Writing Research is Everywhere
I got back very late last night from several excellent days at Writers' Horse Camp. My co-writer on our post-apocalyptic novel and I needed to get away from town and just write, but we also needed to research horses. This camp is the perfect setting for writers to mix creativity with Lipizzaners.
Everything conspired to be perfect--the weather, the food, the company, the animals. On Thursday we crowned our stay with a lesson in how to talk to horses. Animals communicate with body language, noises being mostly for emphasis. The practice sessions were reminders about human signals, a thing I've struggled to suss out for decades. It was quite valuable to hear someone either corroborating what I'd already learned, or adding new insights.
This is such good stuff for characters of all leg arrangements. It's good stuff for self-awareness (sometimes we writers live too much in our heads), and it's good stuff for sparking ideas.
I highly recommend Dancing Horse Camp--on our way back we were already planning when we can return. (BTW for those writers who'd like some help in getting over that last hump toward being publisher-ready, dancinghorse also offers mentoring. Click the above link for details.)
The perfect cap to a perfect set of days was getting to join a bunch of writers (Shweta_narayan, elsmi, kirizal, and voidmonster for dinner, writing talk, and heavenly creme brulee and tiramisu.
Below the cut (made because it's image heavy) are some snaps, made by tcastleb, who generously gave me permission to post them. You'll see that I have a whip in my hand, but it's really only for waving at the ground if necessary to define extra space between me and the horse, or at most to gently touch on a shoulder to indicate direction. I never had to use it.
Here I am bucketing along, getting the horse to follow me.
Here I've just told the horse to run away from me.
Here we are doing the high step together.
C'mon, show me whatcha got.
Let's cruise the boulevard.
Thank you for hanging out with me.
Everything conspired to be perfect--the weather, the food, the company, the animals. On Thursday we crowned our stay with a lesson in how to talk to horses. Animals communicate with body language, noises being mostly for emphasis. The practice sessions were reminders about human signals, a thing I've struggled to suss out for decades. It was quite valuable to hear someone either corroborating what I'd already learned, or adding new insights.
This is such good stuff for characters of all leg arrangements. It's good stuff for self-awareness (sometimes we writers live too much in our heads), and it's good stuff for sparking ideas.
I highly recommend Dancing Horse Camp--on our way back we were already planning when we can return. (BTW for those writers who'd like some help in getting over that last hump toward being publisher-ready, dancinghorse also offers mentoring. Click the above link for details.)
The perfect cap to a perfect set of days was getting to join a bunch of writers (Shweta_narayan, elsmi, kirizal, and voidmonster for dinner, writing talk, and heavenly creme brulee and tiramisu.
Below the cut (made because it's image heavy) are some snaps, made by tcastleb, who generously gave me permission to post them. You'll see that I have a whip in my hand, but it's really only for waving at the ground if necessary to define extra space between me and the horse, or at most to gently touch on a shoulder to indicate direction. I never had to use it.
Here I am bucketing along, getting the horse to follow me.
Here I've just told the horse to run away from me.
Here we are doing the high step together.
C'mon, show me whatcha got.
Let's cruise the boulevard.
Thank you for hanging out with me.