July 27th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Happy Saturday morning y’all. If you happen to live in my part of the country, you woke to the most glorious day. The sun is shining, there isn’t a cloud in the sky, there is no humidity and there is even a tiny nip in the air. I think it’s about 65 right now. I always think it’s funny. When it hits 65 in March or April, it’s down-right balmy, and now 65 is a little chilly. What silly creatures we are.

The hip got better and I was able to write yesterday. I have about 7,000 words to go and four days to do it. That’s 1,750 a day. As soon as I stopped stressing Corporate Blues wouldn’t be done at 50K and my real goal was 85K, I started feeling much better. Who cares if it isn’t done. The challenge wasn’t to complete an entire book, it was to get 50K words done in a month, and I can do it, no sweat. I am kind of hoping to tell the NY publisher who is calling me on August 20^th that it was finished though. Hopefully I will be able to.

So, did you figure out where the picture from yesterday’s challenge was taken? You’ll get to find out in my challenge response, but that doesn’t mean that is where the photo should have taken you. It may have inspired something completely different, Nova Scotia, a vacation memory, into the past or future, or perhaps to another planet. I’d wish you would post so I can see where it did take you.

Your Last Challenge was:

 

 

I pressed my face to the glass, stared out of the plane’s tiny window as  tears trickled down my cheeks. The sense of coming home overwhelmed me. I know it’s silly and unfathomable to most, considering I wasn’t born here and I had only visited once before, but Ireland calls to me like a siren to a weary sailor. The feeling that this is where I belong makes me give serious consideration to the possibility of previous lives. Why else would this foreign country feel so much like home to me? A feeling, if I was being honest, I never really felt in my “real” home.

I’ve often tried to discuss Ireland, but if the person has not visited Ireland before, it is an exercise in futility. They don’t believe that it actually shimmers when you see it from the air or the green is so green it hurts your eyes, like a blue, blue sky in the summer. They don’t understand walking through the ruins of a five hundred year old crofter’s cottage and still being able to feel the families who had once lived there, around you.

 

I honestly could go on about Ireland for hours, because I do love it so and it really does feel like home to me, but alas, I only had ten minutes to write. I will be participating in the official NaNoWriMo in November (it’s going to be a neat trick with the holiday, but you’ve already guessed I was a glutton for punishment), and I will be writing a story which takes place in Northern Ireland. The best way to describe the story would be a modern fairytale romance, completely different from the other stories I’ve written. Stay tuned, I’m sure I’ll tell you more about it in the months to come and I may even ask for help with the title.

OK, off to camp. I have a lot of writing to do before the house wakes up. Have a great day!

 

Your Next Challenge is:

 

The fair’s in town.

 

You have 10 minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.