I received a fantastic Ask Orbie question a few days ago. I tried to get to it this weekend, but … well … laziness got in the way. It’s not one of those I can just dash off an answer to. Nope. I actually might have to engage the old brain this time.

OK, I have been on and off your blog for something like over 4 years…well 3 for sure, and the things that keeps me coming back, and you never disappoint, is your sense of sanity, the openness you share about yourself with your readers, and the manner in-which you write. Which brings me to my question(s).

How/where did you learn to express yourself? Where do you find time to write, and how long does it take you to write your daily blog? Where do you get your ideas, and what makes you settle on that one idea? Seriously how can you take a subject like winding yarn into a ball, and make it interesting to read? Do you write for your readers, yourself or a combination of the two? You do write well!

See what I mean? Not one to just be zipped through quickly!

2,406 words later … I think I better put this monster of a post behind the cut.

Thanks for the compliments, though I have to warn you any sense of sanity you feel around here is probably false. I am nuttier than a pile of peanuts. In fact, there are those who would say, myself included, that the openness with which I share the non-stop babble that runs through my head 24/7/365 is the surest sign of my insanity. Or maybe that’s what keeps me sane. I’m glad you find something here that keeps bringing you back, because a blogger with no readers is no blogger at all.

Now on to the actual questions:

How/where did you learn to express yourself?

It’s kind of a family joke that I popped out of the womb talking, reading, writing and arguing … and occasionally drawing. That’s not really too far from the truth. As soon as I could talk I was talking … all the time. My parents, silly people that they are, encouraged this constant flow of communication as well as supplied me with all the books, paper, pens and pencils any child could possibly need. So the ability to express myself started early with the help of my overly-tolerant parents. I was not raised in a “children should be seen and not heard” sort of household. The number one rule in the house was Always Speak Your Mind. I took it to heart and ran with it. I seriously don’t know how I didn’t drive my parents insane with all the yapping (and arguing and door slamming).

When I got to school, I was lucky enough to have a few really great teachers who engaged me one-on-one and turned the yapping more into writing and drawing. Furious scribbling is much easier to ignore in a classroom setting than non-stop mouth-flapping. So long as I kept my grades up and did my homework, I pretty much did what I wanted to do in school, and that consisted of writing all the things that popped into my head into spiral notebooks (and drawing in the margins). Then I would go home and relate all that stored up information to my parents, plus whatever popped into my head at the moment … plus running commentary on whatever happened to be on the TV (usually the news, my parents loved watching the news). Not just my parents either. I would talk anyone’s ears off. I was a born talker, and I am not easily embarrassed (and seemingly have no shame at all) so it all just flows right out of my brain and through my mouth (or fingers, as the case may be).

Self-expression was pretty much an innate skill for me, I think, and blessedly, instead of telling me to just shut up, I had a lot of adults in my life who didn’t mind listening. I think I was lucky in that regard.

As far as the actual mechanics of turning thoughts into well-formed words and sentences (which I hope I do on a somewhat regular basis), I had some excellent mentors in college who took a scribbling and yapping teenager and gently nudged me in the right direction … mostly by giving me poor grades and making me rewrite things, because they said they knew I could write better than the work I was turning in. The rest was just a lot of reading and writing, because practice makes perfect! The more you read and the more you write, the better you get at it, or so they say.

To be honest, I have no idea what my writing is like. It’s a rare, rare occasion when I actually read anything I have written once I have written it out. It’s as painful to me to read something I have written as it is to hear my own recorded voice, and let me tell you … it’s painful.

Where do you find time to write, and how long does it take you to write your daily blog?

I think and type at about a gazillion miles per hour. I also don’t really plan posts or proofread or edit them. I sit down. I start writing. At some point I declare it done and post it. All of this is squeezed in between the dishes and the loads of laundry and the shopping and whatever else it is I have to do for the day. Sometimes a post will sit open in my browser for most of the day as I do housework and then take short breaks to write another paragraph or two. Sometimes I sit and just babble for 15-20 minutes and post it right away. Just depends of what I am on about at the moment.

(For example, I started this post at 8:30 am, and it’s now 9:30 am. In the process of getting this far with it I have cleaned the cat box, gathered together and taken out the trash, done dishes, started the laundry, and played with the cats.)

On a normal day, I usually post between 5 and 7 times, and I doubt altogether I spend more than an hour or two spread out throughout the day on it. That’s a normal day when I am babbling and ranting about my normal and mundane life stuff (or the cats). If there’s a topic in the news that is setting me off though, the reading part of it all can take hours. Hours and hours. I never read only one version of a news story. In fact, I usually read 5 or 6 versions of something before I even get around to writing anything at all, as well as doing side research and fact checking. I have been known to blow off all the housework and sit at the computer all day putting together the bits and pieces I think I need to appropriately rant about something. Occasionally it even takes days. Sometimes the house is a wreck due to me spending far too many hours reading and ranting. Luckily, I am married to a wonderful human being who understands that I can’t possibly tell him everything I want to tell someone during the day and that I really don’t have anyone else to babble and rant at other than the cats … and they just don’t listen or care.

Oh, and I never sleep. Not sleeping leaves me with a LOT of extra time to read, write and do artsy-crafty things, though I am certain that’s not too good for the old body. Sleep is for the weak, right?!

(See, went back to daily business for a while … took a shower, put the laundry in the dryer, brushed the cats and applied flea goo, clipped all our nails, and put away some dishes. Now it’s 10:30 am. I’m pretty speedy at housework too.)

Where do you get your ideas, and what makes you settle on that one idea?

For the most part, I just sit down and start writing about whatever pops into my silly head first. Those things, of which there must be a million of them running through my neurons every day, get planted in the gray matter from things I see, read, and hear while I am doing all those other things I have to do with my life … or are spawned from what I am doing and things people say to me in conversation. Sometimes actual ideas for posts will pop into my head almost fully-formed, and if I can’t get to the computer and write about it right then, I will compose the post in my head … or scribble a few words on a napkin or my shopping list to remind me about it later (or think about it as I fall asleep or watch TV). I do keep a notebook and pen in the living room while I am watching some of the news and educational programs I try to never miss, and there always seems to be something mentioned I want to read more about on line, and many of those things eventually lead to posts too. Really though, 99.999% of all of this is just train-of-thought rambling about the topic foremost in my skull. I stuff my head full of so much information every day, some of it has to get regurgitated somewhere or my head would truly explode (or I would drive those around me utterly mad).

And I never settle on an idea, unless it’s something I heard or read in the news that I have to rant about, or I think more people need to hear about. There really isn’t much pre-planning going on around Just Orb … just a lot of brain-spewing.

Seriously how can you take a subject like winding yarn into a ball, and make it interesting to read?

Seriously? I don’t have a clue how I manage to make the mundane interesting enough for others to want to read it. That feels like a cop-out of an answer, but I really don’t know. I’m glad people do find it interesting, otherwise, this would just be so much navel-gazing and mental masturbation, wouldn’t it? I think I would most have to attribute it to being well-read and having a love of words and interesting turns of phrases … and I love putting things into as much detail as possible. The more detail, the less likely something will be misunderstood. Of course, that leads to some extremely long posts, like this one. But what’s the point of saying something if you aren’t going to make it as interesting as possible? Winding a ball of yarn may be the subject, but the fun stuff is in the details … like how the cats tried to help, or how I dropped the ball and it unwound down the hall and all the way into the bedroom.

My parents always said I had a gift for words and telling stories. If it is a gift, it’s one passed on and/or learned from them. My mom wrote and illustrated children’s books, and my dad was a fabulous editorial cartoonist and masterful storyteller. So maybe it’s in the genes, or maybe I just grew up in the right environment to pick it up naturally and followed that with far too much higher education in English, Literature, and Journalism (to name but a few of the many things a perpetual student like myself manages to get into). Like I said, I don’t have a clue. A culmination of life experiences maybe? Let’s just call it a gift.

(Now it’s 11:30 am, and I have put away the clean laundry, made and eaten an early lunch, put away more dishes, and watched part of a cooking show.)

Do you write for your readers, yourself or a combination of the two?

When this all started, way over a decade ago now, it was 100% for me. I had a web site for my digital artwork, and I started posting the things that were on my mind … mostly my dad’s terminal illness and the stress I was dealing with due to that and a career I was feeling completely stuck in (and hating). Most people came to look at my artwork, and almost no one read anything I wrote, being as I had it tucked away on some deeply linked page. It was just a way for me to get things off my chest and release them into the wild so I could stop obsessing about them. Then a few friends and far away family members starting reading it regularly, and I started writing for two people: myself and one other person.

I didn’t really realize that was what I was doing until a few years ago, when someone asked and I sat down to think about it, but when I say “you” in a post, it’s usually one particular person I have in mind and not the more general “you” of a group or audience. The person isn’t always the same person, and it is always one specific person that I know either in real life or on line. Almost like I was writing them an email but letting everyone in on it. The only real variance to this method is with the news posts. Those I actually write, or try to write, to an general audience, though I do still tend to have a very specific audience or a specific person in the back of my mind while writing them.

Still, some large part of it is just for my own benefit, to get things out of my mind or off my chest … and maybe to entertain myself with in my old age when I start forgetting things and want to remind myself of the good life I have had (and it has been a good life — so far). I actually don’t much care if people read it or not. It’s there if anyone wants to read it, and if they want to comment on it or have a discussion about it, that’s really cool, but for me, it’s really about the writing and just getting it out there … so it doesn’t sit around in my head waiting to be forgotten. Sometimes though, it crosses my mind just how many people stop in here daily to read whatever it is I have written, and then I find myself trying to make it more entertaining or more memorable, but I try not to think about it. When I do, my writing actually suffers for it. I do best when I think of only having an audience of one. More than that and I start getting self-conscious and the self-editor pops out and tries to take control.

Well, there … did I answer the questions thoroughly enough? I don’t even want to check the word count on this post (but I will, because I am curious). Conciseness has never been my strong point, and it likely never will be.

Now to go clean the bathroom, straighten the living room, start some bread, plan dinner, and do some research on vegetable gardening in Central Texas. Maybe even a little nap, seeing as I still haven’t managed to get any sleep — though I can’t say I am actually sleepy or tired.