The other day someone asked me where I came up with the ideas I blog about. My response? Well, um, duh. Random thoughts. Hello? Ring any bells? OK, seriously, here’s the dirt. When I originally contemplated starting this whole thing up I spent some time thinking about what any blog I started might be about and realized that I didn’t want to do a themed or topical blog, at least not here. If anything, it would be, well, just random thoughts of mine. The decision to even start this at the time was far from certain. I grabbed the domain name just because it was available. Got the rest of the family’s names too for that matter.

But the real truth is that going with random thoughts was my only choice. I mean, I really admire those bloggers who have a topical, useful blog (as opposed to mine, which is about me, me, me) and are able to keep it fresh and come up with interesting topics related to the subject at hand. But the truth is that I’m not creative enough by half to come up with topics on demand. Even the few times some clever topic occurs to me, if it isn’t something I really care about I just can’t write it. My heart just isn’t in it and it shows. You think these posts are a painful read? You should see the few of those I attempted to write.

The topics I choose to write about are sometimes spontaneous. That is, I am sitting somewhere and an idea pops into my head fully formed so I grab my laptop and write the entire post on the spot. More often, though, I will have a rough idea and a few stray thought about something that I care enough about to write about so I create a post with a title and a few notes. Then the topic just goes on the back burner. For me, that doesn’t mean I stop thinking about it, it just means that I just stop actively thinking about it. It brews away in the back of my mind until something pops out. Most often it is just another stray thought or two on the topic which I just add to the notes I already had; sometimes, though, it is the real essence of the topic and I’ll stop and write the whole post on the spot.

Most of the topic ideas come to me while I’m sitting in my truck either in traffic or on a road trip with the music up and my mind adrift. They are usually related to some life experience or something topical that has been on my mind for one reason or another. Sometimes they are stirred from my subconscious by a snatch of a lyric or a mood a certain song puts me in. On one of my road trips I added 14 topics in a 6 hour drive. I’ve already completed and posted around half of those, the remainder are still in the queue. And sometimes, though rarely, I just get a flow going while I’m on the road and I sit there and type blindly  with one hand before the thought escapes me. Such is the case with a piece I recently finished. I haven’t decided rather or not I’m going to post that particular piece yet because it is something that feels too personal at the moment but I may. The point is, I wrote that entire post on my drive in to work. At lunch I opened it up and reread it making minor changes for flow and structure and posted it. I had less than an hour in it total and most of that was while driving. I just never know when or where inspiration will strike.

So all of this leaves me with a backlog of half formed ideas for posts entered here but not yet published (posted publicly). I have around 20 as I write this. Every day at some point in my day I’ll open the list and see if I feel inspired by anything there. If not, I just don’t write anything. Occasionally I will see that one has enough random notes accumulated that the bulk of the post is there in rough form and I’ll start organizing the thoughts and, in the process, find the thread of the post and complete it.

That really compliments how I write anything, though. I’ve never been one to sit down and plan out anything I’m going to write beforehand, be it a term paper, a report for work or a blog entry. That’s just not how my mind works. I know the structure of a good story – not that it necessarily is reflected here, this is mainly for my own amusement – but I can’t approach it from that angle. I simply sit and start typing anything that comes to mind about a topic rather free form. My mind just wanders about the topic at hand and I type. When I feel like I’ve gotten most of it out of me I go back and start grouping like thoughts into rough paragraphs. Then I arrange those paragraphs in the correct order to tell whatever story I sat out to tell. Then I read it. I try to make sure it has at least a beginning, middle and end; my freshman English teacher, Mr Powell would be so proud. It generally needs a ton of wordsmithing and I often find that there are major sections that need to be filled in, but most of the finished piece is usually there by then.

The part that really gives it voice, though, is the rewrite, and the re-rewrite, and the re-re-rewrite. You get the idea. In the end I wind up with something that, if you knew me in person you’d immediately recognize as mine. That’s because I write exactly as I speak, at least what voice my writing has mirrors my speech patterns. That accounts for a lot of the poor grammar or sentence structure. It certainly accounts for my abuse of semicolons and such. I tend to speak in nested tangents, so that’s how I write.

Writing these little missives is far more work than I anticipated to be honest. I generally come back to a post and rework sections of it, sometimes large sometimes small, several times before I think it is ready to ‘put out there’ as it were. Even then I’m not entirely happy with about half of them, but I feel like they are as good as they are going to get. I recalled a quote from years ago and went looking for it. Gotta love Google. It was by Samuel Johnson and the quote was “What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” While looking for that I also found an unattributed quote I liked: “the essence of good writing is rewriting.” Now, I’m not saying that because I put a lot of time in on it it is a pleasurable read, but I am saying that if there is any truth in that first quote – and I think there is – not putting in the work would almost guarantee it would be read without pleasure. So, there. See all the work I do for you? 

And then there are those ideas that simply wither on the vine. I go back to the idea time and time again and I just don’t feel it anymore. Worse yet are those I write most of only to decide it stinks and isn’t likely to improve. Either way, those get deleted. At the other end of the spectrum are those posts I’ve already published and I suddenly realize the I missed some major point in it or have some great thought that I should have put in there. I go back and rework them generally, but only for my own gratification. I’m fully aware that my posts are only lightly read and my back posts are completely unread.

So, at the end of the day, my topics are exactly what the tagline promises: random thoughts. And my writing is also as advertised: poor grammar. As an aside, I originally spelled grammar, ‘grammer’ as sort of a bad joke but no one got it. They just thought I couldn’t spell grammar. Oh well, can’t win em all. I’ve frankly been surprised at the number of people who have found me through some search or another and have hung around to read more than one post. That is more gratifying than I would have anticipated. And many thanks to the few of you who’ve taken the time to email, comment or text me. I sincerely enjoy hearing from you and it is a large part of what keeps me going. But, as I said in the beginning, if no one ever reads this but me I’ll still find value in it. My goal in writing this blog was to force myself to examine my life more closely and it has been more successful at that than my wildest hopes. So now you know. I’ve given you a peek into the inner workings of a self centered, overly introspective blog. And in doing so, I think I might have set a new standard of narcissism. Like dad always said, if you are gonna do it, at least be good at it.

/g