My Plan: Shave It.
Shaving the hair off of my Jack Russell Terrier would not only solve the problem of my allergic reaction to dogs, but it would also make me laugh. The sneezing is definitely a problem and it needs to be addressed. And though the crap is also a problem, my feeling is that if J.R. were funnier to look at (i.e., shaved) I might feel a little bit better about cleaning up or living in dog poop. Also, the amusement I get from looking at a clean-shaved Jack Russell Terrier would probably offer excellent progress in my quest for that free-flowing eternal and spiritual reservoir of joy and love from which all good novels spring. Therefore my plan is laid out as follows: tomorrow morning, while in the shower, I will shave the hair off of Jack and Jack will shave my beard off of me.

The Thing: My Underage Girlfriend
There have been many novelists that have been inspired by or whose writing has been facilitated by absolute debauchery. I could not expect, however, that to simply relive the lives of these great authors by practicing the same alcohol or drug abuse that they practiced would land me a New York Times bestseller. I realized early on that an important part of the formula would involve answering my own demons, giving in to my own specific vices.

Unfortunately, I do not have any vices. I do, however, own a very thorough reference book on character vices. I opened the book with my eyes closed and dropped my finger down onto the page.

Committed as I am to my writing, I went out and found myself a very mature looking and acting sixteen year-old and made her my girlfriend, hoping that the gratuitous and sordid life of illegal relations with this sixteen year-old would feed my dark side and that my dark side would metabolize that questionable and unhealthy living and excrete a great novel.

Long story short: no dice. While it's definitely not above board, calling your girlfriend's high school and pretending to be her father reporting her sick so she can skip school and hang out at the mall is certainly not far enough below board for it to be considered seedy or dirty. Secondly, I spent most of my free time cleaning up after my beard, grooming my Jack Russell terrier or sitting on the couch with Stacy (my underage girlfriend) watching MTV.

And even when Stacy wasn't around-like days she had to go to school or on school nights after her 10:00 curfew-I usually had to write some report for her or look over her Trigonometry homework.

Having such a young girlfriend, I believed, should have filled me with such self-loathing that I could not help but to punish myself by working tirelessly without food or drink or sleep to finish my sure-to-be Ernest Hemingway/PEN Award-winning novel. It did not.

My Plan: Shave It.
My next book is going to be a coffee table book of photographs of people or dogs that are bereft of body hair. I will begin work on that book as soon as my latest short story (tentatively titled How I Solve All of My Problems) is finished. My plan is therefore laid out as follows: Tomorrow, before Stacy gets in the shower, I will replace the shampoo and the body gel with hair removal products. Then, while Jack Russell is trying to console her (as she will likely be horribly upset at this turn of events), I will replace Jack Russell’s food dish with me, armed with shaving cream and a razor, waiting to shave him. When he returns to his dish he will find me there instead of his dish and I will shave him. Then I will let Stacy and Jack Russell attack me and shave my beard to “get even with me,” and I will accept no less than $75,000 for the paperback rights to my first novel about a guy in prison with an imaginary bald, talking dog, which will likely be called Shave It or Shove It.