What My Dogs Have Taught Me About Writing

by Sheila Webster Boneham

For the past couple of decades, I've spent a lot of time, energy, sweat, tears, and love on my writing and on my dogs. In that time, I've written twenty plus books, had articles and short stories published in national magazines, anthologies, and journals, and in itty bitty newsletters.

In that time I've also not only lived with and loved a lot of dogs (and cats, but they'll have their day later), but also competed with my dogs in several sports, founded two rescue programs, fostered and rehomed many Labrador Retrievers, Australian Shepherds, and other dogs, volunteered as a trainer and evaluator for three shelters, volunteered with my registered therapy dogs, and bred highly competitive Australian Shepherds. 

Sunny (left) and Lily, aka
UCDX Diamonds Perennial Waterlily
AKC CD RN TD CGC, ASCA CD, TDI

Right now, my husband and I share our home with Lily, a 7-year-old Lab, and Sunny, a Golden Retriever we adopted last November when she was 11.5.  

As you might imagine, my Animals in Focus mysteries have paw prints all over them. Dogs, cats, and other animals are realistic, vital characters and are essential to the plots of the books. What most people don't imagine is how many of the lessons my dogs have taught me over the years apply to writing as well. So I thought I would share a few of them.

Sage, aka Perennial Meadowsage,
retrieving at 7 weeks old. 

Work is play, play is work. The expression "work like a dog," means to labor without joy, but the truth is that dogs who have fun work harder and better. Even when there's heavy lifting involved. 

Jay (UCD Perennial See You At
the Top, AKC CD, RN, CGC,
ASCA CD, Delta) & Lily

You don't always have to do what you're told, but....

Summer (Master Agility Champion
Perennial Hot Sultry Summer)

...sometimes you have to jump through hoops to get the reward.

Kitty Boneham, dog expert.

Ideas can come from unexpected sources, so don't discount anyone. 

Me and Katy during a canine safety
session at an elementary school.

It's important to make time for your friends. Writing is a solitary pursuit, but without love, friendship, and social interaction, we have nothing to write about. 

And now, according to my technical advisors, it's time for a game of tennis ball!



Sheila Webster Boneham is the author of 17 nonfiction books about dogs and cats as well as the Animals in Focus mystery series. Drop Dead on Recall came out in 2012, and The Money Bird will be out next month. Autographed copies of Sheila's books are available on her website at www.sheilaboneham.com. 

Details, Details

by Sheila Webster Boneham

 



Years ago (at least fifteen), I passed a novel I had enjoyed along to my husband. Roger is a geologist, and the "love interest" in the book is a geologist, and I thought he might enjoy the story and relish meeting one of his own in a romantic lead of sorts. And he did, for the first chapter or so. Then he put it down in disgust.

"Some geologist!" he said.

Turns out the guy in the book had waxed eloquent about the cleavage in a piece of quartz. Problem is, quartz has no cleavage (which means that when it breaks, it has no parallel surfaces). That booboo clattered right by me, but for the reader in the know, it was a book-stopper.

I run into this all the time in books with animals, especially dogs. (I've shown, bred, rescued, written about, trained, and judged dogs for more than two decades, so, yeah, I care that "dog things" are accurate.") I recently read a novel in which the protagonist's dog is identified as a specific rare breed. Exciting! Then the dog is described. She's a color combination that doesn't occur in the breed and she weighs about half what she should. I had enjoyed the first pages of the book, but found it hard to keep reading past such glaring errors.

And then there was the best-selling memoir a few years ago about growing up in southern Indiana, a place of forests, deep ravines, and rolling country that I know well. I perused the book at a conference in Indianapolis, thinking I would buy a copy, but when I read that Indiana is "flat as a pancake," I was finished. Well, almost finished - I did point out the passage to a friend and the two of us snorted and laughed and snarked about pandering to East-Coaster sterotypes about the Midwest. The author's mother was standing right behind us. Ah, well.

I'm sure we've all read things in which some error in our own field of knowledge damaged or destroyed our faith in the author. In fact, almost everyone I've asked about this has produced an example from personal experience. Many of them also express similar reactions. Disappointment ("I was looking forward to this book, and then..."). Loss of trust ("If the author is wrong about the things I know, how can I trust the rest of the information?). Disgust ("It's not that hard to check the facts!").

And really, it's not hard at all. First, of course, we have the Internet. Granted, we have to be judicious about our sources, but as long as we use credible websites, blogs, forums, and other online resources, we can check out almost anything. Or at least get a leg up.

We can also go old school - libraries, books, reference librarians. All good.

We can find people who know. I saved myself from a serious error in Drop Dead on Recall by asking a physician friend read a passage in which a character uses an epinephrin pen on his wife, who seems to be having an allergic reaction. Myfriend's terse response? "Well, he just killed her." Seems my character's technique left a little to be desired. I learned, and he does it properly in the book. In that case, I called on a friend, but it isn't hard to find people in the know, and most people are generous about helping us get things right.

Need the skinny on a location? As my husband, Roger, likes to say, there's nothing like a site visit. Whether its a place or a kind of event or an institutional setting, we can do lots of reading, watch videos and films, peruse photographs, but nothing beats being there. How does the quality of light shift by the minute on the Carolina coast at sunrise? How does the heat dissipate in the high desert as the sun drops behind the Sierras? How does the grooming area at a dog show smell, or the waiting room in a hospital sound? If we can't get there, then once again, finding someone who has been there to read what we write can save us from grievous goofs, and may even give us some telling detail to add.

I'm working on the third Animals in Focus mystery right now, and am planning a couple of site visits of my own. I've already lined up some experts to keep me honest, and I have files upon files of background info. Luckily for me, the research I'm doing for this book isn't tedious at all. I get to interview lots of lovely cats and dogs.

Am I in Your Book?

By Sheila Webster Boneham

"Be nice to me or I'll put you in my novel."

(T-shirt seen at cafe)

"Are your characters based on real people?" I’ve been asked that several times recently, and since my first mystery, Drop Dead on Recall, won’t be released until October, I have to wonder whether the subtext of the question is, "Am I in your book?" Only a handful of people have actually "met" the characters at this point, after all.

The answer is an unequivocal "sort of." What kind of people, other than real ones, can fictional characters be based on? Our concept of people comes from meeting and watching and listening to living, breathing human beings. Yes, we also "know" fictional characters through books, movies, song lyrics, and other verbal art forms, but fiction that works is what I think of as "enhanced reality." Even fantasy and sci fi and magical realism have to be grounded in our sense of the world or they just don’t work for most people. Even aliens from planet Sjtxs are based on real people!

Philosophical meandering aside, though, what about those characters in my "Animals in Focus" series? Let me begin with the non-human characters – dogs and cats in the first book, and other animals to come. The critters in Drop Dead on Recall are based on real dogs and cats. One of them is snoring beside me on the couch as I write this. That’s my Australian Shepherd, Jay, whose namesake in the books is quite true-to-life, right down to most of his backstory. In the book, his human, Janet, is not his breeder. In real life, Jay was born into my hands. Otherwise, yep, that’s him in the book. Other animals are composites, but their behaviors are based on real life actions of real life animals. Oddly enough, not a single dog or cat has shown any interest in whether they’re in the books. Go figure.

The human characters come in two varieties, neither of them "real," but both "reality based." Most of them are completely fictional, although of course they do things, wear things, eat things, say things that I’ve observed or heard about real people doing, wearing, eating, saying. A few are loosely based on people I know or, ahem, am. Take Janet MacPhail, the protagonist. She’s very loosely based on moi. She’s a she, she loves dogs, she has a creative career. But Janet isn’t me; she lives a very different life from mine with a very different family. (No, I won’t tell you what’s real and what I made up!)

Here’s the funny thing about reality and characters, though, and I’ve heard this from other authors as well. Readers get the connections wrong more often than not. A reader of one of my drafts said of one not-so-lovely character, "Oh, I know who that is." Thoughts of lawsuits immediately danced through my head as I squeaked, "You do?" "Yeah, that’s..." she said, and then named possibly the last mutual acquaintance I could imagine in that role. Funnily enough, she did not mention the mutual acquaintance who actually inspired the character, albeit with many a change twixt inspiration and book.

So, the answer to the first question is yes, my characters are based on real people, sort of. And the answer to the second question is yes, you are in my book, whoever you are. You just won’t recognize yourself.

~~~~~~~~~~

Do you know a real life dog who would like to be in the second Animals in Focus mystery? Check out these raffles to support canine health and raffle off a role (and please share with your dog-loving friends). http://www.sheilaboneham.com/Cameoraffle2012.html



Sheila W. Boneham, Ph.D., is the author of the forthcoming "Animals in Focus" mystery Drop Dead on Recall (now available for pre-order) as well as award-winning books about pets including Rescue Matters! How to Find, Foster, and Rehome Companion Animals (Alpine, 2009), The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting and Owning a Cat (Alpha, 2005), and fifteen others. Sheila's books are available from your local bookseller and on line. Learn more at www.sheilaboneham.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sheilawrites