Counting words and synopses

I've just added a couple of word count meter things to my blog - over there -->

Book 2's word count is rather pathetic - but that does include deleting a lot of Book 2 last week (but, let's be honest, I'm talking 1000s, not tens of thousands of words... I have been a bit slack).

The good news is that I do now have a synopsis for Book 2! I entered my first ever US contest, and a synopsis was needed. It's a rubbish synopsis in as far as how it is written (it's unjudged in this competition) but I'm pretty happy with the story. And amazed I managed to wrestle it down from nearly 3000 words to 1200 to meet the contest requirements :)

I still need to work with it a LOT more, and I'm sure it will evolve as the story is written, but it's so exciting to have a road map. For years I thought I was a pantser, but I failed dismally at that. Sadly while I can pants cute scenes, I certainly can't pants compelling, emotional, believable motivations and conflicts. Damn!

So plotting it is for me. For Book 1, it wasn't until I wrote the synopsis (after it had taken me nearly two years to write the first 5 chapters) that I was able to actually finish the book - and then it only took a couple of months. Knowing exactly what is coming next seems to help strangle my ever present doubt demons.

So - what are you - plotter or pantser? And is there anyone else out there who - like me - finds the dreaded synopsis actually (gasp!) helpful?

So much to learn...

I was reading Rach's latest blog post, and one sentence kind of freaked me out:

I've learnt that he needs a goal that would still be there if I removed the heroine from the equation.

It freaked me out, because just as I thought I was starting to get the whole GMC thing, here's something else I had no idea about. I have the same problem - my hero's goal is connected to the heroine. Sure, I could add in a bigger goal, but it would add a new thread that needs to be weaved into the book, and therefore add even more complexity. I'm not convinced the book needs it.

I'm not doing the online course that Rach is doing at the moment, so can anyone shed any light on the "hero needs a goal unrelated to the heroine" thing? What do you think about this rule? Do I ignore it at my own peril?