Ted Lasso: A Beacon of Joy and Compassion

 by

Scott D. Parker

Note: This has been a week of Mondays for me and I'm going to have to call an audible and put up a repeat post from October 2022. A highlight of this week (and every week it's been on this spring) is Ted Lasso. It is like a beacon of joy and compassion when those things seem absent. So as we gear up to the end of Ted Lasso, I encourage everyone to jump on board and watch the finale in real time.

One thing that last week's episode contained was this quote: "He was just a humble preacher's son. And yes, he had his demons, but they never stopped him from searching for beauty. Because when you find beauty, you find inspiration. If, that is, you stay as determined as Vincent. Never stop, no matter how many failures. When you know you're doing what you're meant to do, you have to try."

Boy did I need to hear that.

Enjoy the rerun and I'll be back next week.

 

I expected the laughs. I kind of expected some drama. I did not expect the characters and their relationships.

The wife and I finally watched both seasons of Ted Lasso, the Jason Sudeikis-fronted program on Apple TV. From the outside, it looked like just a sitcom about an American football coach brought over to England to coach a soccer team with the end goal being to drive said team into the ground. This being the plan of team owner Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) as a get-back to her ex-husband who left her for a younger woman and loved the team.

That might serve as the how-it-started part, but that’s nowhere near where it ended up. By the end of the 22 episodes to date, what we got was a show that could make you crane your ear at the TV to make sure you got the joke a character said in an off-hand manner and then next moment have you mute with emotion, with tears likely rimming your eyes.

Each character has a moment to shine, usually in multiple episodes. With Lasso himself, I expected a overly optimistic, shuck kind of guy where nothing much phases him. That’s certainly Lasso’s exterior, but on more than one occasion, Sudeikis lays bare the coach and reveals him to be a man who hides much behind his veneer of happiness.

That’s not to say his joy isn’t contagious. It was fun to watch his outlook on life wash over all the people in which he comes into contact, ultimately making them better people. Or more real, if you want to get down with the truth of this show.

There are so many things you could say about each character and after I watched the last episode, I got on the internet to read some.

Pro Tip: Never go on the internet when you are catching up on an existing show unless you want spoilers. I learned that lesson long ago and now I watch all my TV shows without my phone in my hand. Well, unless I’m watching the live broadcast of SyFy’s Resident Alien because the cast live tweets and they are hilarious and engaging. (But even then, I put the phone down during the show itself.)

But as much as I enjoyed each character’s moments in the spotlight, what I really appreciated was the depth of their relationships with each other. How great is team owner Rebecca and model/publicist Keeley Jones (Juno Temple). On screen, it’s like their sisters who only discovered each other in adulthood. Unlike other shows where these two might be pitted against each other for, say, to get the same guy, Keeley and Rebecca come to really love each other. They bolster each other when one is feeling down and there’s nary a mean things said between. Super refreshing.

The group of guys surrounding Lasso are also great to see on camera. Dubbed the Diamond Dogs, they consist of Lasso, assistant coach Beard (yup, the character’s real name and not just because actor Brendan Hunt sports facial hair), Director of Football Operations Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift), and Nathan Shelley (Nick Mohammed), the guy who went from being a kit manager to an assistant coach. They also keep things together between them and, most importantly, allow themselves to be vulnerable with each other.

By the end of the second season, I found myself thinking about the show over and over while mowing the lawn or commuting to work. The stories, the characters, the depth just stayed with me. Like I wrote about in a review of Resident Alien a few weeks ago, I’m just glad there are shows like Ted Lasso that demonstrate you can have a light and funny show while still delivering the depth and nuance you might only think exists in dramas.

There's a reason so many people respond to this show. 

Thoughts and Inspiration from Dave Grohl’s The Storyteller

by

Scott D. Parker

The urge came out of nowhere. Somehow, last year, I had the overwhelming desire to buy the new Foo Fighters album, Medicine at Midnight. That was odd considering I’d never purchased any of their albums up to that time. Heck, I knew only a handful of their songs and one main video, but buy the record I did and it became my favorite album of the year.

So when Dave Grohl, the founder and front man of the band, published his memoirs, The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, in the fall of 2021, I was primed and ready for it.

But I wasn’t ready for what it did to me.

A Parallel Life

With my newfound interest in all things Foo and Grohl, I learned Dave was only five weeks younger than I was. Back in 1991, when Nirvana released their seminal album “Nevermind” and set a dividing line in the history of rock music—there was a Before Nevermind and an After Nevermind—I probably knew that the trio were my age, but it didn’t register. Bands who made records I could buy were always older than me, right? Turns out, Dave was the youngest. He was like the younger brother of one of the two other guys in the band, brought along on account of his ferocious drumming style. I think we all know that Dave was at the right place at the right time, just before Nirvana blew away the general public with their sound.

But Dave was already a veteran of that scene. He had been intoxicated with the punk rock sound of Washington DC even though he was a suburban kid from Virginia. Even without a proper drum kit (he used pillows), the music flowed through him and he practiced and practiced the drums and well as strumming and picking out songs on his guitar.

Good fortune, luck, whatever you want to call it arrived one day when Dave, the seventeen-year-old struggling high school student, was given the chance to audition for the punk rock band Scream. He nailed the audition and, when invited to join the band, lead singer Peter Stahl finally thought to ask the young man his age. Naturally, Dave lied. “Twenty-one.” Peter and the other members of Virginia-based Scream accepted Dave’s word and Scream had a new drummer.

But Dave had one crucial thing to do, and even as I listened to Dave recount the story via the audiobook, fully knowing how it would turn out, it was a tense moment. Dave had to talk with his mother, a public school teacher, and convince her to let him drop out of school and tour with the band. Her words were surprising: “You’d better be good.”

As a listener to Dave’s journey, I found myself joining in his long days of traveling the country in a van, stretching out pennies per day on food, sleeping like sardines in said van, only to explode for an hour a day on stage. As a parent myself, however, I found Virginia Grohl’s faith in her son heart-warming yet also inspirational. The main job of a parent is to raise our children to be good, functioning, adults capable of holding down a job and making it on their own. She must have recognized that Dave was not going to be a typical nine-to-five kind of person and let him go. Even though my son is now twenty, I think back to when he was seventeen and ask myself if I could have let him go.

Turning it back on myself, however, I thought back to when I was seventeen. I was a junior in high school, just like Dave was. Could I have left the comfort of my suburban Houston home to tour with a rock band? Would my parents have let me? The answer to both is no.

That Guy From Nirvana

The four-year stretch when Dave toured America and Europe with Scream on less than a shoe-string budget helped forge his character into what he would become. His frugality he learned from his single mother, who raised Dave and his sister via her public school job and other jobs she took to make ends meet. He learned to make do with less and be happy about it. I found it telling that when he received his first check after joining Nirvana—an astounding-for-him $400—he blew it on a Nintendo and other assorted things he didn’t really need. Soon, he was back to scraping by, barely choking down the three-for-a-dollar corn dogs from a gas station. Still, he learned his lesson.

It’s common knowledge that Dave auditioned for Nirvana at a time when Scream was a slowly sinking ship. He joined the band with Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic and set to work on Nirvana’s sophomore album, Nevermind. It was great to hear Dave’s thoughts and memories about Kurt, especially how unprepared the trio was for the instant international fame they garnered with that fall 1991 album and, most importantly, the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video. Soon, the very people who poked fun of Dave in high school were now attending Nirvana shows. The alternative, punk rock mentality in which Dave and Kurt and Krist thrived was being co-opted by the mainstream. Dave struggled with it, but he managed to get through the deluge while Kurt did not.

I made the choice to listen to this book because Dave narrates his own story, and it is exactly the way to consume this book. You get Dave’s snide tonal shifts depending on if he’s talking about a funny memory, but you can also hear his somber voice as he talks about how Kurt’s death affected him. In interviews about this book, Dave mentioned he wrote the passages about Kurt last. I wonder if he recorded them last as well.

The Indie Spirit of Foo Fighters

In the immediate aftermath of Kurt’s death, Dave left music. He didn’t even listen to the radio. The very thing that pumped in his veins, that compelled him to become a high-school dropout was now the same thing he couldn’t endure. He wanted to distance himself from Nirvana, from Kurt, and, as he came to realize, from himself. After nearly picking up a hitchhiker in Ireland—the young man was wearing a Kurt Cobain t-shirt, the sight of which caused Dave to duck his head and pass by—Dave knew he must return to music.

As an indie author, I enjoy performing all aspects of writing and publishing myself. True, some tasks are more mundane than others, but that is the price I’m willing to pay. I knew about Foo Fighters back in 1995 but never bought the debut record. What I truly never understood, however, was that, save for a single guitar part in one song, Dave wrote and performed every bit of that twelve-song debut. And he did it all in six days in the studio. That astounded me, but what I really latched onto was how that creativity in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s suicide was Dave’s road out of his depression.

You see, I’ve been struggling with my own career as a writer, wondering if it is all worth it or if I should just hang it up. Why bother, I’d tell myself. No one cares if I write or don’t. In fact, those thoughts have so permeated my thinking that I actually have stopped. It’s been a month since I last wrote new words on anything other than blog posts.

But I have spent countless words on examining myself, and in this time of re-examining what kind of fiction writing career I want, I listened to Dave’s book. I hear him talk about his own struggles, his own doubts and fears, how he, even to this day, still struggles and wonders if he’s good enough.

Dave is a wonderful storyteller, weaving in and out of various tales from the road. All are remarkable and all had me questioning myself and my creative life choices. Late in the book, he described the feeling of being invited to perform—solo—at the Oscars. And it was the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” So, no pressure, right? He was scared, so scared that he nearly declined. But he and his daughter, Violet, had recently performed the song at her school talent show and she encouraged him to do the song. You see, she was scared to perform but she overcame her fears and knocked it out of the park. The child served as inspiration for the father.

In concluding this story, Dave wrote the following:

"Courage is the defining factor in the life of any artist. The courage to bare your innermost feelings, to reveal your true voice, or to stand in front of an audience and lay it all out there for the world to see. The emotional vulnerability that is often necessary to summon a great song can also work against you when you’re sharing your song for the world to hear. This is the paralyzing conflict of any sensitive artist, a feeling I’ve experienced with every lyric I’ve sung to someone other than myself. Will they like it? Am I good enough? It is the courage to be yourself that bridges those opposing emotions, and when it does, magic can happen."

Dave’s book arrived at the perfect time in my life and the inspirational journey he went on and continues to undertake hit me in the exact place I needed it: my creative spirit. It needed a jolt to get me out of the doldrums. My spirit needed to come around and be reminded that every single creative person—whether an indie writer, a rock star, or anyone in between—has moments of doubt. But if we just keep going and keep making our art, magic can happen.

It is remarkable to get an inside look at an established and famous rock star who is my age. The bass player, Nate Mendel, is four days older than me so I should have been a Foo Fighters fans from the jump. But I wasn’t. Instead, it took me twenty-seven years to come around.

Now, I’m there and not only am I on YouTube watching tons of videos but I’m rummaging through my wife’s CD collection and pulling every Foo Fighters album she has. The music is fantastic, but Dave Grohl’s message is even better.

Weird Crime and Writing Prompts

I love a good writing prompt. Some of my best stories were written from prompts in workshops or friendly short story competitions (special shout out to Jessica Leonard, who may be the best prompt writer out there). If I’m ever stupid-rich, after I hire people to do my hair and makeup, I’m going to employ someone to just feed me prompts whenever I hit a wall. Unfortunately, I’m not a self made woman like like Kylie Jenner, so I don’t have “hire people for insane jobs that don’t exist” money in my bank account just yet.

Most of my writer-friends, even the really, really good ones, don’t have that kind of money. Instead of having amazing prompts fed to us by ideas people, we have to look for inspiration and prompts wherever we can find them. I used to think scanning the crime news would make for good writing fodder - but I run into the same problem again and again - if you include something in a story, people have to believe it.

With the news, the more unbelievable it is, the more people want to read it. If it’s silly, even better. But in books and film, things have to make sense. If a criminal in a story is too dumb, people don’t get invested - or worse, they lose their investment the second your hapless protagonist tries to rob and escape room, gets stuck in it, and has to call the police on himself to get out (no, really).

The viral stuff is even worse because you’re the thousandth writer trying to put their own spin on the latest “stupid criminal” or “Florida man” story. Though, now that I think of it, a story inspired by the hot felon that went around a couple years back could be really good - just make it a short story, not a novel.

The best prompts aren’t set ups or plot points, anyway. They’re a phrase, quote, or ominous photo that spark something in the creative part of the brain. A good premise is worth it’s weight, too, of course, but without a great story built around it, a premise is as useless as an unbelievable true crime story.

Oddly, though I really enjoy writing from prompts, I hate prompt books or searching online for “writing prompts” because the abundance of choice paired with trying to force myself to connect with what’s in front of me keeps me from getting into anything at all. I like looking at photos of people and places online, people watching, listening for interesting words or phrases, or even eavesdropping on people who have too personal conversations loudly in public. Those can be too weird and unbelievable for fiction, too, but they don’t all have to be winners.

Where do you look for inspiration and/or writing prompts?

Research Without a Cause

by Thomas Pluck

Today I visited a neglected cemetery and the site of an assassination.
No reason.

Well, other than to satisfy my morbid curiosity. The cemetery is sometimes called the Mulatto Bend cemetery because it sits at the south end of the road with that name, in Port Allen, Louisiana, over the magnificent Huey Long bridge from Baton Rouge. It is also called the Benevolent Society Cemetery, and searching for either of those names will get you sent to the West Baton Rouge History museum, a ten minute drive away. So, don't use Google.

Last night I read the book Fragile Grounds: Louisiana's Endangered Cemeteries, by Jessica H. Schexnayder and Mary H. Manhein, which had been sitting on the night table in my mother-in-law's guest room, and learned that Slim Harpo was buried not far from where they lived. Maybe you don't know Slim Harpo, but he's most famous for the deliciously salacious blues tune "I'm a King Bee," which the Rolling Stones covered, but did not improve upon. The original is here, and Slim really slings the innuendo in it, and his nasal voice gets sweet as honey as the tune goes on. His other killer hits include "Rainin' in my Heart," "Got Love if You Want It," and "Shake Your Hips," which cement him as a blues king in my book. So I went to see where he was interred, and had a little adventure.

First, Google sent me to the museum, where I saw some wonderful restored Louisiana buildings, like a Creole Cottage, a shotgun shack, and so on. But no Slim. So I choogled and I Googled, and found an article by an LSU music historian who found Harpo's final resting place. Even after reading it, I made the same mistakes the author did, and took a right on Mulatto Bend Road and followed it past settling old shacks and rusty playgrounds and one dive called Leroy's Lounge, with the Lounge crossed out and reduced to Bar, maybe when Leroy tired of customers lounging around and not drinking. The cemetery is at the end of the road on the other side of the highway, so I had to race across traffic, right past the historical marker that Baton Rouge residents erected a few years back to honor the native musician.

At the end of the road I found the cemetery, and walked its length several times in the cold. The cold? What did you say, Tommy? You're in Louisiana! And yes, the state is under a five day cold snap that's got them under a hard freeze warning, and covered them with four inches of snow last week, during which residents delighted in sledding and making snowmen. And me without my peacoat! I walked until my hands were numb, eyeing the concrete sarcophagi, looking for James (Slim Harpo) Moore. I used Find a Grave to no avail. I read the LSU article closely, and followed his footsteps. He found a small section dedicated to the Allen family, and said he saw a tomb covered in harmonicas along the fence from that vantage point. When he visited, there was a sign saying that the eldest Allen was a straw boss on a plantation, but that sign is long gone.

But I found a few Allen headstones, and on tiptoe, spotted the only white tomb decorated with mementos. I had walked past it at least five times, but from the path, you can't see the engraved marker or the harmonicas. It was a little anticlimactic, but it got me to visit parts of town I'd never have found before, and Leroy's Bar will help my description of a similar place Jay Desmarteaux makes himself unwelcome in. And I haven't listened to Slim Harpo in ages, and now I have him on repeat. The cemetery itself is good story fodder as well, and I got a feel for the city I'm writing about. All because I wanted to give my respects to Slim Harpo.

After seeing the King Bee, I went to see the Kingfish. That's Huey Long, of the eponymous bridge. He commissioned the new Louisiana State Capitol Building, the tallest such state building in the United States, finished in seventeen months, but not soon enough for him to still be governor when they cut the ribbon. Pity, because he had a Governor's Elevator built that runs to the top of the 29 floor monstrosity, the Empire State Building of the South, as no one but myself ever called it. Mr Long was a populist politician who inspired the novel All the King's Men, and ran on the slogan "a chicken in every pot, and every man a king" ... until he was assassinated in the new capitol building, just outside the Governor's Elevator. Long shifted taxes from the working people to businesses and the oil barons, was impeached, but kept fighting until they murdered him. His legacy includes free schools, abolishing the poll tax, free school busing, charity hospitals, infrastructure, and of course some patronage, but anyone hated by rich men and the Klan can't be all bad.

The hallway where he was gunned down is pocked with bullet holes, as his bodyguards fired 60 rounds into the assassin, who was killed on the spot. Long died two days later. The bullet holes are patched except for one in a column, which you can see here. Today Louisiana is back to being "business friendly."

I didn't get quite as much inspiration visiting the capitol building, but from the observation deck I got a wonderful view of the city, and noticed that the park around Huey Long's statue looks like an ornate symbol of power meant to keep him imprisoned... so maybe there is a story in there, somewhere. When I got home, my mother-in-law told me that her husband's uncle Owen had been in that hallway when Huey Long was gunned down and saw it all. I wish I'd gotten to meet him. This family's steeped in Louisiana history. My wife's memaw saw Bonnie & Clyde's corpses paraded through town after they were ambushed. Her cousin was one of the sheriffs who killed them. I wrote about that for Criminal Element.

So the point of this is, get out of the house and do frivolous things, especially if you haven't been writing as much as you'd like. I've been averaging 500-1500 words a day for the past two and a half months, taking some breaks here and there, but steadily chunking along with Riff Raff, Jay Desmarteaux #2. I'm enjoying it, but I recharge every once in a while by getting out and doing things, whether it's shopping, stopping in Bowie's Outfitters to buy a knife for no reason, or visiting a bluesman's grave. Some people can write inside a cell using only their imagination. I won't do that until I have to.

Emotional Truth

I go on weird show binging streaks that fall outside the scope of what everyone else around here watches. During the puppy training phase of sleeping on the couch every night I let CSI run because it's a show I still essentially enjoy that I can sleep to. It doesn't get too loud or too bright and it worked for me to nap between puppy potty episodes with that show on.

Recently, I started a new show for my new stage of intermittent insomnia. Empire. I'd heard about Empire, and what's not to love about Terrence Howard, who was deliciously evil in Wayward Pines, and brings the bad and the nasty to his performance as Lucious Lyon? Or Taraji P. Henson, who was the moral compass of Person of Interest, and is the somewhat immoral instigator in Empire?

I was just about to delve into a round of manuscript edits, and I had some notes to work off of, and I was trying to work out a solution to one of the key points. I found myself halfway through the manuscript, and I felt like something hadn't quite clicked into place.

Then I had Empire on, and between all the soap hip-hop-era that drives the drama in that show there are these creative moments, when they get talking about the music, and there was an admonition to "put your truth" in the music.



 That's when I started to realize what wasn't quite coming into focus in the manuscript. I was holding back on the emotional side of things. I'll be honest; I think that's much harder to deal with when you're writing a female protagonist. Oh, but women are more emotional than men? It should be easier?

No, it isn't. When we read about a male character who is confronted by how he feels about a situation and processes it, it's seen as growth. He's really evolving, isn't he? Being affected by emotions he can't process, or processing them in a way that drives the plot grabs people, because there's this sudden hope that he'll heal or come to terms with whatever.

When women get emotional it doesn't seem all that special, because they're viewed as being more emotional. And when women get emotional it's easy for that to slip into seeming whiny or, in some cases, bitchy.  I certainly know that when my sleep level is low or I'm sick or I'm just in a mood I can be unpleasant. My husband would never come on here and tell you that, but I know he knows its true. He just happens to be very forgiving.

He will tell you that a lot of the music in Empire is not the type of music I listen to. Yet I've been drawn right into this hip-hop/rap/pop world.




I set myself a specific challenge with the last manuscript; I wrote it from one POV only, instead of my usual multiple protagonist approach.

And that one POV character is a woman.

I'd been holding back on the emotions, and it wasn't entirely unreasonable. The thing is, there are some reasons why this character keeps her feelings to herself and tries not to dwell on them. She's been pretty shut off as a way of surviving for a long time.

However, she'd been on the verge of finally addressing the issue that contributed to that emotional suppression, and her hope for resolution is snatched from her. Although she was practiced at keeping her feelings buried deep, in this situation they would undoubtedly start to surface.


 It was a delicate balance, but I thought about the scenes I was watching with Empire. I know it's just a show, and it's fiction, but they illustrated how getting in touch with your truth and putting that into the music took the music to a deeper level.

Why would I want to write a book that didn't peel all the layers back and really expose what was already brewing beneath the surface?

I went back to page one. The manuscript grew, but I believe then end result is a version that's not only longer than the original in word count, but deeper in character development, and a richer story for it.

Fingers crossed.




PS: I'd venture to say that part of the reason I feel Jamal Lyon's songs are superior to his brother's is because he'd gone through the challenge of coming out and being rejected by his father because of his sexual orientation. His truth ran deeper because he'd been on a harder path.

On Inspiration: Raven

By Nolan Knight 

Inspiration strikes in strange ways. The spark for my debut novel, The Neon Lights are Veins, began with an article in the L.A. Weekly titled “Death of Raven, a Hollywood Beauty”. The lead-in read, “Raven was one of the youngest and toughest Hollywood street runaways…” 

This was June, 2008. 

My future wife, Jenny, and I were renting a one-bedroom in Los Feliz, capitalizing on the benefits of having every amenity within walking distance (Metro line, movie theaters, restaurants, etc.) We never drove on the weekends, a luxury in Los Angeles. These weekends were mostly spent at movie houses or bar hopping with friends up Vermont and down Sunset. Neon signs served as beacons to and from our destinations. I became infatuated with them; the book Los Angeles Neon by Nathan Marsak and Nigel Cox, along with the Museum of Neon Art were integral. But it was the mention of one of these signs in the Raven article that lit a fuse. 

The Olive Motel: a seedy drive-in with rates by the hour and a (since replaced) ominous emerald neon. This was where a sixteen-year-old runaway was strangled to death and then wrapped in a bed sheet to be discarded with trash. The killer (who was caught on tape and later convicted) chose to dump her body behind the El Cid, a flamenco restaurant up Sunset. She was found on a summer morning in 2007. As I read the article, I couldn’t help but realize that when painting the town, Jenny and I would regularly walk right past the girl’s final resting place. Had we obliviously passed by on the night of, inebriated and laughing—the horror scene mere feet away? The article changed the way I looked at my beloved neighborhood, and the image of the poor girl still haunts. 

My novel is in no way a regurgitation of the unfortunate event; the article created an atmosphere to which I would draw and develop characters. Characters that I would see along Hollywood Boulevard as I rode my skateboard in early morning hours, watching sprightly tourists clash with dregs from the night previous. The article and these visuals marinated into what became The Neon Lights are Veins. 

I keep files with newspaper articles on Los Angeles happenings that somehow made an impression: a well for future backdrops or characters. To this day, none have had the impact that Raven’s had. I find this comforting in that I never want to read another article about such a meaningless homicide of someone so young. But living in a transient metropolis that sprawls like no other, I know that I will have to read many, many more in my lifetime. The City beckons; the City destroys. Until then, I await that next spark. 

----------
Nolan Knight is a fourth generation Angeleno whose short fiction has been featured in various publications including Thuglit, Plots with Guns, Shotgun Honey, Beat to a Pulp and Needle Magazine. His debut novel The Neon Lights are Veins is out now via 280 Steps Publishing. He currently lives in Long Beach with his wife and their two children. Peep more at NolanKnight.com / @Nolan_Knight_ 

Atlas Obscura

By Claire Booth

Every day, I look forward to what one particular, and peculiar, website has to offer me. It’s Atlas Obscura, and it’s the best thing in the world. Literally.

It finds the strangest, coolest, most unique things anywhere in the world and tells you about them. Which, as a curious person, is excellent. But as a writer, it’s priceless.

For example, yesterday’s “Place of the Day” was this:

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/louis-xivs-globes

Twenty-foot globes commissioned by King Louis XIV of France in 1681. 

(Kristina D.C. Hoeppner/C.C. By-SA 2.0)

Wow.

And in case you’re worried that every place they show you is pretty, don’t be. Friday’s “Place of the Day” was this:

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/hunterian-museum

Philosophical reading room, Hunterian Museum, London. 

Curiousexpeditions.org

Yikes. Looks like a horror novel waiting to be written.

Sometimes inspiration is hard to find. If you do the roughly the same thing every day, you might have already mined that vein of gold until there’s nothing left but some rock and a bunch of metaphorical holes that your spouse does not appreciate as the artistry they are.

If this is you, or if you just need new fuel for your daydreams, take a look at this site or sign up for the newsletter. If you “like” it on Facebook, you’ll also get links to stories from other sites, like newspapers, who’ve run articles on interesting quirky things. This week, it alerted me to the recently discovered piece of amber that contained the tail – complete with feathers – of a dinosaur.

Granted, the whole dinosaur-DNA-trapped-in-amber thing has been done. But … just imagine what else lurks out there in the vastness of the real world, just waiting to be turned into fiction.

A Change of Scenery

By Claire Booth

For far too long, my scenery has consisted of four walls, a cork board littered with way too many sticky notes, piles of research, and a computer. It’s the perfect set up for writing. But for inspiration? Not so much.

For me, finding inspiration means I need to ditch all of that office scenery and find some of the real stuff. So as summer begins, I’m shutting down the laptop and packing up the car. The family and I are heading to Yosemite National Park. I can’t wait.

I want to see waterfalls and granite monoliths and smell clean mountain air – and not think about the manuscript that I’m agonizingly close to finishing. My goal was to be done with it before this trip – which has been scheduled for a long time – but that’s not going to happen. So now I’m being forced to step away from it. And I’ve realized that’s a good thing.

Not thinking about something is really difficult for me, but when I manage to actually do it, it works wonders. I come back to it with new ideas and renewed enthusiasm. And I think – why don’t I do this more often? I don’t necessarily mean a full-on road trip, just putting myself in a different setting for a while.

Since this location is so different from what I’m used to, I’m positive I’ll come back fresh and rested. And hopefully not sunburned.

How do you get away from it all? And does it help recharge your creative batteries?