I love working with a freelance editor for three reasons. First, a good editor not only points out where things need to improve but where I’ve done things well. I can learn to be a better writer from my own writing. Second, she sees the forest where I’ve seen trees. Reviewing it with her uncluttered eyes, she helps me focus on the central vein of my story that I should follow, and from which I have sometimes strayed. Third, she helps to highlight where my details are not furthering the story, but tripping up the reader, and taking them from that central path.
When nearly 300 pages of my manuscript returned from this latest round of editing, there were many good comments and naturally some areas that need some refinement. One of the issues was about the name of my protagonist’s horse. The name was Llamrei. “A name like this is tough to read,” she had noted. My editor was stumbling over it and it was dragging down the narrative. When she and I spoke on the phone, I admitted that many times I even typed it wrong. The name of the horse, agreeably had to change.
So I looked for historic horse names that were more easily pronounced. I found and chose “Bayard,” which means reddish-brown. Simple enough, but I also looked up the history of the name. The story of this horse goes all the way back to a twelfth century French legend, part of which according to Wikipedia includes:
“Bayard is ceded to Charlemagne who, as punishment for the horse’s exploits, has a large stone tied to Bayard’s neck and the horse pushed into the river; Bayard however smashes the stone with his hooves and escapes to live forever more in the woods.”
Here’s the strange thing… Many times in my writing to this point, the character and his horse are required to cross waterways, and each time I wrote about how the horse became frantic to the point that it needed to be blindfolded. No reason. Just wanted him to be that way. But now, it’s as if the horse’s new name explains why he is always afraid to cross rivers in my story… But I created this horse’s characteristic before I found the name. Before I read about the legend… Odd, right?
Did I know about Bayard somehow? Was he a part of me? Did I know the legend? Past life? This has happened more than once that details woven into my story somehow connect with history before I have fully learned the history.
It makes me wonder, is my historical fiction story not fiction at all? Could it be true…? {Twilight Zone music here.}
