I like to write humour.
But I admit I’m not great at it.
I really cannot write funny stuff on command.
When a funny idea hits me, I’m good to go. Or when I’m writing something serious that needs a bit of levity, I’m all over that.
But if someone rang my bell and asked me to just sit down and write them a funny piece, I’d have to decline.
We’re all different
I’m not saying you can’t do that. Writing comedy is something that some people can do.
I’d love to have a job writing the funny stuff. If you’ve got that ability then you can just call me jealous and get away from me, I hate you.
And don’t be all judgy!
I’ve written some funny things in my time. As I said, I have to be inspired first, I can’t just start talking about slipping on banana peels and have it come off as a laugh riot. (What was so funny about people slipping on banana peels anyway?)
But I’ve written some pretty witty stuff in my time, if you don’t believe me, check out my Facebook page, or dig back in the Twitter archives back to when me on Twitter was a thing.
Word humour
And I’ve even written a few funny things about words, “Oh Umlaut, why must you be so diacritical?” comes to mind.
And there are funny things about words that people never notice, did you realize yet that hyphenated isn’t, yet non-hyphenated is?
I’ve even managed to pass off a few bad word jokes about music, who here has ever played the “did you re-do?”
Wait a minute
I’m supposed to be writing about humour, not being humorous. Or worse yet, just trying to be.
The thing is, if you’re a funny person and you can write, you should be writing comedy, you should be trying to cheer us all up.
Heaven knows we’re not a very happy lot these days.
But let me be serious for a moment
There are people in need of levity and they’re looking for it. And they might well be looking to you for it.
And writing comedy is something that requires you to set aside your sense of the appropriate in that we know that you can’t be aware of everyone’s situation all the time. People have lost others from their lives, had down turns, been separated from those they love for any number of reasons, are suffering mental health issues, there’s so much going on that you can’t know about.
But they know you can’t know about those things. If they start reading something of yours that feels wrong for them at that time, they’re not going to blame you, they’ll just turn away from it.
So in closing
The job description for writing humour is pretty simple, get into the funny part of your head, and out of the worrying part of your head, and cheer people up.
You want to be respectful? Good. There’s too much disrespect that passes itself off as comedy these days.
And if you find you can’t be funny without being somewhat disrespectful, be self deprecating in humorous ways.
People always find that funny when I do it.
At least … I think that’s what they’re laughing about.
