We had a close call this past week. As you probably know, I lost my father in May. Then a week and a half ago, I lost my oldest cat Mac. It’s been a rough year.
For at least a week, I actually forgot my first book, Doll God, was published this same year! I am not kidding either. What kind of ridiculous year is this?!
Anyway, 3 days or so after Mac died, cat #2, my sweet dear Pear Blossom, stopped eating! If you have or have ever had a cat, you might know that cats cannot go without food. Their livers go haywire. It’s very dangerous. I tried everything: a dozen kinds of canned food, fresh chicken, tuna, treats, kibble, egg, tiny hotdogs for babies, you name it. I had to resort to feeding her baby food (Gerber 2nd foods are the ones you want–safe and healthy for cats) with a syringe. I could get about 5-7 ccs in her before she would let it ooze out all over the couch. Yes, the couch because she wouldn’t move from the couch. For days she lay there.
I hadn’t had much time to grieve my father before Mac became sick and died. Now I had had no time at all to grieve Mac and my darling booboo girl looked as if she were going to die.
After $1,000 in vet bills (see how blithely I just wrote that hahaha), she seems to be coming back a little. The only medical problem they found is a UTI (she and my human daughter are both prone to those). But hubby and I are sure that she is grieving Mac.
It’s understandable. She is 15 1/2 and we’ve had her for 15 years. She was inseparable from Mac in those 15 years. In fact, and go ahead and think I’m weird (er), but I have a very long kitchen counter and have 3 cat beds lined up on it. She slept there every day with Mac and Felix. Tiger prefers to sleep elsewhere. Pear refuses to lie on the counter now.
Pear Blossom as Judge Judy
I’m praying she begins to eat better. She refuses most food I offer to her. But she seems to feel a little better.
POLL RESULTS: where do creative nonfiction writers come from?
Well, that wasn’t the name of the poll, but that is sort of what I was angling for. Here is a graphic of the results:
What I had wanted to know is what brings people to writing creative nonfiction. I was intrigued to read that many “never or rarely” write creative nonfiction. I’m pretty sure that a lot of blogs are creative nonfiction, rather than journalism, because as bloggers we can’t help but create public personas by what we write. If we write about our own lives at all, I would call it CNF.
It surprised me that not many others wrote poetry first and then moved to CNF, but I wasn’t surprised that many started with fiction. I read another nameless article that said that writers shouldn’t write more than one genre. I think it was mainly focused on “genre fiction,” but why can’t a writer write in another genre? Judy Blume has written for children and adults, and if that isn’t crossing genres, I don’t know what is. One book opens with a little girl praying to God. Another book opens with a man playing with his penis while an adult woman and mother watches. Hah. Better know which genre Blume book you’re buying ahead of time! Marie from 1WriteWay and I discussed this recently.
Did a book ever surprise you because you expected a different genre? Was it a pleasant surprise or a shock? A penis instead of a prayer? (Or a prayer instead of a penis?)
