Tag: inspiration

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What the Burros Taught Me, Part II

How can you not want to pet this guy?

If you’re one of those charming, organized folks who prefers to read “Part Ones” before “Part Twos,” have no fear. My first burro post is right here. Enjoy!

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My wife, Ellen, thinks she is The Burro Whisperer. She came to this conclusion largely because of Burrito, a denizen of an area petting zoo, who trots over to her every time she shows up and grunts with delight when she pets his nose.

Need more evidence? Fine. She also sleeps with a stuffed Eeyore. Case closed.

The problem with Ellen’s reasoning is that Burrito will trot over to anyone for nose pets and, well, Eeyore is a doll.

But that’s neither here nor there. When we visit burros that are not Burrito, Ellen (who, it should be said, is smarter than me on most other matters) has a difficult time grasping that all burros are not exactly the same.

This was brought into focus on a recent trip to Intercourse, Pennsylvania (which is just one of the many towns in Lancaster County with a sort-of-pervy name), at a place called Kitchen Kettle Village (which is a tourist shopping Mecca that sells everything you could ever possibly want – provided that everything you want is jam).

Kitchen Kettle Village also has a tiny petting zoo that no one ever visits. Petting animals, I guess, distracts from all of that jam-buying.

I kid you not.

The zoo has a burro, so Ellen was on cloud nine. She leaned over the fence to get his attention. She “hello-ed” and knocked on the split rail fence posts.

Mr. Burro, however, wanted none of this. He sat in the center of his pen and made a pretty good show of ignoring her. He positioned his ample burro butt in her direction and stared at a wall. The only thing he could’ve done to make his wishes more obvious was to bury his nose behind a newspaper.

Ellen, however, wasn’t getting the message. She redoubled her efforts, knocking louder and faster and switching from “hellos” to more urgent “yoo-hoos.” Alex, our six-year-old, and I were too busy introducing ourselves to a group of personable goats to notice what Ellen was doing at first, but her doggedness soon became hard to ignore.

Alex played the role of diplomat. “Momma,” he said. “I don’t think he wants to be pet.”

I was less diplomatic. “Geeze, Ellen. Knock it off. Can’t you see he wants to be left alone?”

But then, as if to prove me wrong, Mr. Burro stood up, stretched a moment, and sauntered toward her.

Ellen was flush with triumph. She shot me a look. I was familiar with this look. It was a look that said, “See? You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. As usual. But go ahead and keep talking. No, no, go ahead. I’m listening. I’ll listen while I pet this burro that doesn’t want to be pet.”

The burro approached the fence. He batted his eyelashes. Ellen was smitten. It looked like they were going to be fast friends.

Then, as Ellen reached into the pen to pet his nose, Mr. Burro lunged out in an attempt to bite hers off.

I’m pleased to report that Ellen has good reflexes. She lurched away just in time and her nose is where it’s always been. Which is good, to say the least.

You shoulda seen the look on your face when I tried to bite ya. Wooo!

What’s also good is that, for the second time in my life, a burro had gotten my creative juices flowing. After a lot of laughs and almost as many rewrites, this past week I sent out a new (Ellen-approved) picture book manuscript that is “inspired by actual events.” Momma No-Nose is the touching story of a mother who, with the help of an artistic son and a Play-Doh proboscis, learns to live life again after a startling petting zoo assault.

There are two lessons to be taken from this story, I think. The first is don’t pester the burros; when their dander is up they can be ruthless killing machines.

The second and far more important lesson is, inspiration is everywhere. So go out and get some!

Do you have an inspiration story you’d like to share? Then write me a comment! I do so love your comments.

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Oh, and if you’re one of those devil-may-care nonconformist folks who prefers to read “Part Twos” before “Part Ones,” you’re in luck. My first burro post is right here. Enjoy!

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Paper Trained

Need a little advice, kids? Well have a seat.

I work at a high school, which means I often interact with high school students. It’s not nearly as bad as it sounds.

Most of them know I do this writing thing and can tell that I’m pretty happy, so the aspiring wordsmiths among them often ply me for advice.

“How can I become a writer?” they ask with wide, dewy, earnest eyes.

“Work for a newspaper,” I reply.

Without fail, they then look at me as if to say, “Gee, thanks for the advice, Grandpa, but the world doesn’t work that way anymore.”

Punk kids.

Yeah, Mr. Allegra, you’re still cool!

Sheesh, I’m not stupid. I know where newspapers are going. A couple of years ago I even wrote a feature story titled “Black and White and Dead All Over.” The fate of the daily newspaper is obvious.

I wasn’t telling those kids to work for a daily, though. The weeklies are where the action is. Unlike their big city cousins, weeklies aren’t in financial trouble – and they’re great places to get your boots on the ground, learn the trade, slough off a few failures, and develop a local following. Also, weeklies happily accept journalism newbies. They have no choice, really; their salaries are much too low to attract anyone who has already proven himself.

So, Go Greenhorns!

My old paper, Suburban Trends, was published on Wednesdays and Sundays. Each reporter was assigned a town to cover. Then each reporter was made to understand that he or she was to submit six stories about that town every week. Three stories per issue. “At least three,” Mr. Editor would then tell you with a solemn nod. “Because, you know, four stories are better than three. Better for you, if you get me.”

Oh, I got him.

The job was not as ominous as I make it sound, really. The stories didn’t have to be long or involved, they just had to be in Mr. Editor’s grubby little hands before deadline. This, of course, taught me how to bang out punchy, polished copy on a variety of topics – which is excellent training for anyone who wants to write.

The greatest benefit of this system, however, was that it forced me to be independent and resourceful. You see, Suburban Trends editors didn’t oversee their reporters very much. They gave you a list that told you when the local committees and boards met. Then they showed you the door and told you to come back with three stories. At least three.

You soon learn that only four of these local meetings are worth going to:

1. The Town Council Work Session, where the council talks about what they’re going to talk about at next week’s Town Council Meeting.

2. The Town Council Meeting, where the council talks about about what they said they were going to talk about the week before – only, this time, instead of talking they yell.

3. The Board of Education Meeting, where a small yet vocal minority tries to get a beloved principal fired.

4. The Planning Board Meeting, where people argue about whether or not they should let some guy build yet another ugly strip mall. (Don’t worry ugly strip mall fans; they always get built eventually!)

All of the other township committees and boards exist only as an excuse for middle-aged men to get out of the house, eat butter cookies, and talk about fishing.

Okay, everyone, enough chit chat. Let’s get down to the first item on tonight’s agenda: Jerry’s golf swing.

A good reporter on a good news month might be able to get three stories from the Town Council Work Session, four from the Town Council Regular Meeting, two from the Board of Education, and two from the Planning Board. That adds up to 11 stories per month.

Only 13 to go!

So government news wasn’t going to get me anywhere near my quota. Once I wrapped my brain around this (I believe the epiphany came during my attempt to turn a new pooper scooper law into a three-part exposé), I got out from behind my desk and trolled the streets.

It’s so easy for a writer to forget how important it is to walk away from the desk. Granted, meeting a person face to face takes more time and work than a phone call or an email, but you can get so much more out of it. People tell you things over coffee or a beer that they would never ever tell you under any other circumstances.

I made a point to get to know everybody. And while it might sound cliché, everybody does have at least one good story to tell. Before long there wasn’t a conversation that took place over a back fence in that town that I hadn’t heard about. People I would’ve never noticed (or would’ve actively avoided) under normal circumstances became valuable sources. A lot of them became wonderful pals. And many of my experiences with these unique, eccentric, delightful, and slightly-dangerous-looking people inspire my fiction writing to this day.

A possible source. A scary one.

I had no problem finding story ideas after developing these relationships. Even during the summer, when the Board of Education didn’t meet and the Town Council members were too hot and sleepy to muster up the energy to yell, I never missed my twice-weekly quota.

In fact, I often submitted four stories per issue. And y’know what? Four really is better than three. Because when you have four stories you can tell Mr. Editor to get out of your face and go bother someone else.

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Mr. Mike Builds His Dream Office

Yay! A weirdly-shaped built-in bookcase!

I love my home office. Always did – and that’s saying something, because it began as a pretty ugly and impractical room. I was blind to its flaws, however. Right from the start I was smitten.

“Dibs!” I shouted when I first laid eyes on it. (Ellen and I were house hunting at the time.)

Ellen peered into the dirty, dark little room, raised an incredulous eyebrow, and replied, “All yours.”

Pfft. Ellen. No imagination whatsoever. How could she so easily dismiss that wonderful, dark wood panelling? And there’s a bathroom! Did Ellen even see the bathroom when she glanced in? I’ll have a private bath right off of my private office! I could practically write and pee at the same time!

I imagined the furniture I would buy. The desk would have to be dark wood to match those dark wood walls and the file cabinet and the bookcase would have to match the desk. The far corner looked like a good place for one of those chair glider things. I always wanted one of those chair glider things.

It was gonna be perfect.

Look, my very own bathroom! And you can’t use it.

We bought the house (apparently it contained other rooms that were also nice) and, after moving in, I immediately found the office furniture I was looking for. It was all dark wood. It was all dirt cheap. It was all from Target. This was quite a coup for me; usually it takes me forever to get things like this done – once I took six months to pick out a couch – but this time I was on a roll. I got the furniture and that chair glider thing and set up shop. My office was ready.

And, oh dearie my, did I hate it. About ten minutes after I put the desk together I was grumping.

“This desk is too small,” I shouted downstairs to Ellen who was busy wasting her time on the less important parts of the house like, for instance, our bedroom.

“Mm,” she replied.

“And it wobbles!” I added.

“Mm,” she replied.

“And the file cabinet doesn’t hold enough files! The adjustable shelves in my bookcase can’t adjust themselves enough to hold my animation books. This chair glider needs too much space around it to glide! I gotta give up half of my floor space just to glide!”

“Mm,” she said.

To be fair, Ellen was about as sympathetic as I could ever reasonably expect. After all, she was most likely thinking, “Huh. Who would’ve thought that cheap, hastily bought furniture from Target would be so crummy? Whatta shocker.”

Once I calmed down about the furniture, I got distracted by the room itself. Was it always this dark? It’s like I’m trying to write a picture book while spelunking. And man! That bathroom doorway really messed with the way I could’ve arranged this furniture. This furniture that I HATE.

The quantity and the quality of my writing suffered almost immediately. Never before had I realized how important my physical writing space was to my creative process.

So, with a defeated sigh, I started over. Whenever I found free time to write, I used it to turn my office into a place where writing could actually occur. I walled up the door to the bathroom and opened it up in another room. I painted those dark walls, got an area rug for the dark floor, and bought a brighter light fixture. Then I gave all my Target furniture to my dad who also, apparently, has a dark wood fetish. (I now blame heredity for all of my unfortunate furniture purchases.)

I then reverted back to my old, familiar practice of selecting new furniture: I said, “That desk or that desk?” over and over for the next six months.

The Toy Story poster is where my bathroom door used to be. Bathrooms in offices are overrated. Toy Story posters are essential.

It took me a good long while, but that’s the way a home office should be designed, I think. It has to cater to your practical and physical needs, but it also needs to be a comfortable, welcoming place to tease out your fragile, newborn ideas. That takes time.

I love my home office – and now I love it for all the right reasons. It’s perfect for me. The furniture is both practical and attractive. The room is filled with things that make me smile. Since the redo I have never been more happily productive.

My dad, on the other hand, has a wicked case of writers block. Not my problem.

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