“Curiousity killed the cat.”
This was a term I disagreed with since the moment I first heard it as a child. It didn’t fit in at all for a naturally curious girl like me.
For some reason, curious women, especially, were cursed, right from Eve to Alice to Pandora. Okay, Eve’s sin was specifically tied to disobedience. But let’s admit it, it was her curiosity that got the best of her, that led to temptation and disobedience.
However, this same sinful curiosity is what takes writing from being a regular to the greats. It’s also a fact that writers are notorious for being rebels of sorts.
Curiosity: The must-have tool in the writer’s kit
Writing is all about the imagination. That’s partly true.
Coz’ writing is also about curiosity. From the brick on the wall to a stranger on the street.
It’s having the keen power of observation that stems from natural curiosity. Writers are cat-like that way. They don’t just look, they notice the smallest movement and read silences that most miss.
I remember reading everything and anything. From bubble-gum wrappers to medicine syrup bottles. From watching the neighbourhood girl whose name I didn’t know daily to stalking strangers on social platforms today.
Being a writer means being an eternally curious cat.
A Breakdown on the Writer’s Mind
We writers are obsessive beings. We don’t stop at simply noticing the new girl in the neighbourhood or the new profile on social media. We observe everything about them—what’s visible and what isn’t. Our minds are already at work, spinning threads into fantastical tales before we even realise it.
There is an in-built psychological precision with which every writer operates upon their subject. They scan, linger, break apart, and rebuild them again, when they are satisfied by their findings.
Reading too much into it
But before there was the writer, there was a reader. Our curious powers were activated that magical moment when we were drawn to a book—in the library, bookstore, or gifted to us.
Reading feeds our curiosity muscle as it introduces the familiar and foreign to us. We’re curious to know why the characters are the way they are. We’re eager to turn the next page, the next chapter to know what’s next. We’re curious to know about the author and their other books, once we’ve read the book, and crave for more.
Curiosity triggers our learning, the true elixir of life. So, it’s truly curious how it can kill the cat. If anything, it should have extended the cat’s life from nine lives to eternity.
For the first time in my life, I was so sure of it—of anything.
The Curious Case of Staying Curiouser
You see cliched tropes like “Write…Write More.”
Even less will you hear people say, “Read…Read Even More.”
An even smaller percentage will tell you to, “Be Curious…And Curiouser.”
All want to be writers. All want to be cool and famous or at least brag, “I’ve written a book or few.”
Reading isn’t seen as cool as writing, unless it’s for the gram at some scenic location like a mountain or beach or on the edge of the top floor of a skyscraper. For lesser mortal, your local cool cafe will do, preferably with an aesthetic library as background to compliment the book in your hand. Brawn or beauty with brains mode activated.
Curiosity is already deemed a sin. Or that’s what you were fed.
Like in life, there’s always a twist. “Curiousity killed the cat.” is an incomplete proverb.
The complete saying goes, “Curiousity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”
Prying or being nosy is not the same thing as curiousity. The good feeling or benefit you gain from finding out the answer (the “satisfaction”) “revives” the cat who risked it with curiousity.
So I was right from the very beginning. Curiousity leads you towards learning, the elixir of life.
Curiousity helps writers keep the word alive.
This post is a part of Blogchatter A2Z Challenge 2026.
