Stupid Questions of a Newbie Writer

I do a lot of googling, these days.  What's a pitch?  How about a query?  Do I need an agent?  What is a synopsis... and, holy moly, how the heck long should it be?

The more I read, the worse I feel, to be honest.  Some agents and writer pundit people believe that I need a 'platform'.  I need to already be known to sell anything, but what comes first, here?  People knowing me, and 'hey, by the way, how about my book' or the fact I wrote a story and 'pleased to meet you'?

So do I need to blog so that I show up in a google search?  But what if I run out of things to say (side note: I very rarely run out of things to say, my quota of daily words to get through appears to be very high, much to the horror of my husband, but not all of the things I say are intelligent) and is a deserted blogship floating about on blogger more damaging than one filled with days of blogged rubbish?

Do I need to learn how to use Twitter?  Let me tell you this much - and, Steve Jobs, I'm rolling my eyes towards you, it is very hard without instant and easy access to a hash key.  I need to learn the keyboard shortcut, stat.  I tend to copy and paste one from someone else's tweet, but this system falls apart if I copy anything else.  (If you ever see a tweet of mine with sudden spurt of something that doesn't make sense, I was probably trying to paste in a hash key.)  It really interferes with inserting my little hashtag #WhatYouWishFor.

And back to that synopsis.  I get that it needs to be short.  Really.  I get that it can be dry.  But how short?  I've seen five pages quoted, I've seen one... and I nearly fell out of my chair when I read that.  The five pages was double spaced, but is the one page synopsis also double spaced?  And have I really noticed submission guidelines all differing on this? ;-) I think I might just need a range of synopses.  Cover all my bases.

Do I need a Facebook account dedicated to my writing?  That feels a little too early... I have nothing to brag about yet, nothing to show, beyond "Look at these words I wrote!" and, in all honesty, that's kind of what I do here.

I need to find the Newbie Writer Guide for Dummies.  It  must be out there.  Except then I'd find something that contradicted most of it and this would all start again.

So, I will just leave you with this:

I wrote some words.  They all join together into a story that I really quite like (most days) and someday, I hope, it might be available for you read.

If I can navigate my way through being a newbie with stupid questions.