You heard it here first: The Carver is now a finished rough draft! Standing thick at 112K words, the fun work is about to begin… taking a red pen to it, carving it up, shaving it down, being merciless with extra words and hopefully condensing it into something that will catch an agent’s eye someday in the near future.

Special thanks to: graduate school! For giving me incredibly boring obligations that make it so easy to procrastinate and escape into my little fantasy land with Enzo and Pietro (whom I can’t wait for everyone to meet someday…). Writing isn’t an easy hobby by any means, but it’s a little easy to find motivation when you have comprehensive exams and final papers staring you in the face 😉

Another special thanks to: Alicia Ramirez, for being the first to read and giving me mounds of feedback after every few chapters. They say you need to write the story you want to read, tell the story that you have inside of you, and ultimately write for yourself. This is definitely a story that I’m excited about, but it’s even more fun to have somebody else get excited about it with me and to give me honest feedback that will improve it.

And another special thanks to: Camp NaNoWriMo! No, I didn’t write this first draft in a month (it took me 3), but I’m glad I found a resource that encourages writers to set goals for word count and to get lost in their imaginations for a while. Camp NaNoWriMo assures writers that what they’re doing is important, and many amazing stories have been birthed from their cause! (Marissa Meyer’s Cinder comes to mind right now, which I’m reading to get a feel for other fable retellings and crossovers in contemporary literature. Great stuff so far!)

More updates to come on The Carver’s progress, what it’s like to edit and revise the unmerciful pumpkin guts out of your brainchild, and get into querying agents… there’s still a long road ahead! For now, I’ve passed a mile post, at least. Pop some champagne with me!