Cheese, a Cat, and God

Today God taught me something cool. It wasn't while I was reading my Bible, studying nature, devotional book, listening to worship music, nothing like that. Simply, I was feeding my cat. Cheese, to be specific.

Isn't she pretty?

Some background. This cat is the most antisocial, grouchy animal I've ever come in contact with. She's also a very pretty cat if you can get past the evil, soul-sucking eyes she likes to stare at you with in case you dare to come a few feet away from her. She's relatively harmless, but not afraid to hiss. In short, a few months ago I decided this was a challenge I had to take, and I have been working on befriending her since then.

Things were going okay. Slow, but okay. Gradually I was able to get a few feet closer to her, though she still rarely lets me more than three. I bribed her with "yummies" (aka meow mix), and she begrudgingly tolerated my presence. I even got to the point where she didn't run away if I got too close, merely hissed (lately she's been particularly grumpy, so I've started hissing back, because the cat needs someone to tell her who's dominant here.)

Anyhow, moving on from my weird cat obsession. In the past few days, I've recently discovered that this cat loves cheese. She is willing to get pretty close to me simply to get cheese. Therefore, I've developed the habit of going out occasionally and feeding this to her. So, today, I was out writing in my journal and feeding her cheese, but I stopped feeding her for a bit to finish up writing. She gave me those pitiful, desperate eyes. Well, a little less pitiful and more, I will eat you if you do not feed me more.
Again,

I ignored her for the time being, thinking, "I have words to write, and, anyways, if I wait a moment to give it to her, she'll know more that it's really from me and not just being given to her because she has that right as a cat."
I found myself in one of those moments where I think, "What I just said sounds oddly familiar." Have you ever said something and laughed at yourself, thinking, "I bet that's how God feels" or "God says the same things lots of the time." This was one of those moments. I suddenly realized, we're very similar to this ridiculously cautious and hostile cat.
I've thought this before in the past with her. She's gotten scared for something, and I thought, "There's no reason to be scared. This is ridiculous. And she's getting so up in arms about it... well, we do the same thing, as humans, don't we?" We're bumbling around with our fear, when, in fact, there's no need to be afraid, and God's thinking the same thing about us. Not only that, but we're so hostile and up in arms towards God, when, in reality, He only wants to feed us and scratch behind our ears. (Maybe not scratch behind our ears. But he's got good things planned for us [Jeremiah 29:11, though I'm sure you've heard it.])
But that's only one thing about this whole thing. Sometimes, God takes away our "cheese" to show us that He is, in fact, the Giver of the cheese. Sometimes, he even closes the seal on the cheese, so we can see there's no way to get it but through Him.

I went inside for two seconds and found this...

Of course, when I realized this, I thought, "But that's selfish of God." Then, I thought about the cat and me, and how by drawing her closer to me, I knew that I was helping her. I do love my little hostile, antisocial kitty, and I wouldn't be doing this if it were to harm her. I do know that she will be happier this way, and half of it is for her benefit, the other half is because I really just want to pet this dumb cat.
So, the outcome of all this, is that I am no different than this cat I get frustrated with and hiss at. I can often be just as rebellious towards God, just as scared when there's nothing to fear, and placed in times of need because I'm desperately trying to get something, when all I need to do is turn to God and see that HE is the Giver of all good things. (James 1:17, plus this song by The Afters you should totally listen to.) Maybe I've learned my lesson about hissing back at this kitty. (Or, probably not. She deserves it.)

P.S. Now you know my deep, dark secret; I love cats. Particularly this one.
P.S.S. Her name is Lily. Look how cute she is:

Writing Commandments: #1 Thou Shalt Spread Out Character Info

Hello, world. Quick post; I greet you exasperated and a little irritated and desperately needing to rant. Or, if not rant, at least try to keep this sort of thing from happening again. Why? I've just returned from reading approximately 700 words at once of character personality explanation and background.

Some disclaimer. To give some credit to this writer, he's writing an entirely different style than where I'm heading towards. This book hits around 200k, if I did my math right. I don't even know how you write books that long. Meanwhile, this "commandment" is going towards folks planning on 100k tops. However, this sorta thing is a good example of what not to do for the word-count-conscious people out there. Because you can easily crank down this page (and the page after it I didn't post) to a few sentences, spread out here and there. There should be quite a few pages worth of character development in your own private documents, and then your story should have reflections of that in little sections throughout the book, like this:

Today I'll be bragging on the Raven Boys Series, which I love for the character development.

There are a few ways to reveal character attributes, without shoving it at the reader. You know, showing versus telling.

        1. Dialogue/style of talking (someday I'll do a post on dialogue, too, once I figure out dialogue)

• For example, in the Raven Boys series, Gansey's background can be found in the way he talks, which Stiefvater puts a little light on through the text as well.

• On the opposite spectrum, we can see Ronan's talking exhibits a much different kind of character.



 2. Style of dressing

• Such as, let's follow Blue:








3. Environment
• Next, Gansey and Adam <3

If you read any of them, read this one...
...basically this is the post where I shove my favorite book down your throats. xD

That was a lot of pictured text, I know. Overall, characters are awesome, so remember to not leave them lonely and spend lots of time with them. Develop them more privately than you'll need publicly and spread out the information on them throughout the book. Hope this was helpful and good luck writing!

What's the hardest part about writing/developing characters for you? What are some other ways to reveal character traits? What book, to you, has the best characters? What other advice would you give on characters? Comments are lovely so comment away!