Braintempest
There's a big storm coming to the East Coast. Everyone stay safe. There's a big brainstorm happening right here, though. Everyone should be very afraid.
Every writer I know has a different way of sparking ideas.
Some of them use prompts, some enter competitions. Some go to classes, some brainstorm in groups. Some need to go out and live life, others need to sit home and lock in.
I can’t imagine that everyone uses only one technique exclusively, nor that anyone doesn’t use a combination over their many years of writing, especially when one approach stops working.
I once went to a 50-seat comedy show that was advertised with a surprise star and no other lineup. Turns out, Kevin Hart was doing the full hour of his next arena tour as he currently had it to that intimate crowd. But, he warned us, he would have jokes that were half-fleshed out, punchlines with no set-ups, set-ups with no punchlines, and even just ideas.
He performed great jokes, and then not-so-great jokes that he workshopped in real-time in front of us, explaining what he was doing, why he was adjusting a word or a phrase, and multiple times crafting a joke from a seedling into a full-on comedy tree. It was one of the coolest events I’ve ever been to.
I have no idea what I’m going to write next week, as it may be clear, as I had no clue what to write this week. So I’m going to brainstorm right now for my next Substack, in real-time.
This is going to be my version of Kevin Hart perfecting a special, but significantly worse, and, for some unfathomable reason, in front of significantly more people.
Let’s start.
The first idea that comes to mind? Turtles. Duh. Some people know this about me, but for some reason, a mental tic of mine is that if people ask for an idea, the first word that comes to mind always is “turtles.”
I never have a good idea related to them, like the person who decided they should be teenagers or mutants or ninjas, and certainly not a great idea, like the person who decided they should be all three.
Ideas list starts here (all additional ideas numbered):
Turtles
Uhhh, investigating why I have this turtle tic
Are turtles the RVs of the animal world?1
Up next, I see the cereal I’m snacking on. I love cereal. I say it’s my favorite food, followed by fruit.
Realizing just now I don’t love fruity cereal…too much of a good thing?
My friends get angry at me because those are “categories”, not a specific food, and it’s not like they can just say “meat” when asked what their favorite food is. To which I say, I don’t care. Say “meat.” Who made these rules?
Semantics
A parable about a white nationalist who says semantic when he means Semitic? And then when they call him out on it, he says they’re paying too much attention to the Semitics of the situation?
Hypotheticals
Why I love hypotheticals
Something about instead of being hypothetical, being pathetically high?
Still thinking about cereal. As I go for another handful, I note for this brainstorm session’s sake that the box is of my favorite cereal: Quaker Oats Brown Sugar Oatmeal Squares.
Oatmeal: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Fiber
Oatmeal’s next ad campaign: “For when you don’t want your food coming out as liquidly as it went in”
Moatmeal: A moat of oatmeal, probably difficult to wade in, may have been more effective?
GOATMeal - the greatest of all time meals2
The GOAT’s meal: Tom Brady’s diet - would I be willing to give up the enjoyment of eating things that are fun to eat (cereal? fruit? others of life’s joys?) in order to win 7 Super Bowls?3
Foods I would give up to win 7 Super Bowls: Probably a lot, but I honestly don’t think my diet was the defining factor4
Squares - what is the best shape for cereal?5
I’m gonna keep looking around the room I’m in.
Cereal box. Shoot, already did that.
singing Looking around downtown, walking fast, faces past and I’m homebound
Didn’t get far. I am looking back at the cereal box for inspiration. Heh. This feels like I’m Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects.
What is the real statute of limitations on spoilers?6
The hidden financial riches behind making posters of cats saying “Hang in there” or that have in big print on top of a stock photo landscape: “Perseverance” or “Attitude,” and have small print sayings about that thing
Idea not for a Substack but to get rich: can I make those posters but with insane things on them? Like “Perseverance” over a photo of a mountain, but instead of it saying “it’s never too late to start a new goal”7 and in small print write: "Did the Black Knight in Monty Python stop when he got his first arm cut off?”8 or “Because you have to get divorced to get remarried.”
Posters that don’t even say the normal traits, but a stock photo of a picturesque field that says: “Necrophilia”9
See, this is where I get rolling. That last sentence reminded me of a book I recently read called Under the Banner of Heaven.
I went to a camp called Banner Day Camp.
They had these things at Banner Day Camp called Mad Balls. They were toy balls with grotesque faces on them, and, most importantly, they were squishy. You got them if you won ‘best bus’ or ‘best tribe’ or whatever the hell ‘best’ thing. I wanted them so badly. I think I ended up with 3 over my time at the camp. I honestly can’t believe I remember them, considering I remember almost nothing.
Maybe a Substack about a day at Banner Day Camp, but with me flagging the things I remember, the things I don’t and had to look up, and finally, the things I am making up completely?
Bingo.
That’s the one. The decadozenth idea.10
See? Didn’t even get into my brain switching to Under the Banner of Heaven, which was a book about Mormonism. Thus, the plural marriage tie-in for number 9. Well, I’ll save it for another day.
Anyway, this is how my brain works on the most focused microcosm of an environment for a period of 20 minutes. I literally didn’t get past the box of cereal two inches in front of me. And we got 22 ideas during just this sitting. That’s over an idea a minute. And those are just the ones I could put down.
I could have looked around this whole room and kept going for ages. This could rival the longest Substacks of all time, but I wouldn’t do that to you. Even this is pushing it, I know.
Scared? Trust me, so am I. I live with this thing, I type as I point to my brain. You just took a 30-second joyride. If joy is what it can be called.
ADD symptoms/do I have it?
Whoops, that wasn’t an idea, that was a genuine question to be typed into Google. I figure I already have plenty of diagnoses; maybe we missed one. The book used to be called the S-V until I showed up and put the DM in.11
Thanks for reading the work of a man whose thoughts are this incoherently coherent much of the time.12
I’ll see you next weekend with a work of autobiographical-historical-fiction-memoir-coming-of-age about good ol’ Banner Day Camp.
Buzzfeed quiz do I have ADD
Ignore that.
Keep workshopping, but a solid joke start.
Saving this to pitch at work. Copyrighted. Trademarked. Patented. Mine. Fine, all pending.
No. Yet another reason why I am not Tom Brady.
I didn’t like getting hit by pitches all the time during house baseball; do we think I was going to take hits from guys twice my size, lusting for blood?
Promising idea.
If you haven’t seen Usual Suspects, ignore that comment.
I looked it up. That was one of them.
See idea #7 on spoilers
Saving this idea for personal gain. Copyrighted. Trademarked. Patented. Mine. Fine, all pending. Again. Come on, patent system! Work faster!
Saving this new number word for personal gain. Copyrighted. Trademarked. Patented. The Sumerians and Romans WISH they had a brain like this. Oh, whoa. The other intellectual property applications I put in footnotes 2 and 9 got approved? Yes! “Necrophilia” posters, here we come!
Classic psychology joke about the book of all the known mental disorders. See, this is an intellectual Substack.
More so than usual, as I just came back from a bachelor party this past weekend, and in spite of making an effort to get a reasonable amount of sleep, I can’t even remember how I planned on ending this sentence when I started it.