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Last week, I completed a three page synopsis for NHI and started expanding it. I didn’t quite make five pages, which was my original target, but I have enough to start working on the outline. Since I know the synopsis will most likely change by the time I finish the outline, anyway, I’ve decided to move forward. It will probably take me a couple of weeks, maybe three.

The agent who requested a partial of SHE passed. I’d expected that; he has mentioned on his blog that he has been inundated with a lot of very good projects, so he has a big pool to choose from. Meanwhile, there are plenty more agents for me to approach. I have a couple more lined up to get out this week.

Apparently, my attempt at personalizing yesterday’s email query wasn’t as bad as I’d thought, because the agent responded today with a request for the first 30 pages of my manuscript.

I’m finally getting off my butt to send query letters out for SHE. It’s not fun. Even though I have a solid query body ready to use more or less as-is, I tried to personalize the one I just sent and realized as soon as I’d clicked Send that it was less “personalized” than “sycophantic.” Eep. So I’m sure I’ll get a rejection on that one. I’ll send more queries this week as I have time, and I hope I can avoid coming across like a dork on the next one.

Meanwhile, I have completed a three page synopsis for NHI and started expanding it into five pages. I expect to finish that by the end of the week. Next week I’ll start working on the outline, which will take at least two weeks. However, I think the first draft will fly by as a result of all this work I’m doing ahead of time. I don’t know if I’ll have it ready for Sleuthfest in February, but I’m damned sure going to give it a shot.

After Monday’s gripe-fest about how I wasn’t making sufficient progress on NHI, I immediately summoned my inexhaustible reserves of discipline and focus and…

HAHAHAHAHAHA

No, actually, I instead wrote half of a rough draft for a short story unrelated to NHI except that it takes place in the same city. But that’s OK. It gave me time to adjust to switching back to the original protagonist, and yesterday I completed a one-page plot synopsis. This is a bare-bones list of obstacles that get in Max’s way (full name of protagonist, in case you’re curious: Maxwell Truman) and the actions he takes to deal with them. No description, no interpretation, no contemplation, just road blocks and action.

This morning, I started to expand that one page into three pages. I made good progress, though it wasn’t easy. I find it amusing that when I wrote the various synopses for SHE, after the novel was originally written, that I found it excruciatingly difficult to keep distilling the plot into shorter and shorter forms. I figured it would be much easier to go in the opposite direction. It’s just as hard, but in a different way. Nevertheless, I’m pleased with what I’m accomplishing.

I am not making anything like the kind of progress I’d hoped for on NHI. I’ve put about 20 hours of work into it and don’t have more than the sketchiest idea of the plot. At 20 hours, I’d planned to have at least a short plot synopsis complete from which to start building the outline, but I don’t have that. I’d also hoped to have put in somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 hours by now.

Jury duty threw my schedule off some, which robbed me of about ten hours. The other missing ten are due to work on a couple of short stories, so I’m not terribly upset about being behind schedule in that way. What does bother me is that I wasted a lot of last week’s effort, which puts me behind where I should be for the amount of time I have spent.

Last week, for reasons not quite clear to me in retrospect, I decided to promote the supporting viewpoint character to protagonist and remove entirely the original protagonist. I spent most of the week revising the background for my new protagonist. When I got done, I realized that I’d made a terrible mistake.

My original protagonist was what made the story fresh and unique. Switching protagonists turned the novel into just another police procedural. Better, I guess, to have realized that before I got deep into the first draft. Still, I’m irritated that I didn’t think the switch through more carefully in the first place.