Today I chat with a fellow who writes fiction, humor, and non-fiction and is the author of Fondling Your Muse: A Book of Advice from a Published Author to a Writerly Aspirant, a Hands-On Guide to Writing Your Very Own New York Times Bestseller. With Kevin Guilfoile he wrote My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook of George W. Bush which, was a Washington Post #1 Paperback Bestseller. He edits McSweeney's Internet Tendency and teaches at Clemson University.

What gave you the idea for Fondling Your Muse, and what do you think propelled it from a funny idea to a full-blown book?
To be honest it wasn't my idea and was mostly a lucky break.

It started with what I considered to be a couple of one-off pieces that I initially published at the McSweeney's website before I started doing the editing about Breaking Through Writer's Block and creating Rounder Characters in No Time Flat. I figured that I may do others along the way, but didn't really consider that they would ever become a book.

Then, I got an email from Jane Friedman, an executive editor at Writer's Digest Books who said she was interested in me doing a book of them. Once it became clear she wasn't punking me in retaliation for satirizing some of the things her company has published in the past, I signed the contract to write the book. Ten months later (and two months before it was due) I started writing it.

You have been writing humor for a long time, but did you learn anything new when you took on the role as editor at McSweeney's Internet Tendency?
The biggest thing I learned is that there are a lot of very talented, very sharp writers in the world. I thought I'd be reading a lot of amateur stuff, but the vast majority of what I read is quite good, which makes the job both easier and harder. Easier in that I have plenty of good pieces to choose from, harder in that I have to pass on a lot of good stuff. When I reject pieces, it's usually a function of it just not being the kind of thing we publish as opposed to it being of poor quality.

Some of the writers we publish regularly, Wendy Molyneux, John Moe, Jim Stallard, Teddy Wayne, and a host of others I could name are as consistently funny as anyone I've ever read, period. They should be famous, or at least being paid to make snarky comments on VH1's Weren't the 90's Fantastic, or whatever the next installment of the show is called.

When you were publishing Fondling Your Muse, did you experience anything in the process that you had poked fun of in the book?
The process has been very pleasurable thus far, though the book hasn't come out yet, so most of the humiliation is yet to come. That said, I've been subject to all the little indignities that any writer goes through in publishing a block. One example is asking for blurbs. By and large the writer has to go seeking their own blurbs and it's very cringe-inducing and weird. I maximized my chances of getting good blurbs by including a pre-gratuity with the manuscript.

For those coming along behind me, I've developed an innovation called the Blurb-O-Matic, which generates a nearly infinite combination of blurbs. Anyone can feel free to use them for their books as long as they give credit to John Warner's Blurb-O-Matic.

How do you come up with your ideas?
I'm a big believer in transcendental meditation, where I go into a deep fugue state and allow the spirits of a higher plane to channel their thoughts through me and on to the page, or so I wish. The truth is, I watch a lot of television and read stuff on the Internet.

A lot of the ideas tend to hinge on a "wouldn't it be funny if" question, like: Wouldn't it be funny if presidential spokesperson Scott McClellan got in trouble at home or David Brooks wrote a column about what people of different political persuasions eat for breakfast.

Of course, this is a bad strategy when translated to other life situations. For example, "wouldn't it be funny if I emptied out my bank account and bought all my friends an Ab-Zapper" didn't work out so well.

What have you learned about being a good writing teacher?
My main message to my students is to simply learn how to give a crap about their own work. Most people can recognize good writing when they see it and should be able to diagnose when their own writing isn't good. If you work it until it's good, everybody wins.

That and use a lot of semi-colons; they make you look smart.