At least my closet is color-coded, right?

It's synopsis time around my house.

I know, right? You're incredibly jealous, I can tell.

I have two due. T-W-O, as in "O-M-G, get your a^% to the keyboard, Harper, and start typing."

A disciplined writer would be highly organized and attack the projects with discipline, gusto, enthusiasm, and professionalism.

But I tackle it with a 16-ounce vanilla latte, a spiral-bound notebook full of scribbles, scrawls, poorly drawn "mind maps", and the attention span of my kindergartner after a bottle of Mountain Dew.

I got about two pages into my medieval's synopsis and suddenly felt the uncontrollable urge to be very productive. In the following 90 minutes, I managed to achieve:

• rearranging my junk drawer
• dusting all the picture frames on the wall around my computer
• taking some really cute pirate pictures of my toddler
• leveling my shaman on Warcraft (don't you dare judge me!)
• cleaning the bird's cage
• balancing our bank account (ouch...)
• painting my toenails a "blushing bride" pink
• checking every blog I could think of and them some more
• deleting the outbox on my phone
• calling Kobe a dirtbag about a dozen times during the playoff game
  
• arranging the printer paper in more aesthetically pleasing manner
• drafting exactly TWO more paragraphs in said synopsis (HOOORAY!)

You get the point, right? I did everything BUT write the damn thing, despite how much passion I have for the project itself.

I had this overwhelming urge to insert a disclaimer every two or three sentences to the tune of something like "But it's totally more exciting/heart-wrenching/sexy in the actual story than it sounds here. K. Thanks. Bye."

Let alone the humbling experience of reading your own work written in some alien-sounding voice from the 10,000-foot level and thinking to yourself "Damn, that sounds like an incredibly boring story?" Yeah. Happened once or twice.

Fear not, the story is not incredibly boring, it just seems my "synopsis voice" is.

So here I sit, officially on page six of about 12...fighting with my alien-voice and chastising myself for giving in to the temptation to blog (but I missed you guys!) when I should be "synopsizing"...and I came to the conclusion that the only way thing to do when you're going through hell is to keep on going, shitty first draft and all. (Thanks, Natalie Goldberg.)

I've abandoned all hope of sounding brilliant and interesting in these first few drafts and I've found a really freeing sense of totally sucking as I unload paragraph after paragraph onto that poor, unsuspecting page.

It's fun and a little like dancing to Tone Loc in your living room. You're bad, you know you're bad, and you just don't care at the moment, neigbors be damned.

So to any of my comrades out there struggling through writing the perfect first draft of your synopsis or query, I say the heck with it. Bust out the Fine Young Cannibals and just get the damn thing out. You can make it pretty later.

With you in spirit and absolute terribleness on screen,

h.