Writers have a saying: “Kill your darlings.” But sometimes Little Cat doesn’t like to kill his darlings. Sometimes he likes to let them think they’ve escaped… Then trap them by putting his paw on their tails. THEN kill them. And then, finally, put them on Human-Mom’s knee while she’s trying to read a book. This…
Tag: Writing
An Archaic Concept of Me: Shoulder Energy
Here we are, about to read the sixth delivery of ‘An Archaic Concept of Me’.For those who would like to begin at the beginning, Delivery 1 can be found here.In that initiating delivery we found Aleena and Stuart enjoying a new morning of privilege, waking for breakfast in bed, with water views, figs and all….
Disability and Queerness: Celebrate the Whole Person
Talking through Issues with my Writing Community I rely on my writing community a lot. For inspiration. Support. Feedback. They’re an important part of my life, and not just as a writer. So recently, when I was talking to Adam (mentor, 2 Rules of Writing co-founder, good friend) I mentioned that I’d been having a…
Pride on the Calendar! (Caturday Questions)
Part of what brings us together as humans is that we celebrate anniversaries. Cats, of course, have no patience for keeping a calendar. To this day, Big Cat has no idea why every year on June first (Big Cat does NOT know that it’s June first) his Human-Mom serves up a big platter of rainbow…
My PhD Advisor (A Good Teacher is Hard to Find: 3)
Page is hard to write about. Despite working with her for over 4 years, she remains a mystery to me. She was my PhD supervisor, and we had a bumpy start. To be fair, I was partly responsible for that bumpy start because I didn’t know what I was getting into when I applied to do…
Mysteries (Caturday Questions)
It was just one of those mysteries. A classic whodunit. Human-Mom emerged from the bedroom to find what appeared to be a cat-turd on the floor. She rounded up the usual suspects. But who could have been responsible? Well, it depends what kind of mystery you’re writing. Big Cat, Little Cat We were the Mysteries…
“Where do you Get your Ideas?”
If you listen to interviews of authors, one of the questions you’ll hear most often is: “Where do you get your ideas?” I hear a plaintive note in this question. It is asked so often. Sometimes with reference to a specific work or series (like with George R. R. Martin and A Song of Ice…
Twist Endings (Caturday Questions)
Little Cat has been seeing versions of this joke all over the internet these days. And why not? It’s a classic. It’s the basis for a lot of Emo Phillips’s material. And of course, twist endings are having their day in the sun in Marvel movies, horror and thriller films… And was it only a…
Solitude and Music: The Silence Between the Notes
“Couldn’t put my phone downScrolling patientlyIt’s all the same to meJust faces on a screen, yeah I’m trying to realizeIt’s alright to not be fine on your own” (comethru – Jeremy Zucker) Alone | Together Recently, my musician friend Jabin Law starts a new music project “Alone Together”. Alone Together is a follow-up project of…
“Save the Cat”: Anti-Abortion Virtue Signalers
How do fringe interests like abortion and homophobia take center stage at a time when we have bigger issues? (N. B. We always have bigger issues. So we might as well ask how anti-choice and anti-queer people ever take center-stage.) The answer actually has something to do with how to be a good writer. It…