The Final Draft

I used or abused this blog to let you know about the latest progress in my writings. Well, my first book is about to be wrapped up. No, you won't find it anywhere at a bookstore near you, not in many months yet.
What I'm talking about, is that I am about to complete the final draft of this 100,000-word book. Is it a masterpiece? No way. But it's as good as I can get it now.
Before I sent it out to publishers, I still have to write three other pieces. The query letter to the publisher, which is where I get a chance to make my work interesting to them. In other words, I have to convince them that enough people will want to read my book that they - the publishers - can make money out of it.
Then I have to write a synopsis, so that the publishers actually feel like plodding through the whole hundreds of pages. The synopsis is often a writer's nightmare, because he has to condense all of those 300 or 400 pages into maybe just one page. Sounds simple, but it isn't. What do you leave out but still manage to keep the whole page exciting?
The third element I still have to write, is my biography. That should be simple. You mention the things that are relevant to your work. If you have written a thriller - like I have - you probably won't be mentioning in your biography that you have a unique collection of conch shells. Unless conch shells play a crucial part in your book. If the thriller is set in Morocco, and you've spent the past five or twelve years living there, then mention that, absolutely.
The next stage I will have to face, beginning next week, is how to get the whole thing out of my computer and into the publisher's hands.
But that is for the next episode in my writing adventure.
Sean Moss for S2S.