NaNo-isms: When Your Brain Thinks Faster Than Your Fingers Can Type

Oh, I've got a couple of doozies from the last twenty four hours:

• Leaving the keys in the transmission, I park the car in first gear and set the emergency brake.
• I put her rack up on the saddle...

No, it's not a lesbian romance, so quit thinking about Shelby woman-handling another wrangler's rack.  I meant "her saddle up on the rack" just like I meant "leaving the keys in the ignition".  Oy.  It's going to be a long month.

Day Six Update

First, let me say, THANK YOU GLENNA!  Our ten rounds at the range were exactly what I needed today and I'm already looking forward to next week when we splurge and shoot two magazines.

NaNo update: I got not one word written yesterday for my NaNo, instead I worked on a post for Tales from the Trail during my lunch hour at work.  However, I did manage over 2,000 words today, which means I "only" have 18,000 words left in the 20k weekend word challenge.  Maybe I did bite off more than I can chew since I don't have 18,000 words total yet.

Shelby and crew managed to stack fourteen bales of hay, after sending the two Buckle Bunnies packing.  Allie spent the morning gossiping with Ed and Sam, the hay guys, about how she and Shelby were going speed dating.  So far, everyone's managed to make it through lunch.

Truly depressing that so much hard work can be pared down to three sentences.  I'm giving into the headache that has been plaguing me all day and calling it quits.  I'll pick it up tomorrow and hopefully it will make a whole lot of difference.

G'night y'all.

Exhaustion - I Mean NaNo - Update

Finished the day with just over 15,000 words.  Lost my mind and joined a challenge to write 20,000 words between Friday at 4:00 pm and Monday at 7:00 am.  Probably won't be able to write tomorrow, as it's finals day and I'm way behind on my grading, which I only have 24 hours to turn in.

NaNo summary of the day:

Fourteen ton of hay was delivered.  The Buckle Bunnies copped attitude with Shelby and got sent packing.  Allie (Shelby's best friend and live-in cook/nanny) decided that she and Shelby were going to go speed dating in the very near future.

It's kind of depressing how easy it is to boil down all of that hard work into three short sentences.

I'm still trying to figure out which story to write for Tales from the Trail and I've got to get a new post up for Lyon's Roar.  Those posts may be my break from NaNo this weekend.  I've got a couple of things in mind for Mr. Brody's reception dinner to liven up the story a bit again; we'll see what ends up on the page.

NaNo Update, Day Two

I slowed down considerably today, finishing the day with a grand total of just over 13,000 words.  I know, rationally, that of course I wouldn't get almost 10k today - hello - I have to work, but maybe getting off to such a strong start is kind of depressing.  I whipped out the first 9,498 without breaking a sweat.  It also took me hours to do it; hours that I won't have during the week.  All I can hope for is to stay on track during the week and really crank out the words on the weekend.

Summary of today's work:

First full day on the ranch.  Already, half of the girls missed breakfast because they were fussing with their hair and make up or were sleeping until the last second.  Their choice, but I can tell you, they are going to be starving come lunch time.  The first load of hay was delivered and the crew is learning how to stack it in the hay barn.

Yup, that's pretty much what happened in 3,300 or so words today.  Pretty sad that I can boil down that many words into a four sentence summary, ay?  Let's just say that conversations are the best way I've found to pad my word count.  Heck, we haven't even laid in a hundred bales.  I've still got all of the horses to introduce; that should be good for another 3-4k right there.  A couple of lines of description on twenty two horses will add up.

One of the girls in our region has already cranked out more than 20,000 words, which makes me feel like a big ole slacker.  Jay's closing in on 6,000 as I type this and Jordan's last update was about 5,700, so we're all just tooling along.  The trick, they say, is to maintain the enthusiasm for the entire month, not just the first week.  We'll see how it goes.

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.

Off To A Good Start!

Today I'm celebrating two wonderful things! 

First, this is my 100th post.  I spent some time the other night reviewing some of my old posts and thinking, "why didn't I ever keep a diary?".  This blog has become my living diary.  There are lots of memories stored in each of the one hundred little (and some not so little) blurbs about my life I've put up for the world to see.  And, of course, this blog has created two spin-offs: Tales from the Trail (which is featured in Easy Street Prompts' Blog Carnival, 2nd Edition) and Lyon's Roar (which won Easy Street Prompts' Blog Carnival "Must Read" award, 1st Edition).  Really, this blog has created a writing monster.

Second, today is the official 1st day of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.  In order to stay on track to write 50,000 words in thirty days, I have to write 1,667 words per day.  After we got home from Wicked last night, Jay and I plugged in and got started.  I managed to cough up just over 1,700 words before I called it a night and Jay got just over 700 in.  I'm currently at 3,100 words and hope to reach 5,000 today; Jay's goal is 2,500 and he's more than halfway at this point.  The big difference is the speed in which we type.  I'm awfully thankful that I had a "mean" typing teacher in junior high who made us learn how to touch type.  Jay's just enough younger than me that typing wasn't a required class, so he's a two-fingered typist.  Pretty darn quick for only using two fingers, but it still slows him down.

If I have any fellow NaNo reader, my NaNo name is CSWilson and I'd love for you to add me as a writing buddy.  I'm quickly learning that I'm going to need all of the support I can get :)

I'll post some of my finished 5k later today.

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.