A man was sitting next to a writer in a bar when he turned and asked: “Where do you get your ideas?”
The writer thought for a moment, then asked, “Do you really want to know?”
The man took a swallow of his drink, then nodded.
“Okay,” said the writer. “Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you.”
The man buys the writer a drink.
The writer says, “On the fifth Tuesday of each month I go to a tiny shop in a hidden building about a block from where I live. That’s why I live there. The shop is called Noideaer. For a fee the woman who works there will sell me several prints of story ideas. I take the one I like best and go to the framing shop next door, called The Hang Out, and he frames it for me so I can see the big picture of the story. Then I take it home and when I’m in the right frame of mind, I look at the picture and write the story.”
“Wow!” said the man at the bar. “Can I go there and you know get me up a group of ideas, have one of them framed up like you know you do and then take it home and write?”
The writer looked down at his drink, then looked back at the man and said, “As long as you can pay the syntax.”
The man cursed the government up one side and down the other, and eventually slowed down enough to say if he had to pay a sin tax, he’d rather do without. He then slid off his bar stool and stumbled away.
The bartender came over and nodded toward the man leaving. “Third one this week.”
“The syntax gets them every time.”
