Brainstem!

Everybody seems to think I'm a great writer.

"What the hell are you talking about?" is usually the first thing that comes to mind after being complemented so. I've never been one to really expect much out of my own writing, which may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. My process for coming up with things is usually a bit strange, and perhaps even a bit perplexing. Rather than choose something for a piece, I instead decided that I'd write for you how I came up with my idea for my blog post (which I won't actually write until later). Behold the human mind in its infinite majesty:

"Alright, today is Friday. I need to blog. What the hell am I going to write about? I've got that book that discusses poetry. Yeah, I could probably pull something out of there to get a nice little blog out of it. Do I even have that fucking thing anymore? It's got to be at least a year old. Well, if it's not in the car or under my clothes then it got sold for money. Hrm. Movie Review! Well let's see, I saw Juno. That was pretty good. I don't remember much of it though, not outside of the husband being a pedophile anyway. Pedophilia in movies? All I think of is Lolita and I've never seen that before. Y Tu Mama Tambien was a pretty good movie. It was basically just well-written softcore porn, but still well-written nonetheless. I think the woman dies from AIDS in the end. God, why the hell does everybody die from the hip, stylish disease now? Can't they be creative with their painfully obvious death sequences? Hrm. I blame Tom Hanks and his roles in Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. Wilson probably had Herpes or something too. Lets see. The Vagina Monologues are coming up. That takes care of next week, but what about now!? Wait. Shit. I was going to go to Jen's tennis match. whoops. I remember going to the Vagina Monologues last year. 'If my vagina could talk, it would say...' was my favorite part. What would my penis say if it could talk. Jesus. I could just imagine this going in all the wrong directions. 'My owner beats me up', 'Feed me', and of course 'I'm not a bad guy, I'm just looking for a place to hang out for a while'. I think I'm beginning to realize why we don't have the Scrotum Monologues. Actually, the Scrotum Monologues would be something to write about. It would never fly. They'd murder me. Let's just look at what somebody else wrote and get ideas. OK. Kenyon Review has a blog about process and product. That would fit nicely. Now what do I do? Just start writing I guess. Wait. What's my topic?"

Process is something that nearly everybody must go through when they write. As you can see, my process usually consists of thinking about my topic for two or three hours before I actually start writing. Ogden is always telling me, "you're a writer. Don't think about it. Just WRITE". I try my best when I do that and it's been working out well so far, I think. That's what they keep telling me anyway.