I genuinely like to write. I don’t care if I’m not familiar with the topic. I couldn’t care less about subject matter. I just like to pepper in my two cents’ worth. All I need is an outlet – a blog … a bathroom wall … makes no difference.

Take, for instance, my prison pen pal. Over the last few years, I’ve tried out some of my best material on him. It’s genius, really. Talk about a captive audience. Instead of reaching for the thesaurus, I’ll just ask him what he thinks. Usually, he thinks I need to send him money … but whatever.

But he does have those moments of sheer brilliance that I often covet. Lord knows he’s got a lot more time to be brilliant than I do.

I like to wrap my copy up in a nice little bow. Catchy intro … clever middle part thingy … and then BIG finish! And last week, I was racking my brain for some earth-shattering way to wrap up a new ad. Unfortunately, I’d written myself in to the proverbial corner.

So I did what any good writer in a jam would do: I asked my prison pen pal for input.

Seems he was transferring from one prison to another and didn’t really have time to answer my insipid questions. Seems he was being transferred back to his original prison which he liked infinitely better than where he was now. He quipped that he felt like he was moving forward by going back. It wasn’t quite that eloquent. In fact, it was riddled with swear words and various other sundry items.

But thanks to him, the new, “To move forward in life, sometimes you gotta go back – to school, that is,” campaign was born. Uh, swear words be damned. If only my military pen pal, my French pen pal and my Hawaiian pen pal were this helpful … I’d sure get a lot more accomplished around here.