NOPE, animal biography!

Anyone else writing the biography of an animal?
My main character is a dog recounting his life on his death bed. A little off-beat and weird, I'm sure, but a nice challenge for me without being too far out of my comfort zone of writing about animals.

sounds fun!

Never done this before, but sounds neat!

I've read plenty of books like this, ex The Art of Racing in the Rain, A Dog's Life: The Autobiography of a Stray and there are more I can't remember. I love them personally!

Thanks guys! It's proving to be a good challenge for me. Writing for and about animals is my comfort zone, but I've decided to go for first person and it's really making me put some effot into this.

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Reminds me of You Are a Dog by Terry Bain. It's refreshing to read something with a completely different point of view, and I'm sure it will be a cool challenge for you to put a dog's life in 50k words! I'd read it!

Hey, hawaiiigirl,
You're not alone.
I'm doing that partly too in my novel. I'm writing of several dogs, a few children and the grownups, cats and everything else in their lives.The kids and dogs are the centre of things.

All the dogs and humans live in a townhouse complex so there is a big lawn where kids and dogs run and play (yes, a lack of leashes and clean-up will no doubt allow some scense to unfold). In this residential situation some of the parents are friends with each other. My basic premise is that one inter-species misunderstanding will lead to another and another until someone's dog winds up on a vet's table getting the final injection. A tear-jerker moment for sure.

Of course everyone will "know" it was the bad dog's fault; that family will get a new puppy from a more reputable breeder thinking the same problem won't happen again, but then they'll make all the same mistakes. Kind of depressing overarching theme but the story on the way by will have plenty of comic relief. I haven't decided exactly how everything unfold, will find out when I write it.

I figure some of the adults will learn from their dog training and dog management errors, some will not. I plan to use 2 fundamental points of view, canine and human but using several dogs throughout the story and several of the humans too. I plan the story to occur in roughly one calendar year.

This is my first NaNo and I think my plan is somewhat ambitous but I'll give it my best shot.

It is so wonderful to see someone else thinking from a dog's point of view! Way to go :-).

Maybe some day there will be enough of us we can have our own genre!

My novel is fantasy, but there are no humans. All my characters are wolves. (:

I am writing from the POV of a coyote/dog, and I was also surprised that there isn’t an ANIMAL POV genre listed somewhere. I think we should petition to get out own genre listed.
Gotta go… I left my poor FMC in a dog pound.
You can read about her adventures on my blog (it’s listed on my profile). Yes, I’m posting what I write on a daily basis. I’m doing this so that I can’t cheat -or just because I’m crazy. Tell me what you think.

I think I just found an idea for a story after NaNo: The biography of my cats xD

Yes. I'm doing exactly this. It's...a lot harder than expected.

How is it going my fellow animal biographers?

I've been so busy writing, I haven't had the time to check out all of your novels, other than reading your excerpts. But I fully intend to look at each and every one of them. I'm game for a NaNo swap with you guys if anyone is interested in Dec.

Thinking on it, my cats don't really do much, so I'm not sure how much of a biography it's going to be. I'll have to try and make it more interesting. Hmm...

Explore things that could happen. I had to stretch a bit for my MC dog, but didn't make things too outlandish. For example, he lives on a farm, runs away, lives on the streets, is in a shelter, lives with an elderly couple, lives with some homeless people... just to name a few. Maybe you could write about you having to move and write about how the cats try to escape to go back to their original home.

Well, I could detail my one cat's journey into the "wilderness" when she disappeared for a week haha

Yeah, that could be made quite interesting!

Yeah, I love books like that. One of my ideas for NaNo2012 is a Black Beauty type novel about a horse.

The idea I have for the next NaNo is about a dog named Dog. He's abandoned by his boy and gets caught up in a gladiator-style fighting ring. The story ends with him being euthanized by his now-teenage boy who doesn't recognize him.