When They Ask

A Poetic Summary Brought on by Anxiety

It’s funny. You would think, after so many books, I would get used to having contracts. Signing them and all that. Which really isn’t the terrible part. Signing your words away to be used by someone else. That’s not the scary part. Haha…ha…

No. It’s the beforehand.

The request for the contract.

They ask your name. Where you’re from. What kind of contract you want. Word count. Chapter count. All the stuff. That’s easy. Some even go so far as to ask for the MC’s names, marketing lines, and of course your tags for your story.

It’s always when it comes to…what is your story about? An outline. A summary. We need a short version of 300,000 words and the emotional path your characters take condensed down to where we know that it would sell.

….

….

That is the worst part.

If you have been reading some of my Substack you know that I don’t do outlines. I write by the seat of my pants and throw it all together. I know how to write arcs. I know how to write character development and so I just DO it. Haha. Sometimes I have too many ideas for one story but still. I digress.

It’s just so nerve racking trying to write a summary of a story that is so near and dear to me. The emotions and everything these characters are going through. It hurts. It hurts to condense them down into something that a site would feel like they could promote and others would like.

*sigh*

I did get all three contracts. But the stress of it one night kept me up. Some of you might have seen my late night poetry note.

Usually when I’m stressed, I tend to write. Whether than be poetry or it be an entire story (that’s how The Alpha’s Spitfire Omega came to be). Haha. That night, it ended up being a summary of The Rogue Kings II. Except…in almost a slam poetry kind of way.

Instead of taking the emotions out, like I had to do with the summary, I put them all in. The story in all its glory. But of course, I couldn’t stop there.

I might put some of my poetry on here later. I’ve actually had two poems published while I was in college. But I do also tend to format my poetry very oddly. I like to not only invoke feeling with my poetry, but I like to almost treat the words as art, covering the canvas to where they need to go.

What it doesn’t do, is allow me to format it correctly on Substack. Haha. So, I’m not going to even bother trying. I am putting a photo of the pages down below. That way nothing gets messed up. :)

There are spoilers. Haha. Kinda? I dunno. This IS the entire story. It’s just not worded like that. You may be able to pick up some things. You might not. It’s pretty abstract. There is even a bit of a POV split in the poem, so see if you can see who is who on what side. Haha.

At least, I think it will be enlightening through the story in seeing where we are in the poem. Picking up on certain things.

Anyways, enough chattering. I’ll put the poem below if you are interested.

<3

Mish