over the past decade. So, I began to think of a new way to tell a story. I wanted it to be very different from anything I’d written before. I wanted to keep the adventures but cast the tale anew. But how? Then it came to me. I would keep my first-person writing viewpoint, but I would introduce a whole new protagonist. The new perspective would relate a tale of becoming a runner and tell the familiar tale of the profound impact that a first-time race had upon them. And I would tell it through the eyes of my dog. At first, the idea seemed absurd. Who can really understand what another person is thinking, much less a member of another species? Still, a dog would have a novel perspective, and it would be easy to illustrate the quirkiness of our sport and the people who run in it, especially within my own family. I could keep things light because I think our dog has a very different view of her place in the family and her place in the wider world, than we humans do. A dog would no doubt see itself as the center of all things, and the potential for misunderstandings between humans
and canines would be great, and, I hoped, a little entertaining. Anyway, I find my dog hysterical. She has boundless enthusiasm for the sport (and almost everything else) and experiences nothing but sheer joy whenever she runs. Thus was born a story about my dog becoming a runner. The writing was easy, and I kept myself entertained paragraph after paragraph, often chuckling as I was writing. Whenever I needed inspiration, I just looked over at the dog and she generously supplied me with a fresh idea. When I was finally done, I showed my wife the finished product. She made a quick judgement “I’m not so sure about this one,” she proclaimed. “It’s really weird.” “Isn’t it different from everything else I’ve written? Isn’t that what you wanted?” I countered. “This is just soooo out there,” she continued. “Do you have time to write something else?”
“Do you have time to write something else?”
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