synopsis hell

I have spent my entire day rewriting and rewriting my book synopsis- a critical piece of the package to publishers (and I imagine agents too). Maybe I'm too close to it, but a friend tells me it's no good. I think he's told me it's no good three or four times. And he wasn't wrong. but I I know this last one is much, much better. (And yes, I do have my buddy to thank for this.) but he doesn't like it at all. So do I really know? No, I don't. And I just can't tell anymore. (If it's good, bad, worse than the earlier iterations.) But how come I think it's better? Am I an idiot?) Quite possibly. And given my illness considerably less charming than I used to be. Still look good though. Thank god for small favors. And I'm plumb out of ideas. I hate when that happens.

He (my buddy/synopsis mentor) is coming at said book a complete stranger to the work, so maybe I assume too much for it to make sense to someone coming to it cold. I've compared it to a couple of successful book proposals my incredibly generous sister-in-law's sister (got that?) sent to me. It seems to be of a kind. I know there are bits I most definitely want to edit out. But what he asks for really doesn't apply to what I've written. Am I in deep doo-doo? Is my book doo-doo? (No, don't blame the book. Poor thing. This has nothing to do with Since When. So chill, y''hear?)

Houston, I think we have a problem.

I spend my earlier part of the day getting up and about. Not really. But I am out of bed (But my actual, usable day sadly begins about 1:30. (I actually get up much earlier than that. It just takes so bloody long to get through my daily ablutions.) You really have no idea what a dance it is getting the buddha ensconced on her couch. If only it were the cha-cha.

I've already napped. (So the tranquilizer will have taken effect by the time I get up. Hot damn, works ever time. Anxiety no more.) But now it's 7 p. m., and I have yet to finish lunch. Do you know how amazing peanut butter and jelly is? It's fucking DIVINE. I tell you. Chip had recently switched to strawberry jam. Fantastic. (FYI, the man makes a kickass sandwich.) And surprise, surprise, blueberry, of all things works just as well. Just so you know. I'm not going to keep valuable tips like this away from you, you kidding me?

Hey, I just tried to reach my synopsis mentor. I got voice mail. 7 p.m. on a summer Friday is probably the very best time to call someone to avoid the inevitable dressing down or facing your issues or both. I didn't mean too. I was just such a colossus mess a few hours ago. And even that might not have made a difference. I'm dealing with a man who has a summer home. But if you wish to avoid me, call here in the morning. In the morning, you're totally fucked. Midday is also a keeper. Stay away from evenings. Unless I literally cannot speak, you're cooked.

I think I'll take a crack at writing chapter summaries. Woohoo!

sayonara

Oh, the work never ends...

What now? I'm working through all the mechanics of getting Since When published. I am reviewing my query letter and synopsis. (I tore apart the synopsis last night and finished rewriting it today.) This latest iteration of the synopsis still needs more work, but I think I'm a lot closer than I had been. This damned book is massive jumble. (Like my head except it (my head) isn't massive. But I will take credit for jumbled.) Speaking of jumbles? To all of you who have ever worked with me, do you remember the state of my desk? It looked like a tornado had hung out there for a good few minutes. Every single day. Or perhaps several times a day. But I knew where everything was on that desk. (If I had filed all of it and had a pretty, clean white desk, I'd have been done for.)

I was damned lucky to begin to speak to family when I did. At the time (13-years ago?), I found that there were elderly cousins still alive descended from each of my grandparent's siblings. Cool. Trace their paths (and their long-dead parent's paths) from around 1900 - 1945- those who left Europe and came here and those who didn't.

Okay, I now have a plan. But it required calling all these people I'd never spoken to and many of whom my mother hadn't spoken to in eons. Maybe they didn't like Ma. If that were so, they sure wouldn't like me. (My saving grace was my father. He seems to have universally made a good impression with everyone. And everybody loved my grandmother.) But for the first time of my illustrious career, I had to make cold-calls. Granted, I wasn't trying to sell anything. In fact, I'm giving them an opportunity to talk about themselves. Who doesn't like to talk about himself? And hey, what's the worst these people can do to you? Tell you, chica, I'm not telling you shit. So get off my goddamned phone, to keep the line free for calls with people I actually like.

Well that never happened. I spoke to an awful lot of people who first had to tell about where their bodies were hurting and what diseases they had and how miserable they felt. After that, I usually ended up with a cheery person who was more than willing to share with me some very brutal stories. These cousins were actually quite remarkable. I'm telling you, Mengele would have sent me off to the gas in two seconds. But these people wend their way through the maze of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, forced labor in armaments factories, winter death marches, and live to tell me about them. For me, I really felt honored and humbled by their candor and courage. Okay, one cousin refused to let me buy her tape from the Shoah Foundation, but I could come out to Queens where she would show it to me in full. Huh? God, I never took notes so fast in my entire life. Shit, I needed steno. But she told me everything. I just had to play by her rules. I can do that.

Then I went through what I would call an emotional breakdown in 2002. We had our first "crazy Hungarian" reunion late that summer. I knew I had to be a little manic. I wrote and wrote and wrote. And it was all good. Damn. No wonder artists are nuts. When you've got the high (and mine was only a wee one), can you produce. and produce big.

I crashed sometime in September, so Since When was put on hold for a long time.(A person in the abyss really can't be especially productive.) I edited and re-edited what I had. The work got tighter and tighter. But I couldn't make myself finish it. Then...I became deadly ill. The first year or so after I left the hospital, I was busy. I had to relearn how to walk, go to the bathroom...basically everything. This kept me occupied for a good long time. But late fall of this year, I got the utz again. I was heading to Pittsburgh to check on the possibility of a lung transplant. (Bottom line: I've been invited onto the Lung list, but I don't want it and I never will.)

But those weeks leading up to my week in Pittsburgh in early December, I just started cranking. I rewrote everything. It had been written tastefully in the third person. It still is with exception of my new and exciting comments which pepper the whole damned manuscript. Anger seems to bring the best out of me. Because after doing that, I wrote caustic, profanity-filled stories from my life. And interspersed them with the historical chapters.

I think it works. But try and explain all this to a publisher. But I'm not even close to that stage yet, so I can just dabble with all the pieces necessary for a pitch. goodnight all.

Oh my!

To quote an client from many moons ago at the start of a campaign, (said with real, but no question, carefully-maintained Greek accent), "It's really HAPPENING!"

I can't believe this blog actually exists. It's mine. People will read it. So I imagine, I should have SOMETHING of interest to say.

The reason for this blog's existence is the book I wrote kind of by accident. You ask, "How the hell can you write a whole fucking BOOK by accident? Puhleeze. Lipman, don't get cute with me."

I'm not, really I'm not. This whole thing began more than 10 years ago when it dawned on me that if I don't put my mother's family tales to paper, they'll disappear forever. I wasn't outwardly frantic, but there was absolutely an internal freneticism as I sat down with her again and again and again. (Well, I needn't have felt so pressed, she's still around, got tsu danken.) I remember telling my buddies at work that I was doing this. And that I had 6, yes, 6 pages typed SINGLE SPACE. I was very proud of my self.

But with each story, came more questions. Which my mother was unable to answer. Naturally she couldn't; she was only 6 1/2 years old when she emigrated from Czechoslovakia. (From a sea of rural Hungarians in Subcarpathia.) And she only knew stuff from my grandmother's point of view. Now, I would trust ANYTHING that came out of my grandmother's mouth. (She was just one of those rare people...) But she (and Mom) were not party to everything.

And I'm just one of those people who is COMPELLED to connect the dots even where I don't yet know they're there. (I guess kind of like writing a book and having no clue that you're doing it.) But they have to be. I just have to look harder, ask the right questions...

And my six pages of separate Tales of the Jews of Subcarpathia weren't linked. And relieved as I was to have recorded Mom's memories of the town of Kaszony in Czechoslovakia, I needed, wanted more.

And I also became painfully reminded that while I knew that my mother's family that had remained in Subcarpathia were sent to Auschwitz and that some survived, I was completely clueless as to when and how it happened. (I don't mean, "Gee whiz, you mean they were stuffed in a cattle car?") What actually happened to the Hungarian Jews? Huh? I knew infinitely more about what happened to Poland during the war than I did Hungary. And I just figured, I'll get the answers to all the questions I have and the ones that haven't come up yet. I made the assumption that if I wanted/needed to know, other people would too. I need to dot the i's, cross the t's...To understand Ma's stories, I needed context. So off I went looking for context. I love context.

Man, if were still at work...I bet those 6 single-spaced pages were written in 1997? I'll ask my husband when he wakes up. I sleep so goddamned late, that I keep him up to all hours. (No, not even doing anything interesting. That's a whole other kettle of fish.) And he wakes up at dawn no matter how late he goes to bed. Poor boy. He's starting a company and is my nursemaid. He's remarkable. But I really should cut him a break, and let him go to bed at reasonable time. He needs to function even more so now that I don't.

I got the word. Yup, 1997. God damn that was a long time ago! Back then, I was an ad agency account guy. I had worked at Grace and Rothschild for almost ten years until a nasty thing happened. (All will be revealed in another post, I promise.) I was then asked to come back and work freelance until they could find someone to fill my position. It took 11 months. A monumental 11 months. Auf wiedersein.