It's Almost #NaNoWriMo Time!

NaNoWriMo is right around the corner, and this year, for the first time ever. I know what I want to write. Well sort of. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping a sub-plot takes shape while I write. And I don’t know what point of view the story should be written in. But, my main plot is roughly outlined, and I have a detailed outline of my first chapter and half. By my standards, I’m prepped and ready to go.

I even have a rough synopsis.

Deadly Legacy

Upper YA

Kit doesn't know what caused her parents to become a pair of serial killers, but she worries that the urge to steal someone's life, to watch them die, lies dormant inside of her, and that someday something will cause her to snap and follow in her parent's footsteps. To prevent that from happening, she's frozen her emotions, refusing to feel anything. She convinces herself that as long as she doesn't let anyone connect to her, she'll never feel compelled to hurt anyone.

Lance likes to push things to the limit. It's one of the things that makes him a great cowboy. When he goes to work at her aunt's feedlot, Lance meet's Kit and falls hard. She's pretty, smart, sarcastic, and not afraid to tell him to go to hell. He wants her, and he isn't going to let past scare him the way it has her. He's determined to bring her out of her shell, and help her learn to feel and experience and enjoy everything that surrounds her, that letting go and taking chances can be a good thing.

Neither realize they're being hunted by something more dangerous than Kit's background.

If everything goes according to plan, it will take place in the autumn (I think it has a timeline of about a month) and is going to be set on a cow to calf farm. 

Now, I just have to cross my fingers and hope I can stretch it to 50,000 words. 

Image courtesy of dan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

10/21/12 Six Sentence Sunday and #OctMadWrite

I humbly apologize if I failed to make it to your blog last SSS to read your snippet. Last Sunday I was unexpectedly slammed with work, and stayed busy throughout the rest of the week. 

I'm combining two posts into 1 today, my Six Sentence Sunday Snippet, and my results for Saturday's #OctMadWrite challenge.

Now on to my Six Sentence Sunday snippet. Once again, I'm posting from my YA manuscript, DWARFED, which is so titled because the main character, Grace, is a spunky girl with achondroplasia, a type of dwarfism, who's trying to adjust to life on a Midwestern hog farm. This week's snippet picks up where last week's dropped off. I do apologize, it ends in the middle of a paragraph. You can enjoy more snippets from the great collection of writers participating in this week's blog post visit the official Six Sentence Sunday sign up sheet.

“If,” I don’t like the way Luke emphasizes the word, “she’s not getting enough colostrum, we can bottle feed her, and hope we get enough into her to get her weight up to where it should be. If it’s something more serious … we’ll just have to wait and see. Mostly, it’s up to the pig whether or not she lives.”

            I can’t stop staring at the thin piglet. She’s so small, so thin, and even though she’s in a pen with her litter mates she seems alone, like she’s fighting the whole world. My thoughts wander form the piglet to my parents. 

Now my results for Saturday's OctMadWrite competition. I was able to scratch out 2672 words for Foolish Beauty. For the #6 Challenge my goals for the rest of the year include:

• finish editing DWARFED
• Reach 20,000 words for Foolish Beauty
• Bang out a first draft of Fatal Destiny during NaNoWriMo

Tuesday's #octmadwrite

I did it, the one thing I swore I wasn’t going to do until after NaNoWrMo. I decided to take another past at Foolish Beauty, otherwise known as the, evil historical manuscript that I’ll have to sell my soul to finish manuscript. This will be the third time I’ve started it from scratch, and I’ll figure I’ll plug away at it a little at a time for the next few weeks until NaNoWrMo, and then tuck it away again.

I’m pleased to report that I managed to come up with 994 words today.  I still have some more evening left and am planning to use it to do some editing, plotting, and maybe write a micro fiction.

I also participated in today’s #octmadwrite which was to take the favorite character from a book and incorporate them into my current manuscript. I chose Lucy Pevensie from the Chronicles of Narnia, and free wrote for five minutes. Later I might try to do the same thing with the main character from The Tell Tale Heart.

Jeffery’s spotted Princess Lucy sitting on a low stone wall, her back propped against a tree, and her customary book balanced across her knees. A white goat grazed beside her.           

Lucy looked up from her book and studied his face. “Jeffery,” she said, her tone ever so faintly admonishing. “What did you do?”

            He could lie. The thought flitted through his mind for a brief second. He even felt the words starting to form in his mouth, but at the last moment he simply shook his head. “Your highness, please believe me when I tell you you don’t want to know.”

            Lucy’s head tilted to one side and she studied him, her gray eyes as calm and deep as the sea on a windless day. Jeffery’s heart thundered in his chest. Lucy was the one person in the palace who seemed to see through his easy smile and shenanigans. Sometimes, in moments like this, he suspected she saw straight into his soul. He had no idea what she saw there, and he was afraid to ask.

            Lucy’s nose wrinkled. Her book fluttered to the ground as she jabbed a finger into Jeffery’s chest, poking him with such force he staggered backwards. 

            “You,” she said, her voice laced with excitement and irritation, “have been having an adventure.”