time is a particular problem – dialogue shakeups, and, very importantly, a kick ass title. I’ve been using a bland working title for so long that it’s starting to stick, and it is NOT a butt-booting, gotta-buy-that-book kind of YA title, not by a long shot.
And gotta-buy-that-book inducements like good covers and blurbs are important, as our guest speaker
Sean McMullen pointed out, because you have to convince someone to not only part with their hard earned lucre for your book, but also to invest an afternoon or more to read it.
Sean gave us a great rundown on synopses, pitches, and rather depressing examples of how much the cover layout influences the sales of a book. Paul then set writing a pitch to a publisher as extra homework for our next, and final, workshop. Gaaaah! The synopsis blew my synapses. Goodness knows what damage writing a pitch will wreak upon my brain.
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