Due to the yo-yo nature of the weather, I’ve had no energy at all this week, thus the lack of new posts since Saturday. That and the fact that my brain has been mush and I just haven’t thought of anything to write about.

I finally made myself sit down and start writing last night. I didn’t get much accomplished other than dowloading a pdf of the 1662 version of the Anglican Church’s Book of Common Prayer, which is what my characters in the Ransome series would be most familiar with (I’m pretty sure that would be the correct version. I haven’t found anything more updated by 1814). That version of the BCP is public domain, meaning I can quote from it without running into copyright issues (of course I’m citing the reference!).

A lot of what’s in the BCP is taken directly from the Bible – psalms to use for morning prayers or for prayers of thanksgiving – but many of the passages I want to use are the prayers. The reason I was looking for it last night was to find a prayer for the sick/injured for my heroine’s father to use. To develop William as the spiritual leader he becomes as an adult, I want him to learn it from Julia’s father. I also need Julia to see her father’s deep, genuine love for God. But I want to keep it true to the era, and he would have been raised in the Anglican tradition, being as or more familiar with the BCP as the Bible.

Here’s where I’m torn, though. I love the language from the BCP – the formality as well as the poetry of the prayers. But is it going to be a problem for a publisher that I have my characters quoting prayers written by others rather than my making up words for them to say? There is comfort in repeating prayers we’ve memorized — the Lord’s prayer or “Now I lay me down to sleep…” — and it’s the comfort in his religious training that I want to show for Capt. Witherington now and William later. It’s through their lives that I plan to show how real the relationship with God is — that they’re not just quoting the BCP, that they’ve taken the catechism and creeds to heart.

I think I’m analyzing this too much. As I’ve been encouraging others recently — I just need to write the story and worry about what my targeted publisher will think about it later!