Today I speak with Mark Bazer, who got his start as a student newspaper columnist at Northwestern University and turned his skills into a syndicated gig with Tribune Media Services. He has also been featured in GQ, the Boston Globe, the New York Post, among others, plus was a staff writer for the game You Don't Know Jack.

How did your column originate?

Well, there was more than a little of being in the right place at the right time to it. I was working as an editor at Tribune Media Services, a newspaper syndicate, and I was also writing humor for different publications. I wrote up some sample columns and showed them and other clips to my bosses at TMS. An editor at RedEye, a paper published by the Chicago Tribune that was just getting ready to launch, was asked to look at the samples and she wound up saying she would be interested in running them. After that, TMS jumped on board and decided to syndicate it, with RedEye as the first buyer.

Incidentally, I probably chose the wrong column to debut with. It was all about how I was on the subway one day when it occurred to me that I was the best-looking person on the train. It was, of course, a joke, which I thought would have been clear from my accompanying headshot, but some people didn't think so. They thought I was incredibly handsome and wanted to have my children. No, no, they thought I was an ass.

How do you come up with new topics?
I just hope bad things happen to me. For example, last year my neighbor invited me to a barbecue. Somehow, I ended up being in charge of cooking the meal. After I brought the burgers into the kitchen, the neighbor gave my wife and me severely discolored ketchup that he said he had purchased in bulk. It was brown. And it tasted brown. Needless to say, my wife and I thought we had been poisoned. Which would have been unfortunate, but I kept thinking, "Maybe I can write about this before the ketchup kills me." Actually, I have never written a column about this particular incident, since we also rented a parking spot from this neighbor and I didn't want to lose it. But we just moved, so: Game on.

You write about friends and family in your column: Do you run the columns by them ahead of time or are they fairly laid-back about being subject matter?
I show pretty much everything to my wife beforehand, even if a column's not about her. She's saved me from handing in complete crap on more than one occasion. Friends, I don't care about. If I lose one but get a good column out of it, then that seems like a fair trade.

Do you have any advice for writers on how to maintain a good ongoing relationship with an editor?
It's easy to be obstinate, but it's far more worth it to realize that, like every other writer since the beginning of time, you need an editor. So, I'd say the biggest thing is to listen to their advice. That and make sure to have lots of cuddle time.