Why Writers Are Great (Cat) Lovers

If you want to have an indoor kitty, there are certain things you have to do. You have to feed her and love her and play with her, but you also have to brush her and clean up her messes and clean out the litter box. The problem is that kitty litter tracks everywhere, and even when you get rid of the litter, you still have to deal with the dust. You can vacuum or sweep or mop, or all of the above, and then when you think you're done you turn around and there's more on the floor again.

Being a writer is like having an indoor cat. When I first sit down to write, there's the thrill of documenting all those brilliant profundities; it's the same kind of thrill for me as visiting all those poor kittens at the pet store or humane society. There is so much to say, so many creative juices flowing; I can hardly keep up with all those ideas and I know some will have to be left behind, hoping for tomorrow like mewing kittens. But then, when I come to my senses and realize what I've just written, it's like waking up in the morning to find all that litter and dust tracked across the floor, only it's also tracked across the page and desperately needs to be cleaned up. Immediately, or else it gets tracked onto more pages, and more, and so on.

And so here I am stuck in the quagmire of revision for my second novel, slowly and methodically and painfully editing, deleting unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, checking for consistency, watching for misplaced metaphors, doing what I know must be done.