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?!
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 