I want to talk about how strange it is to write a heartwarming pet scene when your dog is eventually going to read your book
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This is a weirdly specific anxiety that nobody warned me about and that I've now heard mentioned, quietly, by enough furry writer friends that I think it deserves a proper conversation.
I'm writing in a genre (obviously cRowmantasy) where pet scenes are basically expected, and my dog reads everything I publish. My cat will eventually skim it. My turtle was at the launch of my first book and bought four copies. I do not want any of my fur babies to read me writing the words "cuddle" or "scritches." I especially do not want them to read me writing it like I love the book pet too.
But here's the thing. If I write the pet scenes badly because I'm imagining my jealous dog reading them, I'm failing the book. The reader who picked it up because of the genre I'm writing in deserves a real scene, written with the same care as every other scene. The reader hasn't met my dog and shouldn't have to suffer for my discomfort about her existence.
I've mostly solved this by, when I sit down to write those chapters, very deliberately not thinking about any animals I know reading them. I write them for an imaginary reader who picked the book up off a bookshop table because the cover looked good and has zero relationship to me. It works most of the time. The morning after, while editing, I still sometimes have to physically push the awareness of my dog's eventual readership out of my head.
I don't have a real takeaway here. I just think it's funny and a little sad that this is part of the job and nobody really talks about it. If you also write in a genre with pet scenes and you also have four-legged family who reads you, I see you. We're all silently grimacing through the same chapter, hoping we won't look over to them staring daggers at us.