Day 1: 1,667 words

"Damn bleedin' sling," He said as the waves of the Pacific Ocean muffled his thick Irish accent.

Ever since he hurt himself, Stephen Farrelly was biting at the bit, as the Americans would say, to get back into a WWE ring again but his shoulder injury had cost him six months of injury leave. And as a WWE superstar, his passion was to be wrestling in a ring in front of thousands of people, millions more over the TV, but he was stuck back home in St. Augustine, Florida. Not to mention, the sling he was forced to use was starting to drive him stark raving mad.

So the only thing for Stephen to do was go for a walk, not that sitting around and getting fat in front of the TV was the best option for a pro athlete like him to do. On this particular day, November First of 2013, he set out down the beach near his nice home in a gate community. The air was brisk, slightly chilly, especially early in the morning like it was. Clouds floated by over the brightening blue sky as the sun rose in the east, towards his left as he walked the beach. Walking the coast was something he picked up back in his life in Dublin, Ireland. A major port city as Dublin was, and a tourist destination, the cliffs and the beaches around Dublin was not usually seen as enticing to any tourist. It was his peace of mind.

Lost in thought of his homeland, Stephen sighed and kept going. One foot in front of the other, that's all he had to do. And then his right foot hit something, and the momentum of his walk nearly propelled him head over heel into the soft sand, probably would have injured his shoulder more but it didn't. He did manage to catch himself before he did so. And when he realized that it was a backpack he had tripped over, a familiar one at that, he looked up.

Hidden behind big round glasses and a mass of bright blonde hair, snuggled into an old sweatshirt belonging to his favorite rugger team, sat a girl, a lass really. And behind those glasses he saw her eye grow big as she stopped typing away at her Surface Tablet that was perched on her lap.

"Sally, that you?" He asked, tilting his head down to look at her.

Of course it was her. The poor thing was forced to interact with him by her father when David Gallagher had to work late. Turned out that the girl had a fondness for soccer and rugby hence why he had given her that sweatshirt.

"Uh, yeah, it's me." She clicked some keys on the click-on keyboard to her tablet before proceeding to turn off the small device. "My therapist told me that I had to start going out."

"That's good. But why the beach?" He asked, glancing down at the things around her. "What's all of this stuff?" Stephen motioned to her slightly opened backpack. It was jam packed with books, no titles in which he could see.

"They are just reference books to something that I'm working on. It's nothing really." She said, reaching over to close the bag.

"May I sit with you for a spell? That is if you don't mind."

"Sure, I, I guess that's okay." She nodded.

Sally Gallagher was unlike a lot of other eighteen years olds Stephen knew, not that he knew any per se. But she was oddly grown up for being eighteen, yet still childish and skittish around anyone she didn't know. David told him it had been when she was ten and someone had broken into the house when the family was there. She'd been scared ever since of people she didn't know. And as David Gallagher was a friend of Stephen's, David considered Stephen a good person to look out for his daughter.

"How are you doing?" Stephen asked as he settled into the sand in front of her.

"Okay, I guess. I'm not complaining."

"So, are you going to tell me what is with the books or am I going to have to play twenty questions?"

"Do you promise not to laugh?" She asked, looking at him.

"I won't, I promise."

"It's a thing called NANOWRIMO," she pronounced it like Nano-Rye-Moe. "What NANOWRIMO stands for is National Novel Writing Month. It is where you have to write a fifty thousand word novel in one month, and I am trying it."

"What does it entail? I mean, what do you have to do?"

"Roughly speaking, you have to write one thousand, six hundred and sixty seven words a day in order to get to fifty thousand within thirty days."

He nodded. "That seems a bit much."

"Not really. You know I like to write, a lot."

"Oh I know that for sure, Lass. Any time I'm over at your place, you're always typing away."

"But it's not just about writing a novel, it's getting out there and socializing with people. There are things called Write Ins, where you go out and go to places where other WriMos are at and start writing with them. They are doing word sprints and word wars, stuff like that to get word counts up. It's not necessarily about quality when it comes to writing in NANOWRIMO, it's quantity. You can always go back to edit later after the thirty days."

"Still sounds like a tall order."

"Not unless you have an outline and stuff like that planned ahead of time." She smiled slightly.

Stephen quietly admitted to himself that Sally did have a nice smile. "So, what are you writing about?" He asked before groaning when his shoulder moved the wrong way.

"I don't want to talk about that. I don't like to talk about what I'm writing until I'm mostly done."

"Oh, well if you need to ask questions then you can always come to me, you know that right?" He asked.

"Uh huh." She replied, nodding.

When he lightly touched her knee she flinched away, not that he could blame her. In any case, Stephen got up from the sand.

"So, I'll be seeing yah later, yeah?" he asked.

"Um, sure. If my brothers are being to rowdy and loud I might come over to your place for a bit. That is if you don't mind."

"Sure, I don't mind. Not that I have anything going on." He showed her his sling. "But hopefully today I will have it off. I'm seeing my doctor about getting out of it."

"I hope it works out for you, Stephen."

He got up, dusting the sand off with his pants. She was a nice lass, he told himself. Regardless that he was some celebrity, she was the one that had not been giggly like most people, girls in particular, when they met him. Her brothers were ecstatic but she was shy and timid. She actually ran away from him when he stood in the kitchen. Now she was opening up.

That was a good thing, Stephen told himself as he walked back towards his house.

Okay, I'm going to tell you the reason behind this. I have been wanting to write a Sheamus fic for a long time, but nothing ever really stuck when thinking up a story. And then I started doing NANOWRIMO this year and I really enjoyed the fast pace writing it has. So while I am sort of in limbo with my other two main stories, I'm creating a shorter story centered on the 30 days of writing for NANOWRIMO.