another baby step

So, I know it has been just about forever since I posted anything on here. Things are pretty crazy right now, it's true, but in all honestly I haven't been writing on here because I haven't really been doing anything with my writing lately. All that has changed recently, though.

I have found the next place I'm going to send my story, known here as DPG (Dream Publishing Group). This time, I am supposed to send a cover letter to introduce my story and myself, a 3-10 page (nice range there, huh?) synopsis that gives every major plot point in my story, and the first 3 chapters. According to the submission guidelines for DPG, every submission gets "reviewed by at least one member of the editorial staff." (I'm going to pretend, just for the sake of keeping my sanity, that that doesn't mean the intern who is assigned the slush pile for the day.)

I'm in the process of writing my synopsis and cover letter right now. The cover letter hasn't been started, but I've worked on the synopsis quite a bit. I typed up 3 pages a couple days ago. However, I then realized that I had somehow managed to write a 3 page synopsis that only covered the first page of my story. At that rate, my synopsis was going to turn into something close to 1,000 pages--for some reason, I don;t think it is supposed to work that way! How is it that I'm finding it more difficult to write about my story than to actually write the story?

Now time for a little brutal honesty (coincidentally, I would be more than happy to let someone read my story if I knew they would be totally, brutally honest with me, but I digress...). It is my dream to write. I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating, partly for my own benefit. By that, I don't mean I want to be a famous author. I want to write because I can't not write. Of course I want someone to read my writing--it's no fun to tell a story if there's no one to tell it to. Despite this, though, most of the time I feel crazy for wanting this dream. It seems like one of those things most people grow out of, not a dream that keeps growing no matter how much I try to stifle it. I've always been a very logical person, someone who weighs the pros and cons of just about everything. I look at probability and statistics (though I really wasn't a fan of that class in college) and tend to shy away from doing things there's not a very high chance of succeeding at. If you look at the numbers, becoming a novel writer is definitely not something I would consider to have a high probability of success. My scientific, mathematical mind tells me it doesn't make sense to keep chasing this dream.

The deepest part of me, though, just won't let go of it.

for that reason, I'm going to keep writing. I'm going to finish this story and send it out to everyone I think might have an interest in a new, unproven writer. While I'm doing that, I'm going to write more. As crazy as it might be, I've got about 4 more stories floating around in my head right now. I'll write those and send them out, hoping someone out there wants to take a chance on me.

No matter what happens, I'll write because that's the desire of my heart.