Capturing the Spirit of the Wild West

The Wild West has always been an interest of mine. Ever since I was a little girl, I have wanted to ride the range with the cowboys of old and sleep under the stars. I guess that this love was fueled by my location growing up. To me, Idaho was the center of the Wild West, and I can see that in the landscape of rolling hills and expansive prairies. I always wanted to travel back in time, to go to that historical era.

Two summers ago, I attended a writing camp called Writers at Harriman. At Harriman, I took in creative writing sessions. One day, some other campers and I were tasked with writing a story about a journey. I wrote about a young woman named Virginia Dare. In this piece, Virginia was running from the U.S. cavalry. This assignment inspired me to write more about Virginia in another workshop. In that class, I had to write a life story for a character. No surprise, I chose Virginia.

Virginia’s fictionalized life story was a crazy one. Her mother died giving birth to her and having her father be a cavalry officer didn’t lend itself to a solid homelife. She found solace in her friends, Billy Cavendish and Rebecca Reid. They became involved with outlaws, and a lot of bad stuff happened. (I don’t want to be spoilery.)

I wanted to work on expanding this story for part of my ELI. But after an extensive conversation with the ELI advisor, I decided that historical fiction was too much to do in a semester. I had no historical research to back up my story or to make the world I wanted to create believable. Instead, I chose to create a plot-based outline of the story and put the writing of it on a backburner. I don’t want to do a bunch of research at the moment. Fortunately, the outline lets me see what I want to put in the story, and I can pick it up anytime and write it once I have completed the research. Below is an example of one of the points I wrote for the outline:

• Billy and Virginia are married
• They (Virginia, Billy, Rebecca, outlaws) all went back to Cavendish’s hideout
• Cavendish had a kidnapped preacher there to officiate the ceremony
• Rebecca is in pain (the whole getting shot thing)

The whole outline was written like this. I started with the black bullet points; each pretty much represent a scene. Then, I added the sub-bullet points. These points add detail about what is happening in each scene. The bullet points got sassier and more sarcastic the more I worked on it. But as irrelevant as the points may seem to others, I will use them to inform my writing and make sure that I tell the story I want to tell.

I am a little disappointed that I did not get to write my story as a part of this ELI, but I am glad that I got to lay out the plot. I have another story to write. I am going to focus on that one now. (It’s a fantasy, so I can write without having to worry about historical accuracy.) I don’t think I will be able to finish that story, but at least I can focus on writing it.

The time of the Wild West may be over. And I may never live it, but I will always have Virginia and company as a window into that world.

~Leah N. D.