McDog

Yup, that's his name

These days I always have dogs in my novels. When I was a kid I was obsessed with animal communication—still am. Back then I wanted animals to speak to me. Now I’m more interested in how they speak to each other.

Various whales, like gray whales and sperm whales, click, moan, and sing to one another. Recently linguists have discovered they use the acoustic equivalent of vowels, too. Specifically: a and i. Weird, huh?? No doubt GoogleTranslate (with the help of AI) will be decoding their words tomorrow. And by next week we’ll be negotiating water territories.

Do we really want to know what they think of us, these whales? We know our dogs love us (or at least they put on a good show), but whales?

As a writer, I guess I shouldn’t admit that language that hides something is more interesting to me that language that elucidates. I love European novels that feel no compunction to explain; readers just have to accept it as is or go do something else. I’m not a fan of backstory. I don’t care what made the character who she is today. If you write believably, I’ll believe it.

Why do I have dogs in my novels? Because I like them. I wish so much that I could have giraffes in my novels, too.

Your whole house smells of dog, says someone who comes to visit. I say I’ll take care of it. Which I do by never inviting that person to visit again.
—Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

I both do and do not want to know what whales have to say. What if it’s just “Krill here” or “Rain coming”?

Actually that would be pretty exciting, who am I kidding.

Writing Prompt: A woman I never met before told me …