Sitting on It

As salaam alaikum,

So, for something a little different from what I've been talking about for the past few entries, I guess...A Rose Much Desired is done with the editing phase and on to the peer/family edits and marketing phase. My friend knows a publisher and asked me to send him a synopsis. Thinking a synopsis should be on the order of 3-4 paragraphs, I looked it up online and planned to send it to him later that day.

...one week later, I'm still trying to write a good synopsis. There's a way I could write a synopsis that's really boring. And what of my twist! I have to write that in there in a way that doesn't make it fall flat.

So, that and granted it's finals week this week and I need to work on a couple of projects and papers, I'm going to sit on RMD for a little bit longer.

And if it never gets published? I'm fine. I've written an entire novel. If it doesn't get published, I'll find a private publisher, do my own binding, and it'll sit on a shelf. Insha'Allah my kids will read it and understand a little bit about where I'm coming from in life because I put little bits of me all through that text.

I always give excerpts from before page 130, when the twist happens. Here's something after...shorter, so I don't give stuff away. Nisreen just excused herself from her friends, one of whom yelled at Mo pretty badly:

Mo looks back down to Nisreen, who seems to have been waiting for him to make eye contact just to look away. They’re standing close, but there’s no hand holding like he feels there should be. She has her arms crossed. “Sorry about that.”

“What did you tell them?” he blurts, not meaning to, though.

She narrows her eyes. “The truth,” she replies, flatly. “What do you want, Mahmud?”

Mahmud. That’s better. He smiles at her, and her face drops a little, like she’s confused. “Hi, Nisreen.”

Her eyes widen. “Hi,” she almost whispers, bringing her right hand up to her chest like she wanted to wave but thought against it. Mo feels like it’s right so he leans in, but she dodges him and walks a few paces beyond him on the sidewalk. Mo feels like she finds comfort in this dramatic distance so he lets it be for a while before he turns and walks so that he’s just behind her. “Is that all? ‘Cause I can go back to my friends now.”

“Of course that’s not all.” Mo turns so that they’re facing each other again, but she’s looking down at her feet. “Dude, I haven’t seen you in so long, and I haven’t been able to talk to you on the phone—”

“What’s a break, Mahmud?”

“—and I’m not supposed to think about you, but you know how hard that is,

Nisreen?” And it has been hard.

But why has it been hard? Taking a break from what? The suspense...not for me, because I've edited this so many times...

This is like, page 233/280. Muahahaha!

Bedtime!