As you might recall, my writing muse is a small, left-shoulder-sized floppy patchwork pony named Pehr. (Do you have differently-sized shoulders? Ask my chiropractor…)

Me: “Pehr! Where have you been?!”

Pehr: “Emm..er..the south of France, enjoying markets and plats du jour…”

Me: “Well, we have our first adult fiction novel to write! I’ve been stymied.”

Pehr: “You had your research to do, and so did I. Ancient cultures lived in France you know…”

Fair enough.

Pehr helped me write the first part of my intro yesterday and I’m quite happy with it. I wish I could tell you the plot and premise but I can tell you that it’s like nothing I’ve written before. An artist contacted me and had an idea: she would paint the subject matter if I would write the story. And it had to be based upon the works of Shakespeare.

I was afraid.

This set of subjects I knew nothing about. I had Shakespeare in school, but we often had bomb threats during it and we missed about 1/3 of the class. Why the bomb threats could never happen during PE is a shame. I was completely out of my comfort zone questioning her choice of authors, my public school education, the lot. “Are you SURE?! I tested, again and again.

Enter youtube and the internet. There are entire courses on subjects, wikipedia, Google Earth, and a host of other resources.

I had to buckle down and do the hard research before attempting to write. Meanwhile in France, Pehr was enjoying holidays in the cold weather, perhaps when Provincial towns are most interesting.

So, yesterday, Pehr came back onto my left shoulder, full of encouragement and the words flowed and the characters and places began to emerge easily.

I can’t wait to see what happens next in the story…

Image from papiton.de