Busy Day And A Big Goal Met

Whew!  The day's winding down and I'm happy to say that I not only met my goal of 5,000 words, but I obliterated it and I'm more than halfway (well, barely more) to my second 5,000 today.  I was thinking that 10,000 words would be a lot to post here, so I'm just going to give you an overview of today's work.

The wranglers arrived at 3 Heathens Ranch for Wrangler Boot Camp.  Ten women, mostly young girls, arrived bright eyed and bushy-tailed to compete for four full-time positions at the ranch.  After a couple of years doing hiring the tradional way, Shelby came up with the idea of Wrangler Boot Camp.  The applicants arrive to do what the restaurant industry calls a stage, a working interview, for a week.  And then at the end of the week, the four top applicants are offered the job.  Some of the things the applicants will be required to do:

• unload and stack three hundred fifty eighty pound bales of hay,
• clean and oil tack for twenty two horses,
• de-worm and vaccinate twenty two horses,
• spend some serious saddle time learning the trails and the horses

Also, we got a glimpse into Shelby's past and find out how Allie, her best friend, came to live with her and her three heathens at the ranch.

Surprisingly, at one point while I was writing Shelby's past, I made myself freaking cry.  WTH?  But I wiped my tears and got over it.  Hmmm.  Damn RCC putting me in touch with the softer side of GunDiva.

The Final Countdown...

There are less than 12 hours before the beginning of NaNoWriMo and I can't tell you how excited I am.  I can't sleep because of all of the ideas floating around in my head.  One of more brilliant ideas (I think) was to go to Google Earth and get a picture of the mountain meadow that is Shelby's home.  I knew what I wanted and where it was, in fact, it's so clear in my mind that it was a little surprising not to see all of my buildings already laid out.

This is actually the property at Wild Basin Lodge, but I took it over for 3 Heathens Ranch.  The St. Vrain River runs across the top of the picture (N-S).  The Wild Basin Lodge does not exist in my book, so pretend it's not there at the top of the picture.  The ranch house, barn, bunk house and corrals are in the meadow.  The rest of the property will have riding trails and lead to the National Park.

Another one of my more brilliant ideas came just as I was falling asleep last night, but I can't tip my hand yet.  It will end up being my opening chapter, which I'll post tomorrow.

My goal for tomorrow is 5,000 words - well above the minimum 1,667 per day that is suggested to stay on track.  My hope is for a strong beginning so that on nights when I have to work until 10:00 pm, I've got some wiggle room if I can only crank out a few hundred words.

I do have to say, I'm a little nervous about juggling three different genres at the same time.  I still intend to post to Lyon's Roar (action-ish) and Tales from the Trail (creative non-fiction) while writing my NaNo, which is romance.  I'm not sure where all of this writing has suddenly come from - I guess it just feels "right" to try out all of these genres to see which one "fits".  Please forgive me if my other two blogs suffer in the face of my NaNo, but I'm really going to try hard to keep that from happening.