Gathering Clay

Having something to work with when you sit down to write makes a huge difference

In the days before smart phones (now known as ‘phones’) I would scribble joke ideas, premises, random funny stuff I saw, heard, or thought throughout the day on little scraps of paper, whatever I could find, napkins, receipts, parking tickets. My ever patient wife would take these little scraps of brilliance that I’d of course left lying around the house and car and she’d toss them in a box. When it came time to write, I’d dump that box out, and go to work.

Now adays I keep a running list in a Google document, easily accessible by phone or laptop. Occasionally I go in and clean it up, deleting the ones that have already been used and organizing the rest. I usually move the ones I like the most to the top, and I group things together that have a common theme or feel. And once a year or so, I start fresh with a new document.

When I’ve set aside time to write, its great to have this collection of thoughts, premises, ideas, and observations to work off of. Here’s how to go about compiling such a list yourself:

Turn off that inner editor, silence that inner critic. You’re just gathering clay here, the sculpting comes later. Putting things in that you’re just gonna cut or not use is great. It gives you something to do. And I’ve put things on my list that I thought were really dumb, and then later I loved them, and put them to good use.

Write down EVERY thing that makes you laugh, or grabs your interest, even if you didn’t think a clever or original thought about it. I was walking to the weekly show I used to produce at Luna’s Cafe (what a treat to have a regular gig close enough that I could walk there) when I passed an old man yelling at his dog like he was bickering with his wife and it cracked me up. I made a quick note of it. Luna’s was a great workout room, and when I got there, I started riffing on what I’d seen. I hit a few more stages that week and continued riffing with it and before long it became a pretty solid bit. The thing is, I didn’t make a note of a funny thought or observation I had about the old man. I didn’t write a joke. I just jotted down that I saw an old dude yelling at his dog and I found it funny. Making something original out of it came later.

I often get inspiration during the 90 minute or so drive home from gigs in San Francisco. I’m driving, listening to music, adrenaline still up from performing, and my brain just starts kicking out the ideas. If I have one good idea for a premise or a joke, I will repeat it to myself, to write down when I get home, or when I stop for food or fuel. But if I think of a tag or a second idea, I pull over. I know my memory, I know that if I wait something is likely to slip away, and so its not rare to see me sitting on one of those dark off ramp in the middle of nowhere, furiously scribbling away on my phone. Every comedian I know has an empty, hollow, joke shaped hole in their soul where a joke that made them laugh to themselves disappeared into the void before they had a chance to write it down, and we’re all sure that that joke was the one, the joke that would have changed everything, that would have made us!

“I write jokes for a living, I sit at my hotel at night, I think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny.”

— Mitch Hedberg

If you’re new to comedy, challenge yourself to do this for a week; for seven days write down every funny thought, every odd, surprising, or funny thing you see or think. Prioritize quantity and thoroughness over quality. You’re goal is to have a lot to work with, put it all down. And at the end of the week, go over your notes and try to sculpt some jokes out of this clay you’ve gathered.

I’ve asked you to keep your inner critic on silence during the note taking. Don’t turn this voice up to 11 when you’re writing either. You’re still in a safe space. You’re not on stage. Give yourself permission to write a bad joke. Write lots of jokes you’ll end up throwing away, or at least not using on stage. Write hacky, write silly, write absurd, write overly complex, write A LOT. You’re not snapping together a model. You can continue to sculpt these jokes later, pounding them into shape, so for now, just get your hands dirty.

For more on the sitting down to write part of this process, read standup101.substack.com/p/writing-the-creative-process

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