Don’t Be Too Real

Carter Hasegawa from Candlewick Press critiqued THE SNIFFIEST DOG IN THE WORLD for me. He shared many excellent insights, but I saw the proverbial lightning bolts accompanied by thunder when he said that writing about real people or animals is a great challenge because the author can become stuck in reality and not have fun with the characters.

WOW! YES! When I first wrote THE RETRIEVER WHO COULDN’T SWIM, Orvie was like Wilbur the Pig in CHARLOTTE’S WEB,…sweet, humble, gentle because the real Orvie has those characteristics. How much more fun is the story now entitled ORVIE FINDS HIS PAW POWER! where Orvie is a hotshot pup with a huge ego thinking he could swim the Great Lakes like his parents only to find to his shock that he can’t swim a stroke.

I got the idea for THE RAINBOW DOG from Jazz who loves to change colors by rolling in anything from grass to mud. One of her sons, Lenox, actually has a rainbow tail. Boy, has that story morphed! Now Jazz is not even mentioned by name, and she magically transforms towns from gray, dreary grumpy places to friendly, colorful, happy places.

THE SNIFFIEST DOG IN THE WORLD, based upon Rosie who does sniff everything under the sun and is in scent training ,has now morphed into three separate books: ROSIE AND ARLO VISIT THE ZOO ( A Life-the Flap Book), THE LAND OF CURIOUS CRITTERS, and CAPTAIN ROSIE AND HER SCENT SQUAD. All of these are just so much more fun and not based upon reality.

Carter Hasegawa, you changed me as a writer. I am not sure which of the three books borne from the original I will send, but I guarantee, it will be loads more fun than the original.