Synopquery burning effigies

Yesterday was one of those frustrating bang-your-head-against-the-wall-horrible-case of-writers-block-I-feel-like-I'm-getting-nowhere kind of a day. Okay. Maybe I'm exaggerating

But only a little.

I spend hours yesterday revising my synopquery letter. It was truly torturous. I swear I revised every single sentence like 10 times... and each sentence took about 10 minutes. It was incredibly slow, painful work, and honestly, I felt really discouraged. I thought I had made little or no progress on the entire thing--despite the hours siphoned into it. It was extremely frustrating.

So when my hubby asked me how my day was last night, you bettchya a gave him an earful (poor guy...)! I frustratingly related how much I hated this stupid-no-good query letter writing stuff and how I just wanted to burn the whole letter and start over kind of a thing... blah, blah, blah. But instead of agreeing with me, and accompanying me on an effigy burning of the query letter crusade, Rob, being the sweet, supportive, awesome guy that he is, he offered to read over it for me. He offered this, even though he had just barely reviewed it on Sunday and his comments only two days earlier had left me a lot of work to do. Considering the stress and frustration I'd had all day during the revision process, and the fact that I felt like I had made little (if any) progress, I honestly didn't think he was going to be able to give me any comments that were different from Sunday to Tuesday. But since he was being so sweet and supportive about it, I grudgingly allowed him to read it for me.

But then... SHOCK!

He only had two comments! Two! And they were little comments, not big revisions like his suggestions on Sunday!!! I was so wrapped up in the minuscule little details and stress of revising the letter, that I didn't even notice that as a whole, I had a pretty dang good finished product. I prodded Rob for several minutes, trying to determine if he had any hidden criticisms he wasn't telling me about, but he didn't have anything! His only two comments were about the structure of two of the sentences. He thought they needed to be reworded, that's it! "Other than that, Julie," he said, "You have a very solid letter here."

Swoon!

So I spent another twenty minutes or so working on those two sentences, and....

Bada boom, bada bing! I have my synopquery letter!!

I've just sent the second letter off to dear old Professor Dooling for review. If he approves of what I've written, I will officially feel secure enough to start sending it to agents! And of course, that is really the only really way to know if your synopquery letter is any good, anyway, right? Whoopeee! Things are actually starting to get exciting!!

Stay tuned!