“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.” ― Neil Gaiman

Haven't heard from me in a while eh?   Remember that story I was writing?  The disturbing one?   Right - well it kind of took over my life.  And since I'm hitting my first low-word count day in weeks, I figured I'd write here instead.  Doesn't *quite* count, but it still keeps the writing concept going.

So I started the story and the words were flowing super-fast.  I was a little disturbed by many of them, but the story was writing itself so I let it.  And I made a goal to myself that I'd do my own little nanowrimo:  50,000 words in 30 days.  Now I've succeeded at that a couple times in the past, but I've always had to fight for it and the results have always been, to put it bluntly, crap.

This writing was good.  I was really happy with it.  And it rapidly became apparent that 50k wasn't going to be a challenge.  Seriously -- I'm still stunned by that.  I was at about 25k at the time, so not sure it'd keep going, but instead I set a rather ambitious goal of 75k in 30 days.  I even set up a spreadsheet (yes, I'm a geek -- if you've been here more than a week or two, you should know that by now!)

And I thought the odds were not good, but hey, go hard or go home right?  The fact that the novel being published this month isn't even that length?  That I've *never* written anything that length?  Irrelevant.  75k in 30 days requires 2500 words per day.  Did I mention I still work ridiculous hours?  And am trying to get my young horse trained enough to pretend to compete at some point this summer?  And am hosting a clinic next weekend?

Now would be a good time to say a HUGE thanks to Steph who took over a ton of barn work, buying me writing hours :)   Thanks Stephy!

And now, for the first day since I started, I didn't make my word count.  Boooo.  In fact, I barely even wrote a paragraph.  Sheesh.  BUT - my count is currently sitting over 73K, and about six days ahead of schedule, so I'm letting it go tonight in favour of sleep.  Yes sleep - remember that concept?  My mc is very good at putting people to sleep >;-P    I have 2000 words left to my goal.  Tomorrow's going to be insane, so we'll see.   And I figure about 5-10k left to actually finish the story, realistically.  So the new goal is to have first draft done in the 30 days, which is right before our clinic next weekend.  hahaha cross your fingers for me!

I even have a plan of sorts.  I've never written with a plan before - I suspect that might be what's slowing me down now.  Three people still need to die, and sadly I've grown rather fond of one of them, so that's unfortunate.  But he did walk in uninvited so this only seems fair. The other two were brought into the story specifically to be killed, so no worries there.  They're not particularly nice people.  I've been keeping a list of random things Googled for this story -- it'll get its own blog post another night :)

****insert mini writing flash here****

YEAH!  Just knocked off another 1000 words :)  hahaha brief spurt of inspiration got the part written after the first two (including the one I liked) were dead and leading to the death of the third.  Sweet.  It's amazing how much better I feel now; I was *not* happy about losing a day so close to my goal.  I'm now less than 1k from 70,000 words!  Woohoo!

And on a completely unmuderous note -- this photo pretty much epitomizes everything I wish I could do on horseback.  Andrew Nicholson, currently in both first AND second place at Rolex, so easy and relaxed he could do it with a beer in one hand and not waste a drop.  Perfect balance, totally soft contact, seemingly relaxed.  And cool enough to be wearing sunglasses *g*  Mine'd fall off.  Guaranteed.   There's another one of him skipping over a massive brush fence that makes it look like he's riding a 2' hunter round.  In awe.  Completely and totally.