Writing Superstitions, Magical Thinking and Habits

While I always consider Writing my first, one, true love – and penned many things as a child and teenager and then as a young woman as a journalist – I didn’t take the risk of attempting to write a novel until I was in my late 20s. 

My journalism career was being curbed by my uncurable illness. I felt cornered. Suddenly, I found myself at home more often, some days unable to drive or walk or even see properly. Driving and chasing deadlines 24/7 was slowly becoming something I could not do.

I started writing a book not just out of love for wanting to be an author, but a little bit of spite towards my Multiple Sclerosis (MS). I could only work when the MS cooperated, but thankfully treatments, meds and diet helped slow and quiet my symptoms some of the time.

Writing can be considered solitary, independent, even lonely. At my side or at my feet, however, was my cat, Boots. Boots came into my life as a kitten only a few weeks old. His mother had died on the road, unintentionlly leaving him alone and sick. I raised him by bottle and my own body heat. He healed in months, and became my little shadow. It was Boots who would be with me for the next 15 years.

I have never written an entire novel without Boots.

During those years, we saw the publication of The Great Cat Nap, a middle grade mystery based on a cat much like Boots. We also saw the sequel, The Clawed Monet. There were/are a number of manuscripts in a computer folder, as well.

As I revise my book now for my agent, it’s hard not to remember that Boots was with me the first draft it ever was. There are times I feel I won’t make it if I don’t have him. That I will fail.

It’s superstitious, of course, and not at all true. I know Boots is with me in spirit, by my legs when I write, by my shoulder when I type bad sentences that he quietly judges.

Maybe it’s more hocus pocus, but I truly believe Boots guided me and my husband to adopt Emma. I never thought I’d have another cat again after Boots. But Emma climbed her way – literally – into my arms and to my heart. She is less supervisor-ly as I work now than my prior feline buddy. Mostly she likes to jump up and examine my keyboard, steal a pen and settle on the windowsill. And maybe it’s magical thinking that both Boots and Emma keep me company as I try to write full novels again.

Happy reading!

AM Peaslee

                                            Boots, top; Emma, bottom (Photos by AM Peaslee)