New writers are often given the advice to “Write what they know”. I don’t know who it was to first come up with that one, and I don’t really care who it was. I believe my advice, to write what you’d like to know is far better advice.
If you are writing non fiction on a subject, you will have so much more fun, and write a far more interesting piece, if you look more deeply into something you’d like to know more about. The research will be more fun and interesting, and by the end of your article or book, you could be well on your way to being an expert on the subject, with a new book to promote!
And if you’re writing fiction, have your main characters with different hobbies, or lifestyles, to what you have yourself, but that you’d like to know more about. The characters will then be new and interesting to you, and you will make them interesting to the reader, because they, and what they know or do, are interesting to you. I know about dogs, quite a bit about them, actually, but I don’t write books about dogs as the only point of interest. In my series about Buster the Dog, I write about Dogs and something else. The first book was dogs and gardening, the second dogs and mindfulness, and the final on was dogs and buddhism.
These books were all written with Buster the Dog as the main character and they are in his point of view (first person POV). Dogs do many things that people do, but they don’t necessarily do them how people do them. In fact they often do them how people DON’T do them, and that is where the humour comes from.
I know more about dogs now, than I knew back when I wrote that first book “Dig It! Gardening Tips for Dogs”, and I know more about gardening now too. The same with Mindfulness and Buddhism, I know more about both of them before I wrote “Doggone It – Mindfulness from a Dog’s Point of View”, and “Dog Buddha’s Thoughts”. I had enormous fun researching the subjects, and thinking on how a dog would view the same things that I was learning about.
When your writing brings you joyful fun, it isn’t tedious getting the words written, it’s a good time. And talking about your books is still a fun thing to do, talking about dogs and the funny, silly things they sometimes do!
Three of my published books are written by Buster the Dog, with my assistance. Buster the Dog is the dog who lives inside my head. That is, Buster the Dog is in fact a figment of my imagination. He was created many years ago, as a part of the process of writing a book about gardening, as a dog would view the past time.
Dogs don’t do gardening in the same way people do. So to write this book, I had to think about the many dogs who’d been in my life, and look at how they would think about things such as compost bins, or fertilising the garden. I thought up a dog, made up of the two dogs breeds who were in my life at the time, and I called his Buster.
I enjoyed writing in Buster the Dog’s point of view so much that I wrote two more books in Buster the Dog’s point of view. Buster is a sassy critter, he does things his own way, and as I’ve discovered in the writing of the third of these books, he is a spiritual creature, up to a point, at least. Buster the Dog showed me, in that third book, the ways that a dog can have a life attitude very much in tune with Buddhism.
I had so much fun with that book, thinking about ways in which a Dog Buddha, and a Buddha for humans, might be the same in some ways, and different in others. The process was a great follow on from the second book in the Buster the Dog series, which was about how dogs may consider Mindfulness, which was something I’d been learning about just before I had the idea of writing that second book in the series.
At this stage, I have finished with writing these books with Buster the Dog. I have no ideas about any new book or books in the series, and I am content with what I have done with it. Dogs and thoughts about how they may think will go on being of interest to me, but I don’t feel I need to do any more about writing books for them. Having written that, I just remembered Buster the Dog does actually have another book to be written.
This next book, to be written next year, will be another kind of collaboration. A friend of mine, another writer, is interested in writing a book with Buster the Dog and me, and a ‘cat’ – McTavish the Cat. McTavish is real in the same way that Buster the Dog is real – the cat lives inside my friend’s head, just like Buster lives in my head.
Putting myself in the mind of a dog in this way, is one of the things fiction writers must learn to do, inhabiting the mind of their various characters, so the character acts in accordance with the needs of the narrative. This is how fiction writers come up with characters and story lines their readers will believe.
So when I’m writing about a dog, I think on all of the dogs I have known, and make my story dog the most ‘doggy’ dog there ever was. Or at least as much as is needed to make the dog believable, for my reader. And surely that is an important role for a writer, to make aspects of your book believable, so that the reader believes the story the writer is telling them, so they will be willing to spend some time in the writer’s new world.
I know a lot a bout dogs, I try to think about things how a dog might, when I’m writing in the point of view of a dog. If I can get other people enjoying my dog books, with Buster the Dog and I, what a fun time all involved will have, Buster the Dog sure knows how to enjoy life. I love it when my written words have the ability to hook in a reader and keep them there in my story! I lice writing about Buster the Dog, people have enjoyed reading my stories about Buster the Dog, and Buster has lots of fun in my books.
Just don’t tell him he’s only an imaginary dog, please?!
I wrote my first poem that gained acclaim back when I was in my early years of High School I don’t actually remember which year it was, but I was around thirteen I think. It was History class, and we had to do a project on a particular historical place. I don’t remember which place it was, but it was in Europe, in the olden days, and I’m almost certain it started with the letter ‘C’. It may have been Carthage. It may have been somewhere else entirely.
And when I say ‘gained acclaim’, I mean my mother liked the poem and I suspect I got a good mark for the project, enough to impress my mum. Anyway, the important thing is that I learned that poems can impress people, if they are good enough. I didn’t immediately start penning more poetry to attract the interest of others, because life especially when you’re at school, and then work, life takes over many creative aspirations, giving way to financial ones.
But I did get back into writing poetry, particularly after I quit work, and became a ‘stay-at-home mum’. Being stuck at home with this new creature in my life meant I was home, with not much to do beyond caring for this new baby, as well as the dogs we had. It was a whole new world, as I quickly realised having a human baby was not the same as having puppies. Some of the processes are similar, but the care and love is so much deeper when there is your child involved.
I’d gone from being a worker, five days a week, travelling with my husband from our home in a rural area, to the office job in the city of Adelaide, our state’s capital. In the early times of being a mother, I had no car, and I have to say, I felt lonely, even with that baby present 24/7. There was some post natal depression happening, and I was certainly not feeling like a person who was capable of doing anything that deserved public acclaim.
To find some sense of worth, I eventually began a TAFE course – the Advanced Diploma of Professional Writing. I enjoyed this, going out at night to classes, where there was no child depending on me for everything, and I could talk about writing in its many forms, rather than talking about nappy changes … It was a blissful ‘grown up’ thing to do, finally.
I never finished that TAFE course, but I had begun doing many more interesting things relating to writing, in particular poetry. I didn’t feel I needed more information, although, in retrospect, I could have been wrong to thing I was fine. I’m OK with that idea though, and will just do my best to keep on taking up learning opportunities as they come along.
Anyway, back to my first poetry collection. This collection, titled “damage children, Precious Gems”, deals with extremely personal things in my life. I was sexually abused as a child, and then teen, and probably, as an adult too. Being a woman, sexual abuse is always a possibility. I used the writing of this poetry collection as a form of informal therapy, and am glad I have found an audience of people who have also been or still are, victims of sexual abuse. I set up a blog with the same title as this poetry collection, where I look at abuse, in particular sexual abuse, and many things related to it.
It sounds like a gruesome thing, I know, but my collection follows a line from terrible, to good, or even excellent. I was a victim, but I am now thriving in my life. Being able to say that means much to me. I am happily married, have a child who is a fine person, and my life is a good one. Not bad, for a person who went through abuse from a person who was supposed to be ‘a friend of the family’.
The writing of this poetry collection has been a healing thing, a therapeutic thing, and I firmly believe in the idea of therapeutic writing. It can happen in an informal way, as in my case, initially, or it can happen in a more formal way, but however it is, it can be a healing thing, for sure. I have a strong interest in this form of writing.
Being able to find myself in this position is a wonderful thing, a liberating thing, and I hope my words in this first collection can help many more people who are living troubled lives because of abuse. Nobody deserves this, no-one ever. If you are struggling with abuse in your life, I urge you to seek assistance from those who can help. Your doctor, trusted person, authorities, whoever, there are many people whose task it is to help people …
There are many organisations here who can help, please go to these people if you need them. Nobody deserves to live in fear of abuse, and anyone who has been abused deserves to get help when they need it.
I am extremely proud of my most recent book. I wrote it and (self) published it last year. This book is the third in the series that began with “Dig It! Gardening Tips for Dogs”, then went on to “Doggone It – Mindfulness from a Dog’s Point of View” and ended with the most recent book “Dog Buddha’s Thoughts”. I began a blog about that first book a long time ago – it is here.
As you can see in the photo of the book, I claim this book was written by Buster the Dog, “assisted by Carolyn Cordon”. I am Carolyn, and I have to confess that there is no Buster the Dog, not really. Buster the Dog, I always say, lives in my head. and of course that is true, because Buster is a figment of my imagination, a combination of all of the dogs I’ve lived with, and my thoughts and imaginings about those dogs.
I’ve been a dog exhibitor and dog breeder in my past, so there have been many, many dogs there for real. I don’t show or breed dogs these days, but I’m still very interested in dogs, and we still have a dog, one we bred, and showed (once) – Missy. We gave up the dog show world not that long after Missy was born, and then some years later, we gave up breeding dogs too.
The purpose of this blog post is to talk about where writers might get their ideas from. This recent book, about the thoughts of the Dog Buddha, is a good one for this for many reasons. Firstly, it is about dogs, and as I have written, there have been many dogs in my life, and Missy is still here (sitting on the dog sofa, just across from me, as I type, actually).
So I see think about dogs, and live with a dog. Missy does funny things sometimes, she ‘gardens’, she hunts, she rolls on the grass in the backyard, she eats food that falls on the ground, as well as doing many other things that appear in my recent book. I have a friend who is a Buddhist, and the idea for this book flowed on well from the second book in the Buster the Dog series. Mindfulness and Buddhism go together well, and I go the idea that dogs could have their own ‘God’ who they revere, as humans may have their own God or Gods.
I modelled this book on the first two books, where each chapter was about a certain ‘thing’ and I then expanded more about that ‘thing’, as a dog might consider it. So in the first book, “Dig It! Gardening Tips for Dogs” these are chapters about such things as composting, fertilising, and so on, and in the book, it is obvious that dogs and humans look at these matters in quite different ways, with humorous results. With the most recent book, I spent some time considering the thoughts of the Buddha that humans hold dear.
I then thought about possible wise thoughts that could be attributed to a canine Buddha, and then how Buster the Dog might try to live his life in accordance with such wise thoughts. When I first began writing this book, I was the Writer-in-Residence at a particular cafe, and I would sit there thinking about the Dog Buddha, about dogs, about the ‘real’ Buddha, and about Buster the Dog. It was fun, and come up with a new thought always made me happy! I was certainly feeling inspired at that time in my life.
Inspiration can come from many things, as I’ve indicated. I write poetry, as well as prose, and today, I was inspired to write a short poem, a haiku, by two very different things I saw. I was on my way to our vet to pick up some medication for Missy. ON the road just down from our house, I saw a dead lizard, and thought, ‘Oh, poor lizard’. Then, getting closer to the vets (Roseworthy Veterinary Clinic), I saw a better view of some smoke I’d spotted earlier in the day. There seemed to be a fire up in the hills to the south-east of Gawler.
When I got to the vets, I got out my mobile phone and wrote the haiku poem that was sitting there waiting for me. It may not be a great haiku, but I’m happy I was inspired enough to record the sad moments. This is the haiku I wrote. Feel free to comment about it, whether you liked it or not. I always appreciate getting feedback, no matter what. Here goes:
Lizard dead on road
fire in the hills nearby –
early Spring sadness
Now that I’ve thought about this poem, I’m wondering whether or not the final word should be there. What do you think? Leave a message to let me know!
So that is a small look at how some of my writing has been inspired. There are also the five word challenges I’ve written about, and many other things. Life is there to think about, and be inspired by, always – live your life, and remain open to finding the inspirations available!
I too write Haiku at times, and I often sit out on my back veranda, looking at the clouds, the grass, the trees, the birds, and I think on Nature. Sometimes small, haiku style poems come from such contemplation.
Other times no such writing may come from it, in terms of the writing of poetry, but such peaceful contemplation is a good thing in itself, calming and stress free, bliss … Anything that can bring feelings such as these into your life, that is surely a good thing? Life is good, or at least should be, yes? Yes.
Haiku written when paying attention only to the ‘rules’ is not the best way to go. It can lead to an understanding, but paying attention to Nature, rather than rules, that is the way to gain a deeper understanding of what haiku can be.
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 