It was December of 2012 and I wasn’t even into my first month of blogging when I posted about my cat eating my book outline. (Yarn, Sticky Notes, and a Cat). You see, I’d tried to outline my 100K word novel across the wall by using yarn and sticky notes. After putting hours into the outline, I awoke one morning to find the yarn and chunks of paper trailing down the stairs…and a missing outline on the wall.
Over ten years later, I’m still experimenting with how to outline novels but I’ve got a pretty solid way of visualizing the adventure books. They might have a lot of endings, but they’re still only a quarter of the length of a novel.
Anyway, since I’m working on both the Zap Dragon adventure book and the Quaking Soul sequel right now, my big whiteboard is overtaken by the sequel, leaving my smaller whiteboards for Zap Dragon. Since one of my boards isn’t attached to the wall, I sat down on the floor to flesh out the outline.
As usual, the Writing Sidekick wandered over to investigate. I’d decided to use a wet-erase marker instead of dry-erase to prevent a simple brush against the board from causing any panic, so I wasn’t too worried about the Sidekick sniffing the board until he suddenly took a big lick at it.
One option for the adventure turned into a long streak of blue marker.
Eeek. Thankfully, I could shoo him away and fix the issue.
Enter lunch and a brief nap to recharge my brain. I set the board against the desk intending to finish it in the afternoon.
What do I find when I return? Half my outline is now a swirl of tongue licks instead of words. There must be catnip in the wet-erase marker! Or maybe the Sidekick was trying to help me edit? Either way, I was half tempted to check his tongue to see if it’d turned blue.
*Sigh*. The Sidekick strikes again! I have now learned to either outline on a board he can’t get to or turn the whiteboard against the wall while I’m away.
These are the antics in this writer’s life 🤪
Blessings,
Jennifer
P.S. The illustrator has started on Zap Dragon and I’m currently back to work on the developmental edit of Hidden Mythics II. It’s about 55% complete 🙂
Thank goodness it’s ideas you can redo!
Right!! Whew 😅
Oh no! I wonder what’s in those markers that he likes so much. 😂 I hope his “edits” were at least easy to undo!
Thankfully they were!! Otherwise laughter might not have been my first reaction 😂
Nice job, Onyx. Keep up the good job, writer lady!
Just keep writing, just keep writing… 🙂
Anybody want a cat?…,
Lol 😂
Gosh! That’s so silly! 🤣
Makes for a good laugh 😂 thankfully I had already written much of what he erased!
Haha, cats are so funny! Your Writing Sidekick must have had a lot to say about your outlines. My daughter loves watching cat videos, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one lick a board before. Must have been tasty!
He’s never shown any interest in the board before so I’m thinking he must have had some edits in mind 🤔🙂