Writing; The Creative Process
Writing; The Creative Process
Sounds pretty dry, doesn't it?
“F*ck inspriation, just work.” my older brother John told me. “Paint everyday, and the days you don’t paint a good painting, you got a bad painting out of the way, and you practiced holding your brush, and mixing color, and applying texture.”
I love inspiration. One of my all time favorite experiences in life usually happens when I’m walking or driving by myself; an idea will pop into my head and it makes me laugh. And then I imagine myself saying it to an audience and I’m smiling, literally smiling all by myself because I can see it working and I’m excited to try it. This is how some of my jokes come about.
But John is right, if this is to be my job, I have to go to work, and hit the open mics, and sit down to write, and some days I’ll write a lot of bad jokes. Some of these jokes will turn out later not to be as bad as I originally thought, others will morph and evolve into good jokes, and some will just live forever in my notebook as That Bad Joke I Wrote. “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him dry. (It was a watergun).” I love that bad joke I wrote.
On the days when I don’t write a good joke, I got some bad jokes out of the way. I practiced my composition and tagging, I worked out those muscles in my brain, and I kept a habit of thinking and writing as a comedian. Confession: I don’t write jokes everyday. Some comedians do, but I don’t, but I try to write frequently and when that pixie known as inspiration hasn’t visited in awhile, sitting down to write is like sending out an invite. She won’t show up right away, but after a few sessions of flexing them creative muscles, I’ll be on a walk or a drive, and there she is (hopefully not splattered against the windshield. There’s another bad joke for you. I’m KILLING it!)
So here are some tips for writing and making the most of your writing time:
Limit yourself. There’s a reason Haiku is so fun and popular. Contrary to popular belief, limits can be great for creativity. If the blank page is staring at you and remaining stubbornly blank, play some games with it. Try to write a joke that’s under 280 characters. Make a list of topics and see if you can write a joke on each (more on lists in a minute). Write some haiku.
Go Through Your Memories. I frequently write by thinking about the stories from my life that I share when hanging out with family, or at parties. I also go through “Memories” on Facebook religiously, every day, and it often triggers something that I’m ready to write jokes about.
Make Lists. I love lists. I’ve created two comedy specials based on lists. Not For Rehire was originally titled All My Jobs, and it was based on a list of jobs I’d had. What I Was Arrested For was a list of run ins I’ve had with the law. Make a list of every person you’ve kissed, every place you’ve lived, every person you’ve called a best friend, every teacher you’ve had, and see what stories and jokes you get from this.
Ask yourself “What’s unique about me?” I made my list of jobs after realizing my peers outside of the artist community were shocked at how many jobs I’d had. For aritsts, having a lot of jobs is the norm. I realized it was unusual, and then the next question is, what’s universal about me, that will help people understand and relate to this thing that’s unusual about me.
Write on stage. Comics do a lot of writing on stage, especially tags. You tell a joke and your brain speeds up, driven by the fear that it won’t hit, and it hammers out that punch line in a way that’s hard to do in a less high-stakes setting. If the punch line doesn’t hit, it’s amazing how the brain can spit out tags in a blind panic trying to find something that works. I’ve gotten some of my best tags this way, and often on a joke I’d spent hours working on off stage without seeing these angles.
Write with others. I love to get together with someone, usually another comic, specifically to brainstorm and swap jokes and stories. And, it can have a similar effect on the brain to trying your stuff on stage. The stakes aren’t AS high, but if you’re writing with a peer who you want to impress, you may find that you tap into some of the same killer instincts. A writing sessions with your peers and pals is almost a mini open mic.
Regarding writing with others, in my experience most comedians these days write most of their own jokes, but we write tags for each other all the time. We help tweak punch lines as well. I love standing in the back of the club when its full of other comics, and you’ll hear comedians whispering to each other, “That’s my tag. I wrote that tag for them.”
Write too much. Whether writing with friends or on your own, go for volume, turn off your inner editor/critic and write down everything you think of including stuff that is bad, ridiculous, too silly. Just write it all down. Give yourself a lot to work with later when you edit and rewrite. One, because this will get momentum going and you won’t be making log jams holding back ideas you deem bad, so the good ideas behind them will also come out as you scribble joke after joke, tag after tag, but also because you may find some silly idea that you figured you’d toss out strikes you as pretty funny on second (or third or forth) glance, or it makes your writing partner laugh way more than you thought it would.
In my prior job at a marketing firm I participated in brain storming sessions where I threw out a hundred ideas and none of them were used. I was still thanked and appreciated for helping the process, and rightfully so. Sometimes one of my silly ideas triggered an idea from someone else that got used, and other times, I got the ball rolling again when things seemed like they were drying up. Do this for yourself too. If you need 3 tags (more on 3 being the magic number later) try to write ten. When you exhaust the obvious ones, you’ll start hitting really weird and unique ones.
This is the job. Do the job. And when sweet inspiration comes, GRAB IT! I’ll say more about that next week. Thanks for reading. If you’re a paid subscriber, you can ask questions here in the comments, or by emailing me, and also THANKS for helping keep this going by ponying up them dollar bucks. I appreciated it.