see I have not blogged once in December. That is because all of my writing words have been going into the sidebar. My head hurts with how far that progress bar has moved. I know it says “Ornithology Revisions,” implying that I have been revising pages. Ha ha ha. How I wish that were the case. Of those pages–written between 11/9 and today–zero have been revised, and all have been completely, one hundred percent new.

And these are not words written with my internal editor completely off, either. I have rules. I have page counts I have to hit every weekday, and then on the weekends, I have to stitch those counts together into actual scenes and chapters. Everything that I’ve stitched together I’ve gone over two or three times. I cannot explain how much this has hurt to do, day after day after day. On the other hand, it’s really amazing to see how productive I can be when I force myself to it. All the cool kids are blogging about their Golden Heart judging experiences, and so I thought I’d say a few words. I got the Young Adult category. Seven entries. Of those seven entries, three of them were what I’d call “not quite ready for prime time.” The writing was stilted or sloppy; there were obvious errors in the text, obvious motivational flaws. In one case, the entry was quite short–think under 1/3rd the required pages.Three of those entries had really great pages. The concepts were generally good, the conflict was there, and the writing was snappy. I gave these entries scores ranging from 7 to almost a 9. What was the difference? I had never imagined that this would be the case, but the difference was the synopsis. And by “the synopsis,” I mean that two out of these three entries had synopses that actively hurt them. The first one was fatally wounded by a synopsis that read like a hook from a query letter–and it was approximately that long. It was a great hook, too. But–what happens? Who runs away from home? What’s the black moment? What’s the resolution? I agonized about how to score this one. Ultimately, I decided I had to give it a lower score than I thought the pages might have merited. Without knowing if the author can really put together a decent story–with a heart-wrenching climax and a happily ever after–I can’t really give the author a score that says, “go ahead–final in the Golden Heart!” A great synopsis, one that really made me believe the author knew how to craft a great and exciting story, could have netted this entry as high as a 9.

The middle score I gave was for great, but not absolutely golden pages. Again, a great synopsis could have gotten this entry a 9. What I read was good. But the synopsis felt like a series of “and in this chapter, she does X.” There was no understanding of story structure, no emphasis of moments important to the internal or the romantic conflict. And so I was left with the feeling that the book was a bit of a hodge-podge.

The final entry I got I gave a score really close to a 9. The synopsis had a hint of voice and sparkle. It emphasized all the right moments. It made me understand what the black moment meant for each of the characters, and showed how the subplot played into the black moment’s resolution. Was it the best synopsis on earth? No, probably not. But a bad synopsis would have put this entry probably somewhere around the low 7s. The great one pushed it into the territory where, if other judges agree, it will final.

So that’s my golden heart advice for all you junkies out there: Spend more time on your synopsis. Remember that your synopsis tells a story; it doesn’t summarize your book. Yes, it’s the thirty-minute TV special of your book. But you’re still telling that story.

You’ll notice that I haven’t talked about one of my entries yet. The entry actually had a decent synopsis. The writing was not bad, although it was a little stilted in places. All things not considered, it should have been around a 6 or so. I thought about this one for a really long time. I know the guidelines said that it’s not fair to say “I don’t like such and such a story,” and to ask myself whether the story is a good story of that particular ilk.My problem–and remember, this is a supposedly young adult story–is that I would rather gouge the eyes out of any young adult than let thm think that this kind of story is a romance. The h/h relationship was child molestation–she was 14, he was twice that age, and their first sexual experience was an assault. The black moment was when she discovered he was married. And no, the HEA was not her chopping his balls off. It was their getting married–with no explanation of what happened to the prior wife. I am okay with reading stories about child molestation where older men marry much younger women. It’s just that usually I like the author to recognize that it is disturbing–like Kahlid Husseini’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns”–and to pay the bastard back in the end. I decided it was not horrible to say I did not like stories glorifying child rape, and I graded accordingly. That is a very different thing than saying “I do not like books about astronauts.” I thought about not posting this, because the author might recognize herself. But honestly, if you read this and you recognize what I am describing as your story, then GO GET COUNSELING!