When Darcy emailed her proposed website blurbs for her Black Bandit trilogy of books earlier this week (you can read them here), I:
a) Had serious pangs of envy; and
b) Begged her to write my blurbs for me.
I'm really bad at blurbs. I have a terrible time distilling my story down to a couple of paragraphs. Especially two or three paragraphs that are catchy and sexy and still manage to tell the reader something meaningful about the story. That's asking a lot, IMO. Especially of someone who has written well over 200,000 words in pursuit of a novel that will wind up being around 100,000 words long. Brevity, shall we say, is not the soul of my wit.
And yet, Darcy seems to do it with ease. I hate her :->!
Two other writers whose blurbs are so good, they make me want to weep are Annie Dean and Jody Wallace/Ellie Marvel. (Those links'll take you to their blurb pages. Read 'em and, well, weep!)
With a little help from Darcy and me (and mostly Darcy, since as I said, I suck at this!), Lacey also came up with a very kick-ass blurb for If You Asked the Devil to Dance. (She also has a great one for If You Asked a Rake to Reform, but the web page is screwed up for some unknown reason so you can't really read it.)
But, back to me (because we know it's all about me, right?) and my weak, stinky attempts at blurbing A Scandalous Liaison. (I haven't even tried to write one for Lady Libertine or Going Greek yet, although I know that writing the blurb is one of the very first things many writers do when they're exploring a new story.) After an afternoon of chat with Darcy followed by some email input from Lacey and more chat with Darcy, we did manage to come up with a tagline and blurb that I think is pretty darned good. You can read it here.
Now I just have to go through the whole horrible, stinking process again for two more books. A writer's work is never done!
Today's question: What's your writing nemesis? Blurbs? Synopses? Query letters? Or something else? Do share!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
It was really nice to log in the other day and find a blurb waiting for me. I'd have to say my nemesis is in deciding when to quit revising! Talk about an author's work never being done...
I'll be happy to help you with blurbs. That part comes naturally to me; it's self-promotion that I suck at. I hate jumping up and down and shouting (online or elsewhere) BUY MY BOOKS, LOOK HOW AWESOME I AM!!
I'll agree with ann(ie). . . promo'ing sucks. But, I also suck writing long. . . my longest so far has been 32K. . . so, can I borrow a word or two from you. . .you're just going to cut them, right? {snicker}
How about all of them!
I don't have problems with tags or blurbs. I agree with Erika. 75K is the monster I fight and daily. By definition short-format writers look only at progressing the plot. All the gush turns me off.
Thanks for the compliment!
Besides the fact I loathe synopses, I have to say my writing nemesis is my youngest child...does that count? *heh*
Synopses, baby. Well, I should say pre-story synopses. Once the entire book is written, the synopsis flows fairly easily. But before the book is written--during that nebulous period where I have a vague idea of where the h/h is going but not exactly how they'll get there--synopses are all but impossible.
me too, Erica!! I almost never write a synopsis before a project is done (and now my editor wants one because they're going to offer a contract for a sequel to Guide on three chapters + synopsis.) OMG, I'll never get the damn thing written.
Annie, congrats!
Wow, Annie, what an offer! How can I refuse? However, wouldn't you have to actually read the book (or at least a synopsis) to write my blurb/hook for me? I'm not sure you've got the time, what with that sequel to Guide to write (congrats on that, 'cause it's so awesome).
Ericka (aka Pam!) and TJ, the funny thing about writing long versus writing shorter (at least in my case) is that I usually have TOO MUCH plot. Or too many. Or summat. That's why I've written probably 200,000 words to get to 100,000--I've cut out and rearranged more sub-plots than you'd EVER want to know about. I usually don't have story ideas that won't take at least 80-85K words to develop completely.
Erica, I'm like you when it comes to synopses. Once the story's written, they're pretty easy. Before, writing them sucks donkey balls!
And Jody, I understand about the youngest child phenomenon. My youngest is 5 now, but he's still a pretty good writing nemesis, even now. (Although the 9yo who wants to read over your shoulder while you type is categorically worse, especially if there's sex involved!)
Post a Comment