Back to work

Well it’s a new year and I am back to work. It was great to have 2 weeks to sleep-in, nearly overdose on food and football and just to relax. One of the few real perks of being a public school teacher. Next year will be my 40th in front of the class, wow. With a New Year comes New Year’s resolutions—mine, to write more. I have a tendency to get in and out of the writing groove and looks like right now, I am in. My YA modern western mystery is once again moving along. I am hoping for 40 to 50 thousand words and am closing in on 30 thousand right now and writing, at a pace of, nearly a thousand a day.

Just a little excerpt from the chapter I am presently working on. (First Draft)

Jimmy heard the shot, flattened out in the sand of the dry creek and tried to quickly scoot backwards down the washed out canyon. He had not made it the twenty feet to the bend in the old creek bed when a startling reality came to him, he had not heard a slug hit and there was only one shot, again. Were they trying to scare him off, again? Or had someone shot at something else, maybe not him at all. His mind started to clear as he rethought the last thirty or so seconds. He slowly crept back to the spot where he had watched for the past hour or more. What he saw was strange or as Robert would say, “there is some weird stuff going on—supernatural---wo-oow-wo?”
The older, stockier, of the two men he had been watching was hitching the pick-up to the back of his Suburban. In what seemed like only seconds he brushed his hands on the back of his blue jeans, lit a new cigar and appeared to be laughing out loud. He flipped his match stick into the canyon, climbed into the Suburban and headed down the trail, but this time north, not south.
Jimmy sat back down, to rest or maybe to think. Possibly he needed to do both.

Can not wait to see what happens next--I will have to keep on writing.

Time to get back to work

Today I am back working on my Western Mystery. I still like it but maybe not as much as I need to. This week I came up with an astonishing 107 words, and that’s in three writing efforts. I hope to write 500 or so today and if I can stop watching football on TV I could make it. This story may be my toughest undertaking as an author. It covers only about ten days of time but has several historical flashbacks, one to 1755. The amount of research has slowed me down. But I will make it.

Now with an old bit of cowboy wisdom I will go back to work.

“Never miss a good chance to shut up.”