Random thoughts

Now that I’ve posted my whole Children’s Story, piece by piece, I’m left with nothing to quickly cut and paste on the page. So, I’ll leave you with a couple things that I’ve been thinking about recently:

1) Not Gonna Do It. Although I’m naturally keen on learning new things and gaining knowledge from a wide variety of places, I find that I’ve lost patience for learning how to do stuff that falls beyond my scope of expertise and that I struggle to retain. Like accounting. In the past, I would have spent hours and hours slogging up that learning curve in search of knowledge in some subject that simply was not easy for my pea brain to understand.

These days? Foggetaboutit. Not gonna do it.

Selfish? Maybe. But I think it has to do with age as well, and finally understanding that I’m better off focusing on my strengths rather than wasting time on my weaknesses.

What do you think?

2) Writing. I’ve had some unbroken stretches of time recently, which have resulted in this blog and another called “Thinkables” that I’m going to launch soon. That one is a humor blog.

Being left alone in a quiet house for longish stretches of time gives me the opportunity to get some writing done, and I appreciate every minute. Although it also results in a sink full of dirty dishes, empty refrigerator, and clothes scattered about, it’s still nice to finally have some time for creative pursuits.

When do you write best? Morning? With music on? I’m curious.

Children’s Story Final

“He’ll sure have his work cut out for him now”
Pete said with a new worried look on his brow;
“So, before he’s too busy, I’d sure like to see
“If he would do just one more favour for me

“My sight as of late has worsened, I fear,
“I can see things from far but not things from near;
“Before Magee starts to make suits and new sashes
“Do you think he would make me some dinosaur glasses?”

Children’s Story (Continued #8)

For hours and hours he tested those shoes
Until Billy finally gave him the news:
“Now we must go, while the sun is still glowing.
“It’s definitely time for us to get going.”

Pete had a permanent smile on his face,
As they walked through the forest and back to his place.
Once they got home, he knew what would be:
Friends and his family would gather to see.

“They’re all going to want their own, don’t you know.
“When they see these amazing new shoes that I show.
“Billy, they may want Magee to make them all hats,
“Or belts or blue jackets, and stuff just like that!”

 “They may ask him to make fancy dresses or boots,
“Or yellow tuxedos, or dinosaur suits;
“My family and friends will want all these things
“From dinosaur bracelets to dinosaur rings”

Children’s Story (Continued #7)

Tiny white stars ran from bottom to top,
With thick rubber soles to help him to stop;
Rather than laces that need fingers to close,
The shoes fastened up with a push of Pete’s nose

“I love them! I love them! I love them!” he cheered,
As he ran back and forth from there and to here.
He walked on sharp branches and pebbles to test,
And every sharp rock he could find east to west.

“Whippeee!” he shouted, twirling round and around,
“I can now step on any sharp thing on the ground.
“I don’t feel any pain. My feet do not hurt.
“I can walk down the path, over stones, through the dirt.”

Pete turned to Billy and said, “Thank you, my friend.
“Without you, I could not have enjoyed such an end.
“These shoes are fantastic, amazingly clever.
“I owe you big time. I owe you forever!”

“Forget it,” said Billy. “You’re like my own brother.
“That’s what friends do: they help out each other.”
Then Billy watched as Pete ran to and fro,
First going fast and then going slow.

Children’s Story (Continued #6)

Now, three days seemed like forever to Pete,
When all he could think of were new shoes on his feet;
The minutes and hours passed slowly like snails,
As Pete kept track with three marks on three nails.

When the day finally came, he bounced and he wiggled,
He whooped and he hollered, he laughed and he giggled.
He flipped up his tail fourteen times in the air,
He would soon have those shoes for his tootsies to wear!

When Billy arrived to the lake on that day,
They both went to see what Magee had to say.
They walked right on up to the old wooden shack
And found a note stuck there with tape on the back:

“Dear Mr. Pete, your shoes are completed.
“Exactly exact as you said that you needed.
“I’ve now gone to see Mr. Goose ‘bout a hat,
“But you’ll find your new shoes just inside on the mat.”

Pete pushed on the door and his eyes started tight’ning,
What he saw there was like a bolt of bright light’ning;
Right near the door, sat his four brand new shoes,
Sky blue and green, and all ready to use.

Children’s Story (Continued #5)

“Of course I will help you,” Magee finally said;
He tilted his glasses and scratched his white head.
“This job will be huge, enormous in fact,
“I must be quite certain I’m exactly exact!”

He lifted Pete’s legs and measured each foot,
With a tiny green inch worm he called Zagazoot.
Thirty six wriggles from toe nail to heel
Tickling Pete’s foot with an inchy inch feel.

Then Magee scribbled some notes in a book,
And asked Pete how he thought they should look.
“How about green and Summer Sky blue?
With tiny white stars. I think that will do!”

“To my workshop!” Magee said, as he leapt with a bound,
“To make you the four finest shoes in this town.”
“Come back to see me in three days,” he proposed
Then was gone from their sight as the door slowly closed.

Children’s Story (Continued #4)

“He wears a long coat, with glasses and boots
“With grass growing on them in long narrow shoots.
“His white hair sticks up, you’ll see when we meet.
“I bet he can make you some shoes for your feet.”

Then Pete replied sadly, “But how will I pay?”
“I don’t have a checkbook, or cash, anyway.”
“No need to worry,” Billy said with a smirk.
“He only accepts apples as pay for his work.”

So off the two went to find apples and see,
If the shoes could be made by Old Man Magee.
They found the old shack on a huge pile of sand,
And knocked on the door with the apples in hand.

The old man appeared, let me tell you, oh brother!
A chicken in one arm, a rake in the other.
They gave him the apples, as payment in trade
Then told him why Pete needed shoes to be made.

Children’s Story (continued #3)

So Billy thunk for three days and for three more again,
Until finally an answer appeared in his brain;
Now he raced down the trail with hardly a brake,
And found Pete soaking his feet in the lake;

“I know what you need!” he called out to Pete;
“You need some new shoes to cover your feet.
“With shoes you can walk without any pain,
“Over rocks, through the forest, over any terrain.

“You could go anywhere, you could jump, you could skip
“You could run, you could even try a somersault flip.”
Pete was excited when he heard the good news!
But asked where they’d get these fancy new shoes.

“I’d give you my mine, but I think they’re too small”
“For an Ankylosaurus more than two stories tall.
“To make matters worse, you have four feet, not two.
“I’d have to be twins to have enough shoes for you.”

“I know!” Billy said. “Let’s try Old Man Magee!
“He’s made some shoes for my brother and me.
“He lives ‘round the bend, in an old wooden shed,
“With a workshop, a toaster, a cat and a bed.

Children’s Story (continued #2)

At first he was scared of Pete’s size and his spikes,
Afraid the big lizard might even eat bikes;
But Pete had no interest in eating his bike,
(He only ate plants and they’re nothing alike;)

“I have a big problem,” Pete told Billy sadly.
“My feet are too soft and hurt very badly.
“It’s painful to walk along paths through the trees,
“Where I step on sharp rocks and branches, you see.

“All of my friends and my family have scales,
“They have claws, they have spikes, they have teeth, they have tails.
“And I have all of those things on me too,
“But look at my feet: They simply won’t do!

“Will you help me?” Pete asked. “Can you fix my soft footsies?”
“So I can walk where I want without hurting my tootsies?”
Billy said, “that’s a big problem, I have to admit.”
“Give me one week to find some way to fix it.”

Children’s story #1

I’ve always loved Dr. Suess stories for their cadence, their imagination, their colorful imagery. When my boys were young, I read to them most nights before they went to sleep. The most enjoyable stories were often from Dr. Suess, which somehow seemed a step above the others. As Twain put it, “the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

About a year ago, I decided I would try my hand at writing something similar in rhyming couplet, a form of poetry I’ve enjoyed ever since college when I wrote the take-home final exam for a class called “Wordsworth and Pope” in this manner. I got an A on that paper, and hoped I might be able to do it again.

So, I thought about it and began to write. I managed to complete five or six paragraphs when my nosy nine-year-old daughter walked into the room and draped herself over my left shoulder as I desperately searched my brain for a word to rhyme with “bound.” After a minute, she asked what I was writing and then asked me to read it to her.

“It’s not finished yet, sweetie,” I said, in a feeble attempt to ward off her inquisition so I could get back to work.

“That’s ok, daddy,” she replied. “I don’t mind. I just want to hear it.” So, I read it to her.

“I wish you could bring this into school and read it to my class,” she said.

“Do you think they would like it?” I asked, with my interest now piqued (someone might actually enjoy something I wrote!)

“Definitely,” she said. “It’s funny. I like the people in it. And it’s just so . . . well, it’s got a lot of . . . I don’t know, dad! I just like it and think they will too.”

I didn’t realize it then, but her response on that day began an exercise for me that perfectly defines the essence of what it means to be a productive writer. (By “productive writer”, I don’t mean that you make a gazillion dollars selling your stuff. That would be great, mind you, but it’s not really very likely. And that shouldn’t stop you from writing something you’re proud to read to others, anyway.)

I promised to complete the piece before her class broke for Summer break, about eight months away. This meant I had to get down to it if I had any chance in hell of completing it in time. Once this realization sank in, I was soon greeted by the usual entourage of excuses that we all allow into the room: “Where will I find the time? I already have a full time job”; “It will take away from time with my family”; “I don’t really know if I can do this. I’ve never done it before”; “What if, in the end, it sucks? I will have wasted all that effort.”

And so on. I listened to each such reasonable concern as it entered my brain, nodded to each in recognition of its existence, stood them all in a straight line in front of me and summarily dismissed them all.

This wasn’t about me, in the end. It was about a promise I had made to my daughter. And that was motivation enough for me to get on with it. I had the basics. I had an idea. I had a couple paragraphs. I had the desire to do it. I had at least a little experience with rhyming couplets.

I didn’t need anything else except the discipline to sit my ass down and bang out as much of it as I could in the time I had to do it.

So I began to wake up in the mornings just after 5 am, sit down at my computer, and write. It was quiet, I was situated in another room where I would not disturb any of the hybernating inhabitants of my household, and I could write and rewrite in relative peace. I only had about an hour before I had to shower, change and get out of the house to go to my real job, so I had to focus.

I did this nearly every weekday for the better part of eight months and have to admit the exercise was one of the most personally fulfilling things I’ve done in a long time. All the planets aligned:

Keep promise to daughter, check;
Develop a fiction story from start to finish, check;
Hone your craft by writing and rewriting, check;
Try to mimic the form and function of a master story teller, check.

I managed to complete the piece in time–all 1,422 words of it–and read it to my daughter’s fourth-grade class before they broke for Summer. As she had so intuitively pointed out months before, they liked it.

Called “Dinosaur Shoes”, I plan to regularly publish on this blog five or six paragraphs at a time to see what people think of it. I encourage all feedback, good or bad. I can handle it, so don’t worry about hurting my feelings. I’m most interested in whether the words, cadence, storyline manage to generate a vivid and detailed picture in the mind’s eye that an illustrator could easily turn into a real picture. So, here we go. Here are the first five paragraphs of my story, “Dinosaur Shoes”:

It was late in the morning, early this week
When Billy Bigbannan awoke from his sleep.
He rubbed his blue eyes and scratched his brown head,
And pulled himself slowly from out of his bed.

Then all of a sudden, it flashed without warning;
A brilliant idea filled his brain on that morning.
He now found the answer! He could fix the green feet,
Of his dinosaur friend who called himself Pete.

He jumped out of bed, grabbed his clothes and his pack,
And hopped on his bicycle parked out in back;
He had to find Pete and tell him the news:
All that he needed were Dinosaur Shoes!

Pete was a very large Ankylosaurus
With a brother named Jim and a sister named Doris.
But Pete was not like other Ankylosaurs
His feet were quite different, although just as large.

They first met when Billy ran over Pete’s tail
While riding his bike along Too Taffy Trail;
He hit with a clunk, a crash and a fall;
He felt like he hit a solid brick wall;