Garlic Draft Done

Whew! I'm finally done with my 30,000 word draft. And it's only 22,000 words over what I thought it would be. Now comes the concentrated editing time. We'll see how many words survive the cut.

How it all started:
I was sitting in a conference room at the SCBWI-L.A. Working Writer's Retreat in 2007, toying with my main character who was half-Vampire, half-Italian. He loved garlic but was allergic to it. He also had no story. The energy, the creativity flowing through those rooms that weekend sparked my imagination in just the right way and Garlic was born.

About halfway through writing it, the story line changed in a not too subtle way. My main character took off and the story went with him. Then I had to figure out how to get him back. I also realized the original idea of the main story arc would not work. It wasn't strong enough. New characters were born, a new conflict arose, and the growth of the main character took an abrupt turn.

So now I am cleaning it up, smoothing it all out and checking that the story line that came to be is clear throughout the whole manuscript. Wish me luck!

Growing The Website

I finally got some time to add a few pages to my website.

http://sarahlaurenson.com