On Writing About Animals and Being a Genre Nerd

*I’m a full-time horse trainer who has written about horses (here) since 2010. My dogs think it’s their turn now.*

This week, instead of taking my dog to a show, I took my books. I say it this way because it sounds like more fun than sitting in an auditorium-sized room behind a table on a sunny fall day. The event was a Women’s Expo and twenty-three local women authors were invited. Libraries, writers’ groups, or bookstores sometimes put on these events. This Expo was a different crowd, but the organizer is a book lover and was kind to invite us.

I was asked to moderate a roundtable on publishing and was joined onstage by seven authors. Everyone introduced themselves and their genre. This is a surprisingly difficult question for most of us. You’d think naming your genre would be a simple thing, but we end up hyphenating a few together. We have a hard time fitting into boxes.

The audience grew as the hour went on, and there were some fresh writers of various ages. Sometimes I think hatching new writers is the most important part of these events. I asked questions meant to lead us through the process, and the authors gave great responses. We ended by going down the line and offering one bit of advice. They were practical and inspiring. Then one author said that since most adults read at an 8th-grade level, don’t get too fancy. Write to that level. At moments like this, I think I should come with a trigger warning.

Jolene would like you to know that writing takes up valuable time when we could be having fun. She would rather go to scent work class. If the weather’s good, we form a flash mob somewhere like a park or a closed restaurant. This week, it was a farm supply store at the corner of a very loud intersection. One search area was the vestibule, where the automatic doors opened and closed intermittently, and the overhead heater moved the scent around. Waiting outside, Jolene’s hindquarters quivered with all the city noise, but when it was her turn, she was all business, finding each hide. Our instructor says that if I didn’t bring her, Jolene would drive herself.

Jolene would hate these book events. The rest of the day, I stood behind a table with my books. On one side of me was a woman who wrote a children’s book, and on the other, a woman who wrote thrillers. Some tables are busier than others. The most common comment I hear as people pass my table is something like, “Oh, horse books,” with a marked lack of interest, and that’s if they say anything. It’s enough to make me wonder why I don’t write in a more popular genre myself.

Romance is the most popular genre by a big margin. Memoir and nonfiction are at the bottom of the list. I can’t make sense of this. They say to write about what you know. That sounds like memoir, like storytelling. When you think about it, there is nothing stranger, funnier, more twisted and bizarre than real life. Memoir is the soil that grows mystery, fantasy, romance, and all other genres. It’s the story we can write because we lived it. Even if we set it in outer space. So why do I feel like I get a little bit of an eye roll?

I don’t hawk my books, preferring to be friendly. If the passerby breaks stride and pauses, I ask if she is a reader. Or if she has a book in her. I think we all do. I might tell her that my first book was about a midlife crisis that landed me on a ramshackle farm. Another book is about a post-COVID coast-to-coast road trip. On this day, I sold two poetry books, which is practically a world record. No one thinks they can make a living from writing, but poetry books are a labor of love. That’s a quaint way of saying the publishing costs never get recouped.

People say I’m talented, thank you. But I don’t simply live stream my thoughts. Writing is an art that requires as much practice time as creativity. I work to constantly improve, just like I do with training horses. But don’t feel sorry for me. I could certainly write another genre. I just don’t fight the words that drop out of my fingers. So what’s the rub?

Mister wakes at this, slightly offended. Mister is a big fan, not of my writing, but of the fact that I write. He likes a human with a desk job. It matches his level of athleticism. Mister is in charge of my personal sleep score, and this word search of mine is keeping him up. He says, what’s in a name? He’s right, as always. I tell him these events are kind of like facing the ducks, a love-hate thing.

Am I irrelevant for only writing about animals? Sometimes it’s easier to explain something complicated than to say the simple truth. I write about a whole lot more than horses, even if they are on every cover. Horses are just horses, but they are also a metaphor for life. But if I said horses are life, that would make me sound like a lunatic. Haven’t we all been dismissed for being horse crazy?

But we are not the crazy ones. Animals have a way of easing their way into our lives just when we need them. Maybe we drop our defenses, or maybe they know something we don’t. Their simple lives are not so different from our own, but sometimes animals are easier to love. Animals lubricate us. Then a door might open that had been closed.

So I write about animals, because I want to write about this whole big thing called life. I don’t know how to say it simply, so I copied out a quote onto a note card and put it in the middle of my books. It’s that quote by Mahatma Gandhi that just rings like a church bell:

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

Yes, that’s why I write what I do. Jolene is looking up at me, softly growling. Jolene is the timekeeper. My canine fitness tracker, she barks to let me know it’s time to stand up and move around.

Jolene says, the most important thing about writing is having a dog.

And a reminder: Books are a great holiday gift. They’re the same price they were the day they were published, inflation be damned. Available at all online booksellers, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and signed copies from me.

Do you ever think you might have a book in you? Are you curious about writing? In January, I will be teaching a month-long writing workshop entitled How to Write a Memoir If You’re a Nobody. Obviously, everyone is welcome.

… 

#noai #humanart

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Find Anna Blake and The Gray Mare Podcast on Substack or BlueSky social media. Contact me directly at annablake.com. #deletefacebook

My books include three creative nonfiction books, two memoirs, and two poetry books. Available at all online booksellers, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and signed copies from me. Please consider leaving a rating or review.

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