On writing a comedy and rainy Saturday randomocity . . .

In Stephen King's most excellent and useful book, On Writing, he says that you never really know how you feel about something until you write it down.

Damned if that isn't a true statement. I've been stuck on something for days and decided just to sit and jot down some ideas and damned if the juices didn't start flowing again. Sort of akin to the end of a bout of constipation, except the output is something rare, beautiful, and funny, instead of . . . well, crap. Hopefully.

I'm not going to go into details about what I'm working on right now except to say it's a comedy and a webseries, both of which are new territory for me. Comedy is incredibly hard to do well because if it fails, it fails completely. A horror story can still work even if it's not scary if it is suspenseful and has relatable characters. A comedy that isn't funny isn't anything but a waste of time, no matter how interesting the characters or well-written the story.

The shorter version of the above is I don't write comedy that often and I'm being reminded that there is a reason for that. I've come up with some characters that I think are interesting and quirky and hopefully the situation I'm about to throw them all into will result in some serious yuks.

This is also making me appreciate good comedy writers. Trust me, if you can write consistently funny prose, scripts, or whatever, you can write anything. Dave Barry--one of the funniest writers on earth--wrote two "serious" columns that moved me to tears. One was when his father died. The other was when his mother died. Beautiful, moving tributes to his parents, who he presented as real, flawed human beings who had his undying love and respect. I highly recommend you seek those out. Read some of his other stuff, too, if you haven't already. You'll hurt yourself laughing.

Anyways, I sat out on the balcony of my new place with a legal pad and a pen and made some notes and decided the approach I was using for this thing was all wrong. I attacked it from a different angle, and now I think I have something. Instead of being forced the story is starting to flow, naturally, and the humor will arise from the personalities and the situation instead of being forced and stupid.

Yes. Let us hope that this thing will be funny when it's done. Amen.