patinagle16 | Gotta Read: The Divine Miss Snark

For those who haven't found her yet, Miss Snark, the literary agent maintains a blog where she answers questions from writers. She's prolific, profane, and funny as hell, but more important, she's informing writers about how an agent thinks. I've been reading her blog for a couple of months now and it's simply wonderful.

Here's a quote from one of Miss Snark's posts today (in answer to a question from one of her readers):

"The purpose of a synopsis is NOT to give you a sense of style and flow of the manuscript. It's to tell you what happens and who's important. The first five pages of your manuscript should convey your style."

This kind of information is gold. I wish Miss Snark had been around when I was first starting out as a writer. She would have kept me from making a lot of mistakes.

There are other agents blogging. Agent 007, who used to be an editor, is one. (Miss Snark pointed some others out - check the post for 10/14.) They all have good things to say, but I think Miss S gives the best bang for the buck. (The buck being my time, after I've written my daily pages, thank you.)

Speaking of which, eight pages today.