Article: I think every writer should...

I think every writer should have a dog. Writers often find that they spend a lot of time sitting in rooms by themselves, writing or trying to find excuses not to write, and I’ve found that those rooms feel a lot less lonely if they have a dog in them. When I started writing The Dogs of Babel, I didn’t know it would involve a dog at all. I had some of the basic elements of the story down—a widower looking for answers about his wife’s death—but I knew I needed something more. When I came across a piece I’d written earlier, sort of a false history of canine linguistics, and I looked at my own dog lying at my feet, his thoughts a complete mystery to me, I thought I’d found something worth exploring. What pet owner hasn’t wondered what his dog might say if he had the chance? And the idea of writing about a dog appealed to me for other reasons, too. Those of us who share our lives with animals understand that there’s a profound bond between people and their pets, a bond that’s not written about seriously very often. My own dog, Chelsea, proved an invaluable aid to my research; when my character Paul was performing intelligence tests on his dog Lorelei, I did the same tests with Chelsea. Really, it was a form of procrastination that proved productive—let’s see, do I want to sit down and write today, or do I want to see what my dog does when I put a towel over his head?

Actually, research as procrastination is one of my favorite writing techniques. When I decided that Paul and Lexy’s first meeting would involve a device that turns hard-boiled eggs into cubes, I spent an entire afternoon making square eggs. When a telephone psychic popped up as a character, I spent several days learning to read tarot cards. It’s a wonder I ever got any writing done at all.

Sadly, Chelsea died before I finished writing the book, and I haven’t gotten another dog. At first, I just didn’t have the heart to replace him, and now I have a young son who’s at prime tail-pulling age. But I have no doubt that someday soon, there will be another dog in my life. Trying to write without one is just too lonely.

Copyright © Carolyn Parkhurst