A New Love(s) @sloanebcollins #PlottingPrincesses #amwriting #Yellowstone #GrandTetons #MFRWorg

Last month, I fell in love.

With bears and moose, mountain bluebirds and coyotes, owls and bison.
To clarify, I fell in love with Yellowstone National Park and Grand Tetons National Park. While it was my husband’s third trip there, it was my first.

The above-mentioned wildlife were just a few of what we saw on our adventures in Wyoming. It ranks now as one of my top favorite vacations of all time (and I think I’ve mentioned a time or twelve how much I love Maine, right?). I’d move to Wyoming or Montana in a heartbeat.

It was a vacation that fed my soul. I got to be creative with photography, relax and look at beautiful countryside, and get inspiration for the Cowboy series I’m writing, which is set in Montana. (YES! We saw a real live cowboy rounding up cattle!)

I grew up surrounded by the Franklin mountains in El Paso, and have taken other vacations in and around mountains. The Grand Tetons are now my favorite of all. And I came up with an idea for a series set in that area! I think it has a bit of a unique twist. But I can’t say anything yet…

Working through Writer's Block @sloanebcollins PlottingPrincesses #Nanowrimo #amwriting @OneStop4Writers #MFRWorg

Last month I wrote about doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November, in which authors write a 50,000 novel. In a month. Thirty days. Yes, a whole book, or at least the start of a bigger novel.

All over the world, writers gathered up their notes, laptops, research, and set out on November 1 to begin their newest endeavors. And I was right alongside them. I had just attended a workshop on Scrivener the weekend before (if you haven’t heard of it, Scrivener is an AMAZING software program for writing. I’m hooked on it now!), so I was raring to go. I can set a target word count for the whole project – 50,000 words – and also a smaller target for sprinting (writing as much as you can in a timed interval).

Oops, got off on a side tangent. Back to NaNo. I did great writing for a week. I had a general idea of the scenes I wanted, who the characters are, what the goals, motivation, and conflict are for my hero and heroine.  Then this past weekend, I stalled. 

Every word was a struggle.

So I went back to the basics.  What’s my hero’s greatest fear?  I used the Characters Fears worksheet template on One Stop for Writers and dug deep into Nash, my hero.  And I came away with something golden.  A big fear he has, way down deep.   (Thank you, Angela, Becca, and Lee from OSFW!)