Can a Synopsis Cause an Aneurysm?

The deadline for the Georgia Romance Writers annual March Workshop is rapidly approaching and I've been sitting here at the computer every single day from before dawn to late afternoon/early evening bleeding over the synopsis for my latest tome. (Working Title: I Spy).

For any of you writers, you know what I'm talking about. Is there anyone out there who wakes up in the morning and says "Whooppee, I get to write my synopsis today!"?? I think not.

They are the literary equivilent of root canal surgery without anesthesia. You're expected to dig down deep and give it all up (all being the entire story) to the editor/agent in about ten pages or so. In ten measly pages you're expected to get characterization, goals, motivation and conflict, theme, and about a gazillion different things down pat for every major character...and make it interesting. I ask you?!?
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Monday we had a whopper storm come blasting through north Georgia. Here in the Atlanta suburbs we dodged a bullet and got a wee bit of sleet mixed with torrential rain. The only reason I mention this is because yesterday morning, I went down to make some coffee and noticed something odd in my dining room.

There was a yellow string running from the kitchen and it stretched tightly against the legs of the table before it disappeared out the dog door. I had my cell phone in hand because I was expecting a return telephone call. Like an idiot I decided to follow and see where this string was going. I stepped outside and saw that it was not string.

It seems that Rockhead Roxy (the mutt dog that DD the Elder adopted then lost interest in and who now calls me Mommy) found a skein of yellow baby yarn. She thought it was great fun to go whooping and hollering through the house with it before heading out the dog door, up the muddy bank and through some small sapling pine trees before she lost interest in it and dropped it at the very top corner of our back yard.

I got this insane notion that I could retrieve the yarn (waste not, want not!). So, still clutching the cell phone in one hand, I attempted to make like a mountain goat and scamper up the hill. I got about oh, one whole step before I slid and fell face first UPHILL.

Now, I'm not a girl who likes to get her hands dirty. I even wear gloves when I pick stuff out of the sink. But there I was, covered in red Georgia clay from feet to cell phone.

We writers have a phrase for heroines who don't think before they act. "She's too dumb to live." Yesterday I, do believe I fell right into that category!