For years I had a nice little comedy business going, which is both harder and easier than it sounds. The easy part, usually, is coming up with the funny part. The hard part is convincing the client it's funny, and humor never works in this endeavor. This is why I rarely told my clients I was a humor writer. I liked to see if they noticed first, and if they did, I'd play it up.
What is a comedy client, you wonder, and how can I get one?
Mine were corporate. I found that corporations had a huge appetite for comedy and the budgets to back it up, and when I discovered that bosses like to be funny, their wallets fell open at my feet. All I had to do was make them funny, whether they were or not, without making them look stupid.
I went through a period of hiring people — what hubris — but I did it. I had this enormous office in the basement of an apartment building, no great shakes, it flooded, but it was private and big enough for writing sessions with some truly funny people who had no problem taking cash for a few hours kicking jokes around. No doubt I got a better product.
Listen to this, to what I did. I took a door mirror, a full length mirror for a door like you can get at Wal-Mart, and I turned it sideways, angled down, so everybody could face the screen and look into each other's eyes in the mirror! It was perfect.
Then they'd all go home and I'd hang back, and of course the mirror still hung too. The mirror actually became a very important tool for me. I used it all the time, trying out jokes or lines for films or speeches or shows. License to look in the mirror all day.
I would never do that now. You couldn't make me. No one even takes pictures of me; it is not allowed, not for reasons of vanity but interest. I often wonder if I actually exist. I have an embarrassingly small audience and no way to tell if they're loyal, but after a few months of blogging I seem to have topped out.
In this time I've received the highest praise from strangers and the lowest condemnations from friends, family, enemies new and old. My blog has received hateful hate mail, inspired prose designed to flatten me, which it did, like a cartoon: not quite real pain, but close enough. I received a letter of such violence I felt like a stabbing victim at the end. I have been told in terms both uncertain and non that I'm a no good lazy bum who should die and have died as far as they're concerned. That someone would take the time or energy to focus on my destruction should be frightening, but this is where it comes in handy to call myself a comedy writer. I can always figure out a way to laugh it off. It's as easy to get flattened by criticism as it is by flattery.
Article comments
1 - Chris Kent
What a great post. And yes, I laughed....
2 - Shark
CW, I did some stand-up in the mid-80s and there is no greater punishment for a human on this earth. Nothing worse than coming onstage at midnight to a roomful of drunks wanting to hear fart jokes from a Renaissance Man.
My stuff consistenly went over their heads like a very unfunny, out-of-control U-2 spy plane. (As with the general population, there was always that table in the back with two or three people (.01%?) with above-room-temperature IQs who were laughing their asses off.)
Then comes the crash. A six-foot four guy in the front row with his feet propped up on the stage. "Hey, ghrflwm, YOU AIN'T FUNNY!"
whirrrr-kerspalt!
I was hauled out of the wreckage by management and put into a small mentally constructed cell with Gary Powers and Low-Self Esteem. Call my wife! Call Eisenhower! Call somebody!
(Don't try this at home.)
3 - CW Fisher
holy... frijole... ohhhh shark. Stand up. Hey, you and me, man, on the road, what say? We'll do Nebraska, the nursing homes. We'll kill! Anybody tries anything, we take down the whole room.
U2, Eisenhower, Gary Powers -- I get it. I get everything!! Writers writing for writers, sweet jesus, anybody seen any readers around here?
I think I saw one about a week ago. Somebody left me a comment on my blog, The Apologist. I didn't recognize the name or the spelling or the logic of what the person was trying to say so I assumed it was a reader. It was like seeing my first American Eagle, only just the tail as it disappears down the mousehole. It was probably just a disturbance in my vitreous fluid; something I thought I saw. But it pays to slow down and keep your eyes pealed. Peeled? Wha? Don't want to run over no readers, man. There might only be three or four, just wandering from post to post, over and over, just to make us feel good and relevant.
Well, I'm sorry. I don't feel relevant.
4 - sheri
Um. You just made me,the reader, feel irrelevant. :0( And I don't do it to stroke your ego, I would have to charge you for that, and then we'd go getting into the "you would do it for nothing if you really loved me" argument.
5 - CW Fisher
Sheri, Sheri Baby, please don't leave me! I didn't know you were there. Of course I'll do it for free. Of course I love you. What is it you'd like done? Name it.
6 - Eric Olsen
Very fine, honest but deeply troubling post, CW. First, you can never gain validation and security from the outside. Second, the Internet has changed the playing field, but not that much. I am not necessarily an exemplar of anything, but I have used the Internet for the last two years as an advertisement of my writing, thinking, organizational, and even - God forbid - managerial abilities. It takes time and it takes marketing (yes, the "advertisement" requires marketing to be noticed) but as long as the material is there - and it is there both of your cases - then it's just a matter of time, and adjusting to the new environment. See it as a challenge rather than a black hole of despair - it really isn't all that bad, swear.
7 - Eric Olsen
And regarding "feedback": you know the answer as well as I do. There are three basic kinds: positive, critical but reasonable, hateful. Cling to the positive, absorb and respond to the critical, and ignore the hateful, or do what I do and about every fifth one threaten the hell out of the motherfucker in the strongest possible terms. I have never heard back yet from someone I have threatened - of course I am crazy and crazy gets you some latitude.
8 - sheri
Anything? Hmmmmmmmmm ;0)
9 - Tom Johnson
CW, I think you should remove the restrictions placed on yourself by adding "comedy" to the "writer" description: just be a writer. Let readers decide what kind of writer you are. I can say one thing for sure, you're good. Your observations are too insightful to limit to simply being comedy. They're funny, yes, but they're also very truthful and honest - and maybe they're most funny because of that.
10 - CW Fisher
Thanks, Eric, Tom, Sheri, Shark, Chris. Seems every three weeks I lapse into ideations. The support helps. It is especially good to be read. It's like deep back scratching. I need to make money this way again. I'm no good otherwise.
11 - James
Does it get any worse than this? eight am, ten (that number being 10 and all...) cups of brown and this essay looks about as finished as the europe referendum.
The point? oh yeah, anyway...
I write (essays for the bastardo of an english college. Grafitti...)
I read (essays from the bastardo, books from the same. Grafitti...)
Do I become a rare and great-crested reader from the books i must read and dissect or books i float into and out of for pleasure? Is there a happy medium? Will I find it like i might find say keys and sandwiches? Is grafitti wrong?