Believe it or not, I've been writing quite a bit over the weekend. I took a 14-page synopsis and chopped, slapped, cajoled, and browbeat the angry critter to fit into 11 still too long pages. Only problem is the synopsis wasn't mine. One of my friends, who is a wonderful fantasy writer, is preparing to start the querying process but wanted to get all her ducks in a row before sending anything out. I guess this tells you how new she is if she was asking me for help.....me who has only one novel finished (and not even a very pretty one at that)....me who can't seem to get off page seven of her own new book....me who keeps referring to herself as an annoying pronoun. What really rankles me is how easy this was to do. But of course it would be. After all it wasn't my poor baby being sent out into the cold, cruel world to be ripped open, sneered at, and thrown in a dark corner without even cab fare to get home. But then again, maybe I'm just sensitive.
I've been thinking a lot about critiquing partners lately and how important they can be in the writing process....or at the very least in the querying process. My friend and I traded off chapters from our respective books as we were writing, offering our thoughts for whatever they were worth. Trouble is that though we both enjoyed each other's books, we generally don't read in the particular genre the other writes in. I know good writing is good writing no matter what, but I think familiarity with a given genre certainly helps. She'd never been much of a romance fan (she writes straight fantasy), so I took it as a compliment that she actually enjoyed my story, contemporary romance though it is. I've never read much fantasy aside from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (and let's be honest that had everything to do with Viggo Mortensen), but I thoroughly enjoyed her story as well. And even though I helped her clean up her grammar and make sure her names and descriptions stayed consistent through the book, I feel I've been the most help to her now as she prepares her query letter and synopsis. An extra set of eyes as well as a truly objective opinion are invaluable when it comes to tweaking these things to within an inch of their life. As writers, we're often too close to really do them justice. We'd sooner give up a toe than cut a sentence we know is imperative to the story. But what do you do when they all seem just as important? You find a good friend/writer who isn't afraid to be brutal and get a little ink on their shirt. And you feed them lots of chocolate....lots and lots of Dove's Chocolate Truffles. Hmmmm...I wonder if that was too subtle?
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