The fireflies froze in their lazy circles.  It seemed they waited for an answer, too.  My mouth dried up, probably because it had been hanging open in surprise for the past several minutes.   

I blinked.  Once.  It was promising, that flutter of movement.  It was reassuring to discover I hadn’t died of shock, after all.

“Claire?”  Liam asked.  Everything about Liam screamed his confusion:  The hesitation in his voice, the way his eyebrows pulled together over his dark eyes, the way he drew his hand away from my chin and tucked it in the pocket of his dress pants.  “Say something.  Please?”

He was looking for words, noises to come out of my mouth--my still-hanging-open mouth--that would amount to something.  That was asking a lot from me, a girl who always said the very worst thing at entirely the wrong time.  Besides, my brain swirled with all kinds of thoughts, none of them an answer.  I shut my mouth and swallowed, then turned back to look over the gently rolling surface of the pond.  

Liam waited for my response, but I remained silent, unless you counted my deafening thoughts.  I felt sure that anyone in a five-mile radius could hear them loud and clear.  If he heard anything, he didn’t let on.  

“Edwin’s lawyers requested that I come back and help wrap up things with the sale of the stable.”

I dropped my gaze to where my freshly-manicured fingers rested on the smooth wood railing of the gazebo.  “I don’t know what to say, here,”  I croaked, finally.

A puff of air escaped his lips as he ran his hand through his shaggy brown hair.  “It’s okay.  Forget I asked,” he sighed, turning away.  As usual, my reaction wasn’t what he hoped for.  You’d think he’d be used to that by now.  I related so much better to my horses than people, even the man I loved.

Yes, I loved him.  That much I knew for sure--but marriage?  Marriage.  Like forever, forever.  I’d just graduated from high school a few months ago. There was a lot of forever left ahead of me.  Still, he’d just spent the day pampering me with a trip to the spa, the beautiful dress I now wore, and dinner at the most amazing spot in town.  He deserved something more.  Maybe he deserved somebody more.  

Tonight I did it.  I finally completed--in 2-1/2 months--what I was hoping would only take me one.  But who's counting, anyway?

Book 2 Draft 1 is complete at 50,004 words.  It is not perfect, but I never expected it would be.  Show me someone who writes the perfect first draft, and I'll point out that it probably took them 20 years to do it. 

There is a lot of smoothing to be done, details to be added, and probably I will end up with a completely different story when I eventually go through and do a second draft of the thing.....  Kind of like when I did a second draft of my FIRST book.  But right now I feel better about this one.  I think that's just denial.  Time and space will reveal how horrible it actually is.  For the moment, I am proud. 

Thank you to the hundreds of people who endured my word count posts on Facebook.  I know it is one of the many reasons you hide me in your newsfeed, and I love you still.  Don't expect me to like the accomplishments you are proud of, but we're still okay.  Haha.  But, seriously, thank you for your encouragement--especially those who have no idea what I'm talking about most of the time.  Yes, I realize that's most of you.

(Is it weird that I still get surprised when people say, "You're writing a book?"  I've kept it this big secret and all.... ;-)  )

And even though I'm not 100% he deserves it, I'd like to say thank you to my amazing husband.  He's my biggest fan, always, and yet he gives me so much grief about my starting on a second book when I haven't published the first.  There's a method to my madness this time, dude.  Take a chill pill.  Just for your impatience, maybe I'll start writing installment three.

The flu has made me testy, my bad.

Tomorrow--today, officially--I will rest and do whatever it is when I'm not worried about self-imposed deadlines.  It likely involves mountains of laundry and even bigger mountains of pet fur lurking in every corner of the house.  Exotic, I know.

Unless I decide to do something really crazy like enter this contest, in which case I would have to forego said piles of things and figure out stuff I've never done before (pitch and picking an excerpt).

Tonight, I sleep.

... or I'd like to think it is.

I hit 40k words just a little bit ago.  Finally.  I almost went to bed early because I've been dragging all day.  Instead, something told me that it would be a perfect night to check out the Write Or Die desktop program I bought before Christmas.

The premise of Write Or Die is that you can set goals--crazy or easy, or somewhere in between--for your writing, and if you don't hit those goals, then you are punished.  The punishments range anywhere from violins screeching in the background to words deleting themselves from the screen.  If you are idle for too long the screen fades from pink to red, which I found to be really annoying. So tonight, I managed to write about 1084 words in an hour, which is  some sort of record for me.  I'm excited about this new gadget to hopefully motivate me to get to the finish line.  I'm only 10k off now!  Yay!

And now I am falling asleep at the keyboard.  That's the price you pay for an hour of super-speed.

Dance-Off! 

Okay, not really.  It just sounded exciting.  I'm still in my pajamas weighing the pros and cons of doing anything else besides nursing my current mug o' joe.  So far, nothing has been so important that I've moved.

The ringing in of 2013 was anti-climactic.  Some tummy issue sidelined me from my family's annual karaoke/card game party, so I curled up in bed with my laptop, a tall glass of water (I'm a lush), and a couple of Twilight movies I haven't seen in ages but try to avoid watching when my husband is around.  My husband is my biggest fan and would sit through a Twilight marathon if I begged him to--and secretly, he would like it just a little bit.  That's the kind of thing he holds over my head, though.  Eventually I pay a price for such injustices to his manhood.

But, getting back to New Year's Eve...  The house was mine.  Empty.  Friends, I have never lived alone.  Never.  Maybe someday my own voice will echo back to me and I will miss the sheer chaos.  For now, the solitude is as close as I will come to straight-up magic.  My family's party could have gone for a week solid, and it would have been the next best thing to laying on a beach somewhere with a fruity drink in my hand.  Sadly, the boys returned at about 11:30p.m., and we flipped on the t.v. ten minutes before midnight only to see Carson Daly and his female co-host holding a conversation they wouldn't shut up about until 10 seconds before midnight.  Horrible--I want Dick Clark back. 

Anyway...

Uninterrupted, I managed to plunk out a little over 1900 words, reaching my re-re-revised goal of 38k by the end of 2012.  Shortly after the ball dropped, bringing in 2012, I was snuggled up with my laptop.  A year later, I am in the same place, same characters, different story.  My eyes opened this morning, and my first thoughts were, "Now what happens with my characters?"

Well, no.  My first thoughts were, "Coffee.  Where's my coffee?"  But, the two kind of go hand-in-hand, so it's almost the same thing.  The point is, clearly I am where I am supposed to be.

The end of the world didn't happen, not yet, unless we're already smack dab in the middle of the zombie apocalypse and we just haven't noticed.  So what are you going to do to bring yourself to the place you want to be?  I'm not talking resolutions, because there is something about a resolution that screams "You know I'm too hard.  Quit already."  It has to be something else--something you go for with fire, because failing isn't an option if you ever want things to change for the better.       

Maybe you're stuck on a big picture, when focusing on a single baby step is enough to begin.  Every journey starts with a single footstep... or keystroke... or glass of water.  Take that single footstep every day and by this time next year, you're at least 365 paces closer.  But I bet you're closer than that because momentum in one area of our lives tends to push us to take a step or two (maybe more!) along the way. 

So tell me what your journey is, and one baby step you'd like to take to get there.  Can I help you, even if it's just cheering from the sidelines as you baby-step your way through a year?

"Yeah, I was totally robbed.”  A voice behind me sneered.  “Claire only won champion because of that stupid flat class.  Oh, and because she’s a Darling, obviously.”  

The sudden, crushing power of my grip on my boyfriend Liam’s hand caused him to glance over at me.  I didn’t turn to meet his dark eyes, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of even a twitch of response.  Instead, I riveted my gaze to the uneven surface of the path we were traveling towards our stabling area.  

She raised her voice, obviously wanting to be sure I heard.  “It’s so crazy what you can buy these days.”

Your new boobs, for one, I smirked.  If I hadn’t been representing my family’s riding stable, Hope Creek, at the horse show, I would have said it out loud.  Her reaction would have been worth the catfight that was sure to follow.

“But I guess I’d be winning all of my classes, too, if daddy dearest bought me any horse I wanted.”  The others giggled, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to identify them.  Celestine (though everyone on the circuit knew her as “Tini”) Lowenstein and her her stuck-up shadows Ariana Llewellyn and Maria Gaudio.

I couldn’t stop the laugh that burst from me at the sheer craziness of her statement.  Tini, of all people, was in no position to point fingers and accuse anyone else of being spoiled rotten.  She was practically the poster child for privileged children.  And, besides, I knew for a fact her horse, Sloan, cost more than most of the homes in my hometown.  I knew that because her daddy waltzed into my family’s place, Hope Creek Farm, and plunked down a small fortune--Sloan’s purchase price--without so much as batting an eye... but who was keeping score?

“Yeah, “ one of the other girls offered.  “Claire could be dead and Tally would still make her look amazing.”  The three of them giggled.

Even though it was meant to be an insult, I nodded my head in agreement.  Finally, they’d gotten something right.  My Thoroughbred mare, Tally, could make anyone look like they knew what they were doing.  Too bad for Tini and her henchwomen, I guess.  As long as Tally was around to make up for my atrocious riding skills, they would continue finishing behind me in the rankings.  

Before Tini could spout off anything else ridiculous or hateful, I steered Liam to the right, down the long row of temporary stalls that led to Hope Creek’s stabling area.  The three girls kept walking, but I could almost feel the burning from their demonic eyes on my back.

“What’s their problem?”  Liam asked when he was sure the girls were out of earshot.  The thickness of his Irish accent made him sound way more irritated than I knew he really was, and I found it completely adorable.

“There’s no problem.  That’s just Tini,”  I sighed, releasing my grip on Liam’s hand so I could recapture the wayward strands of sandy brown hair with a ponytail holder.  At least, I didn’t think there was a problem.  With a petty girl like Tini, it was hard to say.  The fact I was currently breathing the same air was probably enough reason for her to be ticked off.

Until last week, Tini and I didn’t need to worry about each other.  Last week I changed all of that by standing up for myself.  After 18 years of riding and working for my parents and their clients, I decided that it was time for me to compete and make a name for myself in the horse world.  It’s a funny thing about following your dreams--most people would rather you didn’t because it messes with theirs.  People are selfish.

****

Felt like sharing a little bit from the first draft of my second [untitled] book. It's rough because it hasn't yet been edited, so forgive its imperfection! Hope you enjoyed it! <3

Here I am, the first morning of December.  Up too early on a Saturday despite having only one child in the house at the moment (two if you count my husband) who is still sleeping under a thick cover of Angry Birds and purring kitties. 

I've been awake for an hour on the insistence of my bladder and that of the doggers.  I don't mind because I have much to unravel from the knotted plot lines of my novel.  My brain is not yet caffeinated enough to dig in fully, but the day hasn't stolen away all of my energy, so I'm not fighting drowsy-brain, either.  All week I've struggled to write because I've been the only adult in the joint, and by the time I get everyone settled enough so I can sit down and think it's 10 p.m. and I'm nodding off at the computer.

So...  National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) ended at 11:59 p.m. last night.  Participants were supposed to hammer out 50,000-word novels in 30 days.  I was participating in NaNoWriMo, therefore I was supposed to ring in December with 50,000+  words for my latest novel.  Somehow I squealed into the finish line with a blistering 28,036 words, just over half of my goal.  On the one hand, I'm disappointed that I fell short by so much.  It's not like I had unrealistic goals--I wrote a book in a month last year, so I knew that it was a huge undertaking but something I'd been successful at previously.  This time around, I guess I wasn't as interested in writing just to write, and maybe I stifled my creativity by trying to plan things out too much.  My second draft from last year's NaNoWriMo novel is mostly unrecognizable from what I spewed out onto the page the first time around, and it took, literally, blood, sweat, and tears to make it into something more, well, less crap-like.

And, confession-time, I rode my ponies a lot more than I probably should have and soaked in as much sunshine as I could before winter hits and the ground freezes and thaws, then freezes all over again.  There'll be plenty of hours to write then, hermitted in my house in my bubble of fleece.  I welcomed two doula babies this past month and met with several expectant families.  When friends asked me to go places and I wanted to take part, I did.  No regrets--well, except for missing my goal.  Ha.

I'm trying to be more positive about the missing of this lofty goal, telling myself I'll be happier to have taken a little bit more time with it.  The process of writing subsequent drafts or revising won't suck quite as much..... but that darn number bugs me a little bit.  Okay, a lotta bit.  It's just a number, but I knew I was capable of it.  I set so very few goals for myself, and fewer that I really care about reaching.  To write 28k words on any subject could be considered impressive, I guess.  However, the average reader can skim through that many words in the matter of an hour, if they really wanted to. 

My new-and-improved goal is to reach 50k (or the end of this novel) by January 1st, 2013, should the Mayans be way off on this end-of-the-world business.  This is NaNoTwoMo, and I may be on my own with this, the lone writer striving for that elusive word count amidst the holiday chaos, I don't know.

I will do this.  I've got to.

I'm 5071 words in to book #2, cleverly titled "Hope Creek Book 2" until I come up with something better.

Nevermind that I should be 1500 words further.

Nevermind that I have no clue where I'm going in the immediate future with this.

Nevermind that the inner editor won't shut her yap because I'm still in editing mode.

Nevermind I shouldn't be blogging because there's a novel to be fleshed out.

I hate playing catch-up, but I love the feeling of that goal number.

A year ago I'd not quite finished the first draft of my novel.  If I recall correctly,   the bulk of my writing took place near the end of July and most of August 2011.    The draft wasn't complete, so I dribbled bits and pieces here and there until I finally felt it was complete in December.  Nearly 69k words, a surplus from the 50k I'd been shooting for initially.  Thousands of attempts to make something readable--a feat considering I'd sat down at my tiny HP netbook with no story and no direction.  Crazy what has happened in my life since then.

This year I'm going into National Novel Writing Month with an improved second draft under my belt.  This time, my biggest fear is going into this thing blind again.  I love writing, but forcing myself to spend months ripping apart and stitching back together the old with the new feels less like writing and more like playing Dr. Frankenstein.  Outlining and planning are two of my weakest points, I'm already aware, but even the crudest of ideas are a step up from blank pages and an oppressive deadline.

Scrivener is a snazzy program for writers who are in the drafting/research phase of a novel.  They offered a nice discount for 2012 NaNoWriMo participants (and something like 50% off for those who meet their 50k goal), so I hopped onto that bandwagon.  This blustery, miserable day was spent navigating the tutorial in an attempt to demystify the program.  Now I kind of have a clue what some of the features do instead of being convinced I'd wasted my dough on something I'd never figure out.  Plus, the guy who compiled the tutorial wrote like he was British, which is always fun to read.

Another positive:  This morning the name of the next big antagonist came to me, I don't even remember how.  Out of curiosity, a few minutes ago I looked up the meaning of her name and it means "heavenly".  That's pretty funny because she certainly believes she is God's gift to mankind.

I wish those minor accomplishments were enough to say I was ready for the start of this next journey, but I know it's not. 

Two days to make some plans.  Scary.