Little Cat is 17 years old. Things have gotten to the point where he has considered retiring from his job of periodically running away from home and scaring the crap out of Human-Mom. It’s bittersweet. He’s very good at his job. And he obviously loves it. But like so many consummate professionals, he’ll probably retire into a consulting position, the better to pass on his wisdom to any potential young candidates.
But being so close to retirement has made him pensive. He’s started thinking about when he was a young cat and still had all this potential ahead of him. Did he live up to it? Did he run away enough? Perhaps most importantly, did he scare the holy hell out of Human-Mom enough? Who’s to say, after all? What is the standard for comparison?
Cinematography by Erika Grumet
Executive Producer: Rocket
Starring Frob as Big Cat and Widget as Little Cat
Description below.
What it Means for a Writer to have “Potential.”
So the other day, Little Cat was sitting on Human mom’s right arm as she was trying to use the mouse and Big Cat was sitting on Human Mom’s shoulder so he could lean in front of her face while she was trying to see the screen. Because cats are jerks. And they were talking about life.
You know. Like you do.
And Little Cat mused out loud: “What makes for potential? How do people see potential? How do mentor-figures decide who has potential and who does not?” Big Cat responded: “Well. Ultimately it’s who wants it the most. No other standard really makes sense. I mean. Neuro-atypicals run into this problem all the time. Some of us have trouble in school and so we get dismissed early. But if we had been nurtured properly we might have blossomed. And some of us seem so apt to succeed that we get tons of encouragement.
“But then when push comes to shove, it turns out that we don’t have coping techniques for the way our minds work. Teachers just think if you take to something you’re good at it. And if you don’t take to something, you’re not good at it. But it’s so much more complicated than that.”
Another County Heard From
While this conversation was going on, Human-Mom was apparently on the phone, because she kept saying unrelated things like: “Oh my God. Get off of me. I can’t even see the screen you orange blob!” Who could she have been talking to? Her accountant, maybe.
The Gist
A lot of writers are good at writing. But most of writing is the daily grind. So if you don’t have coping mechanisms to keep up the daily (or weekly) grind, you’ll go from ‘has potential’ to ‘wasted potential’ pretty quickly. But that’s just what other people say about you. Really you didn’t change at all. Your teachers just didn’t finish teaching you everything you needed. And you maybe didn’t know enough to pick up their slack. Not least because learning to be psychologically balanced is harder than learning to write an elegant sentence.
So what do you think? Have you ever mentored another writer? What convinced you they had potential? How do you define potential?
Description
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Two cats are sitting on a cushion, a large orange with a contented expression on his face. And a small grey with a pinched, borderline wrathful countenance. After a lull in the conversation, the small grey says: “Oh crap.” “Whats wrong, Little Cat,” asks the large orange. The grey answers in a low murmur: “I think I just went from ‘has potential’ to ‘had potential.'”
