October Novel Prep Challenge

So, I'm sitting here, mulling over which story from my cache to write. I started fretting and hyperventalating last night, which was silly. Why should I do that to myself?


This morning, I got up and showered, fed the dogs and cats, and tiptoed around, trying not to trip over the Catahoula hound, and trying not to wake the man. I've been going through a few changes in my life over the past couple of months, such as getting engaged, buying a house, going to court to give testimony on an armed robbery where I work... it's been insane. I don't tell all this to shock or get sympathy. I tell this because everything affects the way I write, what I write about, and how I feel while I am writing. Like most of you, I use experiences in my own life to shape what I write and make it believable, even when I work with Steampunk or Fantasy.

Well... back to this morning. As I was getting ready, the rising sun was beginning to glow through my window, and I became calm. I felt a little bummed because it's a beautiful day on the farm, my fiance has a day off, and I'm stuck in my office, thirty miles from home all day, but at least it's a beautiful day on the farm and I get off work at 4:15.

As I headed down the county road toward the highway, I started the CD on deck and remembered why I started writing Wicked Wolves in the first place. I remembered the original inspirations behind it. I remembered the way the town looked in my mind when I created it, and realized that the reason I have turned against it. Too many of the most important elements in the story have changed, and certainly not for the better


Here's the eerie part about the story of the story: It started in high school. I began creating this story when I was around 17 years old, spending free time in Music Theory to write fiction when I wasn't writing music. I still have the notebook I used, somewhere in my mother's house. I had a vision of the way the small town should look, surrounded by farms with clusters of old trees and a railroad track.... I think I even had sketches in that old book.

Now, fast forward 15 years and you have me moving out to the country, 30 miles from the town I grew up in. In Texas, that's "just down the street", but it still changes the landscape a bit. In Round Rock, where I grew up, there aren't many farms left. They've all been made into apartments, grocery stores, and Texaco stations. But the highway I grew up near winds east into towns like Hutto and Taylor, and an itty bitty map-dot called Thrall. Technically, my address is Taylor, but I live closer to the map-dot, and oddly, that map-dot is nearly identical to the town I created in my mind. As long as I have lived in the area, I had never been through Thrall until I moved there. On the edge of town, before a bend, there is a service station where everyone seems to gather. Across the road is one of two cotton gins within five or so miles of my house. And then, there's the main county road that takes you to my house.

As I headed south to the highway on that county road, with the sun nearly blinding me from the east, glistening off grassy hills where cows fed, and a big, proud, Black Angus bull stood, I let the music flow through my mind and remind me where the ideas came from. As quickly as the sandpipers darted away from my truck, I removed all the excess "junk" from the story, and went back to what the story used to be.

It was like a cleansing... a baptism, of sorts, for my writing. It went in to the waters of my subconsious mind, and came out clean and sparkling. I took a deep breath, smelling freshly plowed fields and cattle (a comforting smell to me) and I smiled.

I'm excited, and I am back to writing the book that I so tirelessly spent the last month planning out. I'm going to take today and go back through my notes and edit out the clutter, and give NaNo my best shot.

I hope everyone has a great Halloween, and I wish us all a lot of luck in completing NaNo, starting tomorrow!!!