On Cats (and Writing)

On Friday the Critique group squeezed into my flat and I gained a major insight into Tibo's little feline brain. I think he thinks that everyone who walks through my front door is there to see him. And after all why shouldn't he think that. The day he arrived Jane did come just to visit him. I remember watching a sporting event one night and realising the person I thought I was talking to was actually in the bathroom playing with Tibo. There was even the lady from the cat association who came specially to see him. Even the postlady and the census lady have cooed all over him. So of course he thought these women who walked through the door were here to see him. As realisation slowly dawned he decided that if they weren't here for him, he would sure as hell make his presence felt. He jumped in and out of handbags, bit knees and hair, stole pencils, tried to taste the snacks, took nips out of everyone's writing and generally TOTALLY misbehaved. After all this when someone did arrive who would pet him, he curled up on the back of the sofa and fell asleep.

Despite the fact that I spent the evening with one eye on the critiques and the other seeing where Tibo would stick his nose next, I felt the evening went quite well. Two things became very apparent to me:

1. Show not tell - Ok it's not an earth shattering discovery. It's not even new, it's not like I haven't heard it a million times before. But then I suddenly discover the advice has flown out of my head...
   
2. Along with my grasp of punctuation. I have a very intuitive use of punctuation. I think a comma or semicolon should go there. And there, yeah there, let's slip in a dash! Anyway it becomes kind of glaring when one of your crit partners sends you a link for a punctuation website. So yesterday I purchased New Hart's Rules - The Handbook of style for Writers and Editors. It's got a whole bunch of other sections that I will probably never look at, but it seemed to fit. I do own Eats, Shoots and Leaves, but I seem to have Read, Thought and Forgotten! And really to find the rule in amongst Lynne Truss's rants is not really practical.

Despite these minor flaws (uh hum) I seem to have acquired myself not one, but two Roars for Powerful writing. Eeek! The first one was from Kimy over at Mouse Medicine and she made me blush she was so kind. The second one is from Marie over at Deep Thinker. And I now have to tell you 3 things that I think make powerful writing. So here goes...

1. Write from the heart. Be it fiction or non-fiction love your subject, love your words.
2. Edit and let your love sing clearly and loudly.
3. And because you always can - keep on learning. I'm hoping YOU guys, my crit group and Stephen King's On Writing will continue to teach me a lot.

And so on to the fun bit, passing it on. It'll be interesting to see what these people find powerful.

So Kimy, I have to pass the roar right on back to you.

Vanilla at Absolute Vanilla - I hope you don't me borrowing your words, but you say it so well.

David at Witnessing am I

Apprentice at My Gap Year

And Jon from Writing in a Vacuum (and not because he's collecting awards this time).