Now, before I reveal this secret of the writing community, I must clear up some misconceptions about Mike. I've gotten a lot of fan mail asking me if Mike is, in fact, a real person. Actually that's not true; I get absolutely no fan mail and therefore have to imagine questions from ficticious fans. Anyway, to answer the question, Mike is a real person. He's even a real friend of mine. He is protected by the pseudonym Mike to mask his true identity. Really, do you think I could've made up half the stuff I attribute to him?

Mike's formula is quite simple. Think of a humorous incident that happened to someone you know. Start the story with the phrase, "Once, I knew a guy named Mike."  Then, proceed to tell the humorous story. At the end, say something like, "and if you think that's bad imagine ...." To finish the story, you relate a separate incident that happened to someone else. Mike claims this formula got him through many an English writing assignment.

I am grateful to Mike for his Pulitzer-prize winning idea, and I would use it more often if this wasn't an almost daily column. The frequency with which this column is written makes it nearly impossible to stick to Mike's formula. For one thing, readers would start sending death threats if I began every article with the words "once, I knew a guy named..." Secondly, not even my friends do enough stupid or funny things to fill three articles a week. This brings me back to my original problem of writer's block. I guess I'll have to stick to the other bastion of creative ideas, Mad Libs.