Merry belated Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Zoey and me.

Hope that everyone had a great Christmas and spent some quality time with loved ones. The DPH and I took it easy this year, which was wonderful! I am so blessed to have such a great husband. Lots of good food, great gifts, and time with family.

Showing

To start off this post, let me shamelessly plug a contest that getmyfix.org is having. They are giving away a custom Hayward hunt coat. To be honest, I read about the contest/brand on Tucker the Wunderkind's blog and did a little research on the Hayward line. I am not in the loop as far as current fashions go (both equine and regular life, sad to say!) so I had not heard of this company. If you ever show hunters, jumpers, etc. then their FB page/website/etc. is definately worth a visit! I may not know exactly what is in style but I have been seeing some gorgeous (and I mean GORGEOUS!) hunt coats at the shows. Gone are the days where you got to choose from navy with subtle blue pin striping, navy with subtle red pin striping, or a nice charcoal. There are options up the wazoo now. I personally am coveting a chocolate coat with a subtle turquoise lining. Yum. Check it out and visit getmyfix.org to enter the contest!


I am hoping that I will get to show some this spring. I get really frustrated at times because I do not know how to get from Point A (where I am now...starting these young horses) to Point B (getting to show at least a little) to Point C (being a successful trainer). The answer seems simple enough; get the young horses to the point where I can show them and go from there. The problem would be that all of the young ones that I ride are sale horses. Generally, we sell them right about the time that they get to be pleasant to ride. This does not bode well for getting them to the show ring. It is also hard to try to get back into showing successfully with really green horses. I know, I know...complain, complain, complain. It is just one of those days!

On top of all that, my special extended NaNoWriMo word count is sucking big time. (Becky-hope yours is going much better!). I should have written quite a bit last night but I ended up cleaning out one of the bedrooms in our house. I have a huge pile of stuff to throw away and a huge pile of stuff to go to the local charity resale shop. Unfortunately, all that stuff = no words added to the word count. Darn. Maybe tonight?

Writer's Block

I have the hardest time coming up with a catchy title. I read other people's blogs and turn green with envy over their witty headings. Unfortunately, I may be doomed to always have boring blog entry titles.

As predicted, I failed utterly at NaNoWriMo. My final count was 25,232. Part of me is rather impressed that I made it halfway there. The sad part is that I think I had enough plot to carry me to the magical 50,000. Just not enough hours (or motivation to give up sleep for a contest where the only competitor was myself) in the day to make that happen. I have not opened the file on my laptop since then. Part of me was pretty disappointed. At first, I felt like I had written all these words so quickly and had sacrificed quality for the sake of quantity. Whenever I have sat down to write something in the past, I hem and haw over finding the perfect prose to convey my character's thoughts and emotions. Eloquence reigns and the editing that I have to do later is non-existent.

That is not the case for my 25,232 NaNoWriMo words. Not the case at all. I need to run rampant through the pages with a red Sharpie.

On the other hand, 25,232 words is the most progress I have ever made on a novel. I know that I can edit things and clean them up at a later date. Maybe what I need is to just write for the sake of writing. Word vomit, if you will. At least I have that many words to work with and edit now.

Who knows. Maybe I will go ahead and try to hit the 50,000 word mark. It is not technically NaNoWriMo anymore but I can set my own goal. By the end of December, I am going to have 50,000 words. I will update my progress here. Hold me to it, fellow bloggers.