Some basic blogging inspiration tools.

Inspiration. Not a word I use often. But when it comes to blogging, I gots to find me some every single day or I’m dead.

I was thinking about this the other day. Where does inspiration come from?

The rest of you may have your own way, but here are a few things I’ve found that (sometimes) work for me.

First up, the painfully obvious. Life. Living. Being alive. And pain. Searing pain. Yes, I’m talking about the burden of being alive and doing things. Painful things. This means things like my job have their upside, like Blogramedy so thoughtfully pointed out recently. Without my jobs this blog probably wouldn’t exist. I’d just be sitting here with a vacant look on my face and drool going down my shirt. Hmm. That’s a tough call!

Leaving the house is a very close second. That is, of course, where you bump into all sorts of assholes. And I loves writing about the assholes. The possibilities are endless, but the most basic opportunities are found in places like: driving, stores, sidewalks, movie theaters, standing in line, and being outdoors.

Another idea is a WOTD (Word Of The Day). Fire up the dictionary of your choice and get their WOTD and work it seamlessly into your writing. You know, this reminds me of the time I once “sojourned” at a dictionary factory. Bonus Tom B. Taker trivia: I once sojourned on a shitty little planet known as Earth, too.

Then there is a website called Plinky.com that serves up daily blogging inspiration. Caution is advised. Is the world really ready for me to answer questions like, “What do you do when you can’t sleep at night?” I mean, seriously, the thought of that is simply too horrible and graphic to contemplate. I guarantee no one wants to hear things like that. Even I have to draw a line somewhere at how truly pathetic I can be. (Luckily for us all, though, I haven’t yet found that limit.)

What do you do when you can’t sleep at night? I wrote a song about it!

It’s the middle of the night and I can’t sleep
Nothing worked not even counting sheep
Wanna know the truth? It’s really quite silly
It’s hours and hours of wonkin’ my willy

Oops! I guess I missed that line. Again!

The news is always a great source of ideas. Just the other day my regularly scheduled post was bumped by a picture I saw of an idiotic pinhead douchebag idiot. Properly inspired, I can occasionally come up with satisfying zingers like “the separation of church and prostate.” (Sadly, though, a Google search reveals I wasn’t the first to coin this phrase. Dammit!)

Another form of inspiration I’d like to discuss is music. Everyone once in a while music comes along that just grabs you and throws you to the ground. From the very first listen when it catches you completely unawares, you are hooked. Call it love at first sound bite, if you will. There have been many of these in my life. Recently it was Green Day who I heard for the first time ever. Yeah, I like to be at least a decade behind the times. Just this morning, while writing this blog, it happened again. Check it out. I’m attaching the video at the bottom of this post.

Finally, there is one other form of inspiration. It’s one that I use from time to time. I guess you’d say it’s a form of meditation. It works by discarding in disgust whatever I was trying to write. I then stomp off in search of a different idea. I sit or lay down somewhere quiet, close my eyes, and clear my mind. Then I just let random thoughts wash over me. This method has actually produced a few posts. And some very random tweets over on yonder Twitter, too.

I hope you enjoyed this sneak peak into how I go about my craft of blogging. The good news is, tomorrow morning the whole thing starts all over again and I’ll be under the gun with an insane deadline. Good times!

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Uh oh. Look out, but the official theme song of the Abyss may be in trouble. A new challenger waits in the wings. It’s time for the Octogon of Video Death. Two videos enter, one video leaves.

Does this song have what it takes to dethrone The Grouch by Green Day? Good luck, Theory of a Deadman!