As I pass the midpoint of the novel-in-progress, daily life is far from the flip and funny world I'm writing.
It requires physical and emotional detachment from the day-to-day that is recently more difficult than any job I've ever held.
Doubts crowd dialogue. Distraction steals the story arc. A writer, if they are the real thing, should persevere through rain and snow and gloom of night. I must be a sunshine scribe, I think, a pretender.
You know you're in trouble when the cat has a greater resolve than you do.
Bess is the wuss cat. She's not clever or personable like Little Bit. She doesn't have Sadie's beauty or mystery. She's the most uncoordinated feline I've ever known, often taking two or three tries for a simple lap leap. She hibernates at the hint of a stranger and otherwise needs our human contact in the most dependent way. When the other two want to fight for fun they take on each other. When they want to fight to win, they take on Bess. I've never seen her pick a fight with either.
But Bess loves to sleep in my writing room upstairs and will only stay up there if I am with her. This is Bess' ultimate experience and she's not in the least bit shy about letting me know. If I spend too long on the downstairs computer answering email, working on household accounts or blogging, she paces and meows.
When I keep the (her) appropriate schedule, she is upstairs waiting to sleep, directly behind me on the bed about a foot from the back of my chair. She will stretch over to the chair at various times to give me a pat and likes a lap nap after lunch. A lunch break is the only interuption permitted without her complaint.
When I turn off the satellite radio and blow out the candle, we head back downstairs for the night. If I do those two things too early in the afternoon, she meows and carries on -- either reminding me there's more work to do or that she's not finished resting here.
I left Bess sleeping at the foot of my bed when I got up at 4 a.m. yesterday to get an early , quiet start on the vexing chapter. Imagine my surprise to turn on the upstairs light and see Smokie, the 80 pound Lab whose hips hurt too much to go upstairs in the daylight, stretched out on the bed. Rather than bust her for forbidden furniture crimes, I rubbed her head and started to work.
Bess arrived five minutes later, stretching and yawning in the door frame. She recoiled when she jumped up on the bed to find it occupied. Smokie had her head on the pillow and had only taken the upper half of the bed. Bess always sleeps at the foot. I didn't think co-existence would be an issue.
Bess weighs seven pounds, she has no claws and is missing one of her fangs. But she had none of her usual coordination issues when she walked right up to Smokie's nose and slapped it three quick times.
Smokie whimpered, jumped down and left the room. Bess came back to the foot of the bed and settled in for the morning.
She's hardly my muse, but she could be a mentor. If I had a fraction of her blind resolve, these chapters would be a breeze.





Copyright 2004 Judi Griggs