D is For Drafts

Yesterday was a very good writing day. One of those days writers dream about where you have an idea, and you sit down to write it down, and the ideas and words just keep coming.  By the time I finished, I had 4000 words of an outline for a series of children's stories.

The idea came from this guy.

Fluffy on a rug in our sittingroom

 We call him Fluffy. I know, I know. Not very original, is it?

He's a feral cat that moved onto our homestead with his mom and siblings some time ago. Basically we were cleaning the yard of weeds in an unused area when we realised that we actually had tenants there. we called the SPCA, but they asked us to keep them.

The other cats are not domesticated, so no one is going to adopt them. I certainly wouldn't want strangers to let their kids near them thinking, "what a sweet kitty!"because they are not sweet. Not dangerous either. Just wild.

We let them stay, and for the most part, Fluffy's Mom and siblings they are OK with us. They come closer to get the food when we put it out, but they are off otherwise God knows where, and the kids in the family know they're not pets.

Except for Fluffy. That is, he's not a pet, but he likes hanging out with us and he has taught himself how to interact with us. For example, when he bats at you, he always makes sure his claws are sheathed.

Of course he's not completely tame either. Some days he brings us gifts and leaves them at the kitchen door- dead mice, birds, dead stuff we really don't want:-).

Anyway, the point of this post was not to tell you about our cats but to talk about Drafts. So Fluffy was sitting near the kitchen door, watching me cook when I wondered why I never wrote stories based on what I think his life is like. It's certainly not the conventional one of a well-loved indoor cat. I started typing  and 4000 words later, I had an outline for a series of children's stories.

The draft had practically written itself. That's one type of first draft, the kind we writers get occassionally when we're lucky.

The more usual first draft we writers work with is the kind where you get an idea, research the facts and depending on your style of writing, you either outline things a bit before you draft, or you just jump in and start drafting. The words may come, but you have to work hard for each sentence.

Like this post. I knew what I wanted to talk about, but I still had to think things through, do some broad planning so I at least had an idea of what sub-topics I wanted to cover.