I
watch a lot of forensic shows, Cops shows, Snapped, etc, because I get
ideas for stories. Often not right then. But like in SEAL Wolf Hunting,
one of the men in the story is suspected of committing a crime, and SEAL
Paul tells him his story is full of holes--that criminals do stupid
things, so that doesn't automatically indicate he didn't commit the
crime. But he uses a true couple of scenarios to illustrate his point.
Both were Cops stories that I had watched some years back and always
stuck in my mind and had laughed about. They were so dumb, but some
criminals just are. This picture made me think of two of the Forensics
shows. The clock sitting here means I took the picture at the time shown
on the clock, right? But the clock hasn't run for years. LOL
Anyway,
so during the holidays, I usually get requests for edits. It just seems
the editors are getting caught up on their reading as submissions slow
down. Word to the wise, you might have heard that everyone takes a break
over the holidays and no one reads submissions. Not true. I've had full
manuscript requests during the holidays. And as you can see from the
situation with me, I often have requests for stuff by the editorial
staff over the holidays. So right now, I'm rewriting the synopsis for
the book that I had written before the book was written. What is the
problem with this? I have NO idea what I'm going to actually say in the
book. So I had lots of things happen that I had no clue about. My
characters are total rogues.
And as I've
been rewriting this, I'm like, wow, I really was clueless. Yes, some of
the details were there, but most were not as important as what really
happened because I didn't know what would happen.
When
I was a kid in school, we were always required to write an outline and
then write our paper. It never worked for me. The teachers had some
notion that planning out your paper was the best thing to do before you
wrote it. Now, for plotters, yes, it works. But I'm a seat of the pants,
pantser, writer, and it just doesn't work for me. As I'd begin to do
research for my paper, I'd realize that I'd need to go in a whole new
direction. I've done that with my books too. And so what happens? The
outline/synopsis is not anything like what I thought I was going to
write.
If I could write the outline with
the paper and turn it in, I was good to go. I would write my paper, and
then write the outline. :) But some teachers were out to get my kind, so
they'd make us turn in an outline BEFORE we wrote our paper. No getting
around that. :)
Everyone is unique in the
way we think, the way we accomplish something. If you take a group of
people to accomplish a mission, and asked each how they would do it,
based on backgrounds, personalities, moral compasses, etc, each will
have different ideas. We could see this in business models when I was in
Grad school, or when I was in leadership reaction or other courses in
Army ROTC where a leader was required to ask of his squad if anyone had
different ideas of how to accomplish some mission. Some ideas will be
better than others. But it's really interesting to see this. Even my
dad, when he was a prisoner-of-war in Germany, submitted his ideas to a
committee on how to escape the POW camp. He was 16, so no one paid much
attention to him, but he actually did escape twice on his own during
death marches.
News Flash: Heard an
elephant on the roof and thought it was a cat, ran to the windows, no
cat. Then saw a squirrel! Tried to take a picture but it wouldn't come
out. My birds are all but gone because of the hawk. Maybe also because
of the annoying cat, that isn't mine, prowling around, but the squirrel
is brand new. I've seen one of the bunnies too. Never had a squirrel out
here before. But my live oak trees have gotten old enough that they're
starting to produce nuts, and my red oak tree is....
Okay, back to synopses....so I'm stuck rewriting one and need to turn it in today.
The
moral of the story is do the job your way and it will get
done--probably better than if you had to do it in some weird way that
doesn't work for you.
Are you ready for the holidays?
Still proofing Call of the Cougar print version. Then it's back to Phantom Fae. :)
Have a super great Monday!! The good thing about Mondays, is they only happen once a week.
Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy is reality.”
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