Dr. Dume ~ The Doctor is In

I have to write a synopsis. I hate that. I hate it so much I’ve been procrastinating about it for weeks. It refuses to write itself, so I decided to turn the procrastination to some use.

I typed ‘How to write a synopsis’ into Yahoo and pressed go. This was, admittedly, after I’d typed ‘How to remove a brain with the eyes still attached’ and other interesting subjects. Yahoo is a wonderful tool for the procrastinator.

There are a lot of sites offering advice. There are several legitimate ways to write a synopsis. Which do you choose?

All of them.

Looking at agent’s websites, they don’t all want the same thing on initial approach. They vary. A lot. From a query letter with a 100-word summary (eek!) through a one-page synopsis to a chapter-by chapter breakdown. Some with the first 50 pages, some with chapters, some with no pages.

One thing’s for sure. Nobody wants the whole damn thing straight away. Nobody legitimate, anyway. There are no short cuts.

I have to write this thing. I know I do. I don’t want to, but I’ve written and revised the book and now I have to sell it. This is the only way.

If I can only convince myself of that.

Anyway, to save you all the trouble of procrastinating for yourselves, here are some of the useful places I found:

Fictionwriters

Brenda Coulter (this is a good one - it contains vital clues for the clueless).

Paul Saevig

There are many, many more. You can read about how to write a synopsis forever, while your manuscript turns yellow at the edges. If you leave it long enough, someone else will have the same idea, wite it and publish it first.

Keep that last thought in mind. It's the one that finally stopped me procrastinating.

Posted by Dr. Dume at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Soon we have to go out and vote for local councillors. It seems such a waste of time, marking a scrap of paper to let some idiot keep his pointless job, or to let another idiot take it from him. But, vote we must.

I think it would be far more entertaining if there was more at stake. If, say, the candidate with the least votes were tarred and feathered and subjected to public ridicule. That would be fun and it would give them all an incentive to actually convince people to vote for them. The council rejected my ideas out of hand again this year, which I thought a little unfair.

One of the candiates visited today. Scroat Pustule, of the Sackcloth and Ashes party. Mr. Pustule seemed ill at ease so I invited him in for a tour of the premises. The tour ended at the laboratory. Well, it ended there for Mr. Pustule, anyway.

I like visits from politicians. Nobody minds if they don't come back.

Posted by Dr. Dume at 05:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Romulus visted again. This time he was elated by gadgetry. He loves all that sort of thing. I was interested in his idea of a solar-powered train, but at the same time I was a little miffed.

Solar power is a wonderful thing. Free electricity is not to be scoffed at. I try to use as little mains power as possible, but from this month's bill I suspect Stumpy is tapping in somewhere. But that's another story.

Solar power needs one vital component. Sunlight. Dume Swamp has little of that. I can tell when it's daytime, most days, but there's never enough to make any solar-powered thing worthwhile.

I go for wind power. There's a lot of it here, and I've even fitted a little turbine into Stumpy's favourite chair. I can power a small town when he's eaten beans. There is another alternative that occurred to me recently.

Rain. I'm in Scotland, and rain is one of our greatest natural resources. We have a lot of it.

Dume Towers has a lot of roof area too. All that rain is collected in gutters and sent into downpipes. So, what if every downpipe had a water wheel connected to a generator?

Don't get hung up on thinking green. Think 'free' instead. Why pay for someone else to provide power when there's so much of it available for nothing? Rain power is certainly the way forward for where I live. Energy that literally drops from the sky.

So, next time that smug Professor visits, I'll take him outside and show him the Rain Train.

Weather permitting, naturally.

Posted by Dr. Dume at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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I have suffered the indignity of a broken computer these last few days. I spent ages beating Stumpy for breaking it, and now it turns out it wasn't him. Well, he needed beating anyway. it gets some of that dust out of the wrinkles in his saggy skin. So it wasn't a completely wasted effort.

What happened was that one of the Ferals sneaked in and ate my hamsters. I had seven, running in wheels to power the computer and I've now had to train new ones for the job. All is well again, and Stumpy is, at least temporarily, relatively free of filth and a rather attractive shade of purple.

I should beat him more often.

Posted by Dr. Dume at 12:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Friday the 13^th is here. Local elections loom, so I might get visited by a politician or two. Nobody minds if politicians disappear. I have that old hockey mask dusted off, ready to answer the door.

Bad luck for them.

Posted by Dr. Dume at 11:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Stumpy insists he wants an Easter egg hunt, so I've sent him on one. I'll inspect his haul when he returns.

He gets one point for each egg he finds, and two points for any he gets before they're laid. Those are more of a challenge. I hope he doesn't overdo it. Eggs are all right, but once you get past boiled, poached, fried or scrambled they start to lose their appeal. Then there's all that cholesterol to consider.

While he's out egg-hunting, I'm left alone to eat the chocolate ones I bought yesterday. I thought of letting Stumpy share them but he was so keen on hunting for his own it seemed best to let him get on with it.

Posted by Dr. Dume at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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The new issue of AlienSkin magazine is now available and free to read.

You don't want to miss this one. The fantasy article is about death, the science fiction article is about horror, and my own contribution has a smattering (should that be a spattering?) of gore also.

Best hurry on over there. You only have two months to read it all.

Posted by Dr. Dume at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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