thank you, emrys! the book is nearly real!

The only thing more surprising than fiction is real-life. 

2020 started out with an expectant air of new beginnings and optimism:  and every day we were asked to adapt and pivot some more.  As an artist now working from home instead of traveling to art fairs, I found myself spending more time marketing my work online and shipping out a record number of etsy orders.  While I’m grateful, it was so much to keep up with that [finding time for] my writing suffered.

My original intentions for the Alice Conger Patterson Scholarship was to attend a Wordsmith Workshop writers’ retreat— learning from bestselling authors, group critique, and peaceful, picturesque writing time.  Well, 2020 being what it was, that plan was derailed and re-scheduled three times, despite my desperate optimism.

Instead, The Emrys Scholarship Committee graciously let me try another tactic for getting my novel in motion:  hiring bestselling YA author Mary Weber of Cherry Pie Author Services for six months to help me develop healthy writing habits and keep me careening towards a completed book.

you can try and read those index cards and sticky notes all you want; everything changes in rewrites, i promise. ;D

Despite years of independent research into the writing craft, and even workshopping my first 50 pages in a WriteShare Greenville class, I still couldn’t quite figure out how to get all of the book’s parts moving in the same direction.  With Mary’s coaching, I’ve received story guidance, learned the power of chapter-by-chapter index cards, and I now have a real-life first draft!

After this next round of revisions (fingers crossed for just a few more days!!), Mary will give my middle grade manuscript a full developmental edit, with which I can fix it again:  and then begin the exciting work of querying agents! Woohoo!! (As an artist, rejection isn’t that new; art is glorious and subjective. Plus, I’m in it for the longhaul! It only takes ONE YES! *more affirmations on request. ha!)

Finishing the task for a real life full draft has empowered me to write even more stories, and I send many thanks again to the faithful supporters of the literary arts who made this help accessible to me— an artist in the midst of a global pandemic!  What a dream to be that much closer to sharing this magical work with others.

thank you!

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