Tag: Buster the Dog

poetry

Turning Japanese

carolyncordon

The poetry prompt for yesterday was a poetic form, the Katauta poem. This is another Japanese poetry form, almost identical to haiku, in that they both are three lined poems with syllable counts of 5/7/5 syllables (or fewer). The difference is that with this poetic form there are two stanzas, with each being written by a different person, with one, with the second being a reply to the first.

 

It is written by a pair of lovers, in the Japanese form, but that didn’t suit my life situation at all – happily married for over thirty years, sooky love stuff well and truly over & done with! I think I know my husband well enough by now, to realise he would not be interested in writing in this particular poetic form. 

Nothing wrong with that, we all so our own thing, and that is fine, so I came up with another way to use this particular form. I like to use my creativity to work my way around issues like this!

 

Instead of the truly Japanese way of doing this poetic form, I have taken McTavish the Cat and Buster the Dog, two creatures who live in the imaginations of a writer friend of mine (cat) and mine (dog).

 

These two creatures will feature in book four of the Buster the Dog series, that began with “Dig It! Gardening Tips for Dogs”, which was followed by “Doggone It! Mindfulness from a Dog’s Point of View”, and, I thought, with “Dog Buddha’s Thoughts”.

 

I had thought these three books said all I and Buster the Dog needed to say, but my friend had other ideas, and so along came McTavish the Cat!

 

So, these two creatures end up living in the same house, after a relationship  break up, and then a new one starting. Buster the Dog, and his ‘owner’ move into McTavish the Cat’s owner’s house, and work out how they can all live together. Buster the Dog and McTavish the Cat, might not normally have joined together to become best friends,  but such is nature of adversity, and ganging up on a common ‘foe’.

The pair, a dog and a cat, have both previously actively avoided getting too close, but when you live in the same household there are far fewer ways to keep away from each other, and they come to realise they have a lot more in common than they had realised.

 

Things, are very tricky at the start,  but they eventually work out their issues with each other, as they continue finding ways to make life hell for their ‘owners’ and eventually building a loving friendship that is beautiful, hence the poem for this day:

 

Your feline grace –

you flow across the room

like no other can …

 

Your canine calm –

you fill the room with peace,

embracing all …

Writing

The Dog in My Head

carolyncordon

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.

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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?!