The Creative Process Is All Wet

Late start on the blogging today. Got inspired in the shower (no, not like that), then had to run downstairs right after and write a piece for the PJM home page. Not sure when it’s going to run, but it will piss some people off — and I don’t mean people on the Left.

Sometimes, inspiration is like that.

Now I can’t be the only one who does his best work in the shower. All night long, while you dream of talking cheese ferrets or whatever, other parts of your brain are getting up to all kinds of mischief. Oftentimes those bits are sorting through tomorrow’s tasks you need to do and yesterday’s jobs you accomplished. And then you wake up, and most of those thoughts disappear. But I find that a cup of coffee and a hot shower and a really excellent shave can shake them loose again.

In this case, the process started last night on The Rick Moran Show. It’s always fun doing Rick’s show, because he expects you to do your homework, and he hits you with challenging questions. Even better, Rick never has any dumb guests. Last night’s show featured IBD’s Monica Showalter, Rich Baehr of the American Thinker, and yours truly.

Unlike most of what you’ll see & hear & read from the MSM, we talked frankly about Rand Paul and race. And we had plenty of criticism for the left and the right. Monica came up with an angle on Title II of the ’64 Civil Rights Act that I’d never heard anywhere else — and it’s worth listening to the show just for that. Then thanks to the sharp conversation (and, to be honest, a second vodka-rocks), I came up with my own angle. It was good angle, but missing something. Incomplete. Sometime late last night, Sleep Brain put it all together. Then the shower jostled it back out.

So it’s a pretty good bet than whenever I write a column I’m particularly proud of — whether or not any of them are any good is for you to decide — it’s usually almost fully-formed by the time I’m toweling off. All that’s left is to get in front of a screen somewhere and get the thing typed out.

Which is what I spent my morning doing, which was “music to the ears of a traffic-hungry editor.” And then I felt the need to type all this out, probably still on the writing rush of putting out a good column without too much effort.

So… uh… now I’ll do some real blogging.