By Morgan Hixson
October 8, 2019
Greetings to all, especially my devoted and adoring fans, which at this point should be all of you.
Welcome back to another excellent Omnibus article written by yours truly. I thought I’d do something different this time and give you a glimpse behind the curtain as it were. You see, I have been getting questions about my writings from dozens of y’all like: “How do you so consistently produce the funniest written content on the web?”, “Do you think Mark Twain would be jealous of your witty writing ability if he were still alive?”, and last but not least, “Wait why are you recording me... I thought you said this was off the record?”. The answers to these specific questions are of course: "Because I’m just that good," "Yes, obviously. What kind of dumb question was that," and "Yes, I did say that, but my fingers were crossed so it didn’t count," respectively.
The thing is, I am beginning to notice a common theme among all of these inquiries. The fan base is struggling to understand how I do what I do. Which brings me to the main focus of today’s article. Prepare to be amazed, everybody, because we are going to take a deep dive into the thought process I go through when crafting my art.
Step 1: Inspiration
It goes without saying that before you can write, you must know what you are writing about. Naturally, before I even volunteered to start writing for Infuse, I had a dozen ideas for articles. However, here we are smack dab in the middle of year 2 and that well has run dry. At this point an inferior artist may suffer from the “dreaded” writers’ block. However, for me, avoiding it is easy and the creative juices continue to flow (I know what you guys are thinking. But Morgan, what about that time you wrote that awful meta-poem about writer’s block? Well, joke’s on you! That poem was definitely an intentionally awful doubly meta joke that you were simply not advanced enough to understand, and it DEFINITELY was not a terribly put together, last-minute-trying-to-beat-the-deadline desperation idea. So there.). What’s my strategy? I simply lock myself into my dorm room, hop into my PJ’s, turn on some Mozart, crack open a root beer, and meditate. After a ten minute interval, I sprint to my laptop and furiously write down every single idea that came into my mind during the process. From this list, which typically has about ten things on it, I use process of elimination to narrow the candidates to two. I then stage a debate between the final two ideas which usually ends in a duel to the death. At that point there is only one idea left and… voila! Inspiration.
Step 2: Words on Paper
Now that I have my inspiration, how do I actually go about writing my inspiration into reality? Well, I go to my Google drive, open up a Google docs page, crack open a root beer, and get to work. While a more feeble writer would need two or three drafts, I only take one draft because, when you are as good as I am, that’s all you need. Most of the lines just come naturally, but occasionally I will come to a point where careful thought is required for the comedy to be written to its fullest effect. For example, in my last article about the best and worst of SBU’s campus I wrote about the wheeled revolution taking over the campus. As mentioned in that piece, it was the most controversial topic I had to deal with as I went back and forth on whether it belonged in the “best of” or “worst of” category. You saw a glimpse of my thought process if you read the article, but as promised, here is a rough transcript of what went on in my head during the process.
ME: Hmm. My friend Connor likes skateboarding, and I don’t want to make him mad, so I’ll put it in the best category.
ME: Now hold yer horses there mister. This here represents a golden opportunity to climb up into that there saddle and shoot our ol’ buddy right off his high horse. Put ‘em in the worst category, son *spits some chewin’ tobacco into the dirt*.
ME: While you do make some good points, I still feel like there is more potential to make it funny if we put it in the best category. If we put it in the worst category, then the joke will just be me being cynical and over-exaggerating, which, while always hilarious, has been used quite a bit in the past and, dare I say, may even grow stale if I continue to use it at such a high rate. Why, that’s the kind of humor I had in my articles from last year and Stephanie did not even crack a smile when I showed them to her.
ME: *walking into a saloon and stepping on a creaky floorboard* Now pardner, ya know gosh dern well Ms. Stephanie has a sense of humor so backwards she’d laugh at a cowpoke tryin’ to do the Boot Scoot Boogie while wranglin’ a herd of milk cows.
ME: That is true, but I think I just came up with a way to have my cake and eat it too! *explains the plan*
ME: *tips 10-gallon hat in approval* *rides off into the sunset*
Now that you know how I do the writing, the very next thing you might be wondering is “what’s next?”. Lucky you, because that is the very next thing I’m writing.
Step 3: What’s Next
Next, I submit the article on the Google drive, do my "I Just Accomplished Something" dance, crack open a root beer, and relax.
Once the article has been published a few days later, I like to go to the public places on campus where my adoring fans can find me and tell me how much they loved it. At this point I blush, look down, and act like it wasn’t all that great (even though it was). This kind of false modesty is just what is politically expected of cultural icons such as myself.
And there you have it! You are all very welcome for this exclusive glance into my advanced mind which doubled as another absolutely fire article for your enjoyment. It really wasn’t all that great, you know.
The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Infuse Student Media or Southwest Baptist University.
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