People have a variety of places where they’re comfortable writing—places where their imaginative stories can flow freely without the interruptions of whiny children, barking or meowing pets or even the constant ringing of your cellphone. From separate writing rooms to a private room in your home to a particular table at a coffee shop to even a secluded corner of your community library, it helps to have a spot where you can tap into your mind’s desire.

Recently, my sweetheart, Todd, and I made a trip to Door County to check out the new writing center built by Write On, Door County. While I’ve been writing books forever and a day, Todd is still slowly working on his first novel. However, after visiting the writing center, we came to one inescapable conclusion.

We need a chicken coop.

No, Todd and I have not decided to chuck the day jobs and go into farming full time, even with me growing up in a country atmosphere. Instead, we were inspired by a Wisconsin writer who did much of his writing in a—drum roll, please—chicken coop.

Norbert Blei, born in Chicago, settled down in Sister Bay, Wisconsin, decades ago, and he wrote most of his books out of a converted chicken coop. That coop has been relocated and is now on land owned by Write On, Door County and utilized for its writer residency program, which means other writers are getting the opportunity to do their writing in a place where a famous writer crafted his stories.

I never met Blei (he died in 2013), and I’ve never read any of his books. Still, you have to marvel at a man who converts something where chickens once laid eggs, slept and even relieved themselves into a place where he could be alone with the strange worlds churning in his mind and put them on to paper.

Seeing the coop for ourselves, Todd and I wondered if having such a place would help get our creative juices flowing. We imagined ourselves coming out a quiet home in the countryside and finding further solitude in a small, simple space. Blei moved from the big city to a community nestled in a rural peninsula and found the inspiration to write things that the masses loved. Imagine doing that yourself.

That visit to the coop was almost missed because it’s not next to the brand new writing center, which is inspirational in itself. No, the coop and a house for the writing residency program is across the street, and the house looks like your run-of-the-mill home, not hinting at the gem that lies behind it. The path from the house to the coop is decorated with old typewriters, some with the keys missing, like something you’d find in Alice in Wonderland.

I could just imagine myself working in a place like the coop, escaping the everyday activities of the house to a place where I could be alone. Perhaps many of the excuses I make for not writing would evaporate if I were able to slip away and find peace in a separate environment.

The coop could just as easily benefit my sweetheart, who has found it much more difficult than I to put ideas to paper. If having some old chicken coop could help him to finally finish that book he’s struggled to write, I would be beyond ecstatic. Todd has a creative spark just like I do, and if he could nurture it, the results could only benefit humanity.

Obviously, we would not be interrupted by actual chickens cackling, but maybe we could find inspiration by placing a few chicken stuffed animals on roosts in the coop. For me, I might go a little further and invite other “birds” into the writing sanctuary. My own collection of owls, stuffed and otherwise would be very interesting to have close to me in that environment.

Of course, before we can have our dream coop (that just sounds odd to say), we still need to buy a house, as the current residence does not allow for chicken housing to exist. Still, like most of my books and story ideas, the coop is but a dream, and just like any dream, the dreamer needs to push hard to bring it into existence. With any luck, Todd and I will have our coop, and maybe Norbert Blei will look down from on high and have a good chuckle.