Monday, August 13, 2007

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

Are you a poet who sees the beauty of the world around you? Or a potential romance writer? Perhaps you have the makings of a screen writer stirring inside you just waiting to get out. Thanks to Melanie at "A Quiet Symphony" I found this quiz site that lets you figure out what kind of writer you are (should be)...in case you didn't already know, that is...:) The choices are limited and it's kind of cheesy but I thought I'd have a little fun with it. It consists of about 10 questions and in the end I got what I already knew:

You should be a science fiction writer. Your ideas are very strange...I already knew that!...and people often wonder what planet you're from (yeah, like I'm going to tell you!). And, while you may have some problems being "normal" (why be normal?), you'll have no problems writing sci-fi. Now you're talking! Whether it's epic films, important novels, or vivid comics...Your own little universe (yup!) could leave an important mark on the world! WOW! I'm so enlightened now.
Now you try it! I dare you!

I think one of the main reasons I fit into the Sf category was how I answered Question 4: what inspires you? I selected "what if" scenarios.

What if...I'm fascinated with "what if". Our lives are full of "what ifs". They're the stuff of our imagination. Our dreams. And, sometimes, our nightmares...We base a lot of our regrets and guilts on those nasty "what ifs". Here's a sad one I've been carrying around for a while...

A few months ago, I started half-waking up in the morning here and there, thinking I heard Sammy, our cat, outside meowing. Rather plaintively. Then I would hear him by his favorite place, happily crunching on his dry catfood...and I would fall back asleep and forget what I'd heard. It repeated several times...that kind of sad meow, then finally went away. We have a lot of cats in our neighbourhood, so I didn't think much of it. So long as Sammy was okay...

One morning we all got up to find Sammy gone and realized that he'd stayed out all night (we always bring him in nightly because of the coyotes that live in the field behind our house). The boys finally found him inside the small tool shed; he must have strayed inside while my husband was working outside the day before and got trapped inside (he knows he's not allowed inside, but he's a cat). Turns out he had a reason to be there; when the boys let Sammy out they heard a little plaintive call of a cat. It came from behind the wall of the shed! We realized to our horror that a cat was trapped behind the inner wall. Herb quickly figured out that it must have crawled into a small opening at the roof and fallen down a good nine feet between the cramped outer and inner walls. Herb set quickly to work, hacking open the wall to free the poor thing. When we finally got him out, he was a mess, blind and pussy and (pardon) literally rotting. My son and I rushed him to the vet (with blind thoughts of adopting him) who pronounced him too far gone: he'd hurt himself in the fall and had literally starved to death over the course of a few weeks and during the entrapment he'd been infected by vermin (it only takes a few days, apparently for that to start) which had eaten him alive. The vet then euthenized the cat. Herb closed up the gap in the shed roof so no other event like that one could occur again. I can't look at the shed anymore and not think of his suffering. I have no words to describe how that makes me feel. I'm haunted by it. What ifs...I keep thinking, what if I had checked when I'd first heard those calls? What if?...
photo of cat borrowed from wvs.topleftpixel.com/06/03/06

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Awww... Nina, how heart-wrenching! (I feel your pain.)

Yes, you should follow those inner promptings...

Don't wait until it's too late, only to say: "What if?"

Jean-Luc Picard said...

I can feel your thoughts as to the plight of that poor cat. What a sad tale, Nina.

Nina Munteanu said...

your right, Karen...sometimes it isn't as obvious as one would like. I don't think I truly remembered hearing that poor cat until later...and it all made sense. It was too late by then.

Navin said...

J.K Rowling is one example of such imagination.

"what if??" ummm. i feel sad for cat.