By Katherine Kern. Cats are immensely popular pets worldwide. Many people are passionate about their feline companions, whom they view as part of the family. Cats also maintain a significant presence on the internet, where memes, videos, and images of cats entertain and engage audiences, showcasing the enduring fascination with these animals. Because of these […]
Writing Craft
8 Things I Learned from My Cats about Writing Haiku
by Lee Wardlaw 1. When poised at a hole, remain still – use your ears, eyes, nose, whiskers and mouth to detect a lurking creature. In other words: OBSERVE Observation is crucial to haiku. One must quiet the mind and use all five (or more!) senses to absorb, appreciate, and anchor the moment. A dog […]
Improve Your Pacing, Line by Line
By Kris Bock. “Gripping.” “A page turner.” “I couldn’t put it down.” Why do some books get this praise? Characters, plot, setting, and theme are all part of pacing. Compelling characters mean readers will care about them. Stakes that are high and vitally important to the main character help readers root for those characters to […]
How the Cat in the Blue Virus Mask Changed My Life
by Linda Wright It’s all his fault. His fault that my writing career took a 180 degree turn from “serious” Private Investigator (PI) novels, in which my cat-loving animal rights sleuth mends the world, to . . . cat silliness. One particularly miserable day in 2020, I was sure, as were many of us, that […]
How Joining the Cat Writers’ Association Started Me on My Publishing Path
By Debbie De Louise. As a child, I loved to read and write. I also loved my cats. My parents were animal lovers, so I grew up surrounded by pets, both dogs and cats. During my college years at LIU/Post where I studied English and then library and information science, I wrote a daily diary, […]
Cat Writing in Multiple Genres
by Mollie Hunt Fiction? Non-fiction? Mystery, thriller, cozy? Sci-fi and fantasy? Children’s, YA, memoir, and poetry? If you look at the CWA Book Directory* you’ll see instantly that cat writing comes in all flavors. The booklist itself has fifteen categories for authors to choose from, and that’s not counting the vast selection of sub-categories. Those […]
Why Every Author Needs to Work With a Professional Editor
By Ramona D. Marek, MS Ed. Background I grew up in a home of readers. We read everything from cereal boxes to Shakespeare. My mother was a writer and an academic editor for 40 years, so my siblings and I grew up writing; for us it was as normal as playing outside. While Mom checked […]
Finding Inspiration to Write from the World Around Us
by Andrea Dorn, Cat Writer Writers are often asked by others how they get their ideas for books or articles. Struggling to find ideas of things to write about is common. I know I struggled to find a topic for this blog post, so I procrastinated – my usual reaction to a lack of ideas. […]
How and Why to Add Cats to Your Fiction Writing
Cats have been popular in literature for ages. Children’s books often feature them, as do cozy mysteries, and other novels. Why? Because people love cats. They can add humor and humanity to a story. With their unique purr-sonalities and mystical natures, they make purr-fect characters to write about. Before we talk about how and why […]
6 Self-Editing Techniques
by Cassandra Morgan (CP Morgan) Nothing will ever replace a good editor. Nothing. No software program out there today can replace the years of training and education that professional editors go through to be the very best. But sometimes, we need to know how to edit our own work. Whether it’s an important corporate email […]