Calling all writers for help! A few posts up, I mentioned I was writing in first person POV with a dialect, although I'm not certain that's the correct word. I was using my dad's Texas accent/colloquial speech as a guide, because that's what I've heard all over the rural West, whether Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, though curiously, not Colorado in particular.
I'm seriously second-guessing my decision, even though I toned down the phonetic spellings quite a bit. I saw in a review of someone else's book a reader saying the colloquialisms were distracting. So, if you're willing to give me an opinion, read the excerpt below and vote for one of three options:
A--Leave it alone, it's fine
B--Get rid of most of those apostrophes and just leave the g's off the -ing endings
C--Forget all of it and just write it straight; make the tenses grammatically correct, too
Here's the excerpt:
When all them girls come to the ranch, it changed everything for us. Before, the boss paid us some attention, but left us alone to do our work. Uncle Hank would tell us what the boss wanted done, and what needed to be done besides, and we’d get it done. The only woman on the ranch was Janet, the cook, and she was older than my mom would'a been if she hadn’t've died. I didn’t mind that. It was hard enough to know what to say to the girls at school, before I graduated, especially when they got all moony-eyed and expected stuff I didn’t know nothin’ about.
In my senior year, I had a girlfriend, though. Wasn’t any of my doin’, Cass just come around and wouldn’t leave, and I gotta admit, those kisses she gave me were somethin’. Got kinda uncomfortable in my jeans, if you know what I mean. When the time come that she peeled me outta them jeans, and showed me what life was all about, I got a whole new interest. That spring, I was a walkin’ hard-on. But then come graduation, and before I could ask her what next, she up and left me for a dude that graduated the year before, just because he was doin' good in the rodeos and got him a fancy new pickup and trailer rig for his calf-ropin’ horse.
That’s when I decided I’d like to rodeo, too. The boss told me I was startin’ out at a disadvantage, that everyone on the circuit had been ridin’ rodeo since they was little kids, but it didn’t matter to me. I knew I was good with horses. Uncle Hank made me a wrangler after just six months at the ranch. I just needed to save up and buy me a horse, tack and some way to get to the rodeos around, and I’d be on my way.
I’d been on the ranch a year and a half by then, and workin’ full-time once I graduated high school, when I took a shine to a two-year old frame overo named White’s BB King. The boss liked to name his horses for old blues singers, Uncle Hank said. I called him by his barn name, though. One of the older hands, a Mexican outta Texas, named him Abogado. He said it meant lawyer in Spanish. That was because no matter what you wanted him to do, that horse would argue about it. I’d say, “Here, Abo, have some sweet hay.” And damned if that horse wouldn’t turn his nose up and say, “I’d ruther have some grain.” Or the other way around. I got such a kick outta that--he was somethin’! But, he always listened to me, and sometimes he wouldn’t argue quite as much. One day, the boss noticed I was givin’ Abo more attention than the others in the barn.
“Cody, what’s with you and Abogado? You got an understandin’?” The other wranglers laughed, because the boss meant was I sweet on that horse, like a girl, and I turned red.
“Boss, this horse listens to me, I swear it. I bet I could train him for a calf-ropin’ horse, I put my mind to it.”
“What would you need a calf-ropin’ horse for, Cody Wayne? Wanta give up wranglin’ and go to cowboyin’?”
“Nosir, Boss. I wanta rodeo.”
“You serious?”
“Yessir. I reckon I know horses and that’s all it takes.”
“Well, Cody, you got some more reckonin’ to do, but if you’re real serious, I’d sell you that horse on payments, if you want him.”
Uncle Hank was there, and Miguel, who’d named Abo, and a few others. They was all shakin’ their heads like that was a bad idea. I couldn’t back down. I stuck out my hand to shake on it, and Abo was mine. At a hundred bucks a month, I reckoned I’d have him paid for about the time I could start ridin’ him. Right then, I started puttin’ away an extra hundred for my tack.
I took to ranchin’ like I was born to it, my Uncle Hank always said. We didn’t talk much about my mom, dead from the poison my dad was cookin’ up in a shed behind the house and sellin’. I knew about meth, what kid in this country doesn’t, these days? But I saw what it was doin’ to Mom, and even though I couldn’t get her to quit it, I wouldn’t touch it. When Mom died, I called my Uncle Hank and he was there in half an hour, hollerin’ and takin’ on. He said he was gonna kill my dad. I was sixteen, too old to cry, but I couldn’t help it. If Mom was dead, and Uncle Hank killed my dad, I’d be an orphan, and he’d be in prison. I begged him not to, not that my bastard dad didn’t deserve it. After a while, Hank settled down and took me to the ranch. We never knew what happened to my dad.
So, there I was, workin’ and goin’ to school, and then just workin’ and talkin’ to Abo, gettin’ him used to listenin’ to what I said. I was growin’ taller and gettin’ heavier, so I knew I couldn’t ride him for another coupla years. Makin’ friends with my horse, I didn’t miss Cass so much, but there was times I like to've busted outta my britches, I got so horny. Times like that, I’d climb way up in the hay loft and take care of things. I guess the other guys my age was doin’ the same thing. More protein in the hay, they always joked.