A Writer's Notebook Day Fifteen

Things grow and come together.  Themes and images start to emerge, and they come together in ways that are not entirely clear to the conscious mind.  A number of cat's, both real and otherwise, are appearing in the story.  I'm considering the question of their role, but I am also aware that it will be there, no matter whether I do anything to make it happen.

To explain, I had been doing research on toys and wanted to describe some antiques.  I came upon the Ithaka Kitty, which you may be familiar with.  It is basically a pillow the shape of a seated cat and with the image of said cat on the fabric.  As well, I was thinking about the owner of the Greek diner and decided he would be Odie, short for Odysseus, and that led me to thinking of him having a one eyed cat, and I decided that since he went by Odie, he would name the cat Arbuckle.  He is not unaware of these things, indeed it is his character that leads to those choices in my mind.  Or, it might be more precise to say that making such choices is about discovering the character and allowing his expression.

In short, I am doing quite well in contemplating how the story needs to resolve and where it is heading.  I did a bit of writing on the story today, and began moving in the direction of some new ideas, but I am looking for specifics.  I can make some of it up, but I need to provide specifics even if they are fictional.  In part, the goal must be to use both and make them indistinguishable within the story.

To keep things short for now (it is quite late already), I hope to have a bit more time for working tomorrow, and will, I think, have a chance to make a lot more progress.  I may need to do a little more research as I go, but I have a lot more of the story in my mind already.  It feels to me that the difficulties I had were the birthing pains for something that will be worth the effort, even if I do need to rewrite things a bit, and I am already considering how the story might be changed to restructure the beginning and solve a few of the problems.

I would keep going, but honestly, I have fallen asleep like three or four times trying to write at this point.  I apparently can keep typing and even spell correctly while doing so, but the sentences did not make any sense...  A Dadaist exercise?  Perhaps another day...

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