There are certain rules that must never be broken.
One that has always puzzled me is the unwritten rule that says we may not use cat fur for clothing. For some reason, cats are protected by this iron-clad edict, despite the fact that their fur comes in many different styles, and is exquisitely soft and warm. There is a strict “hands-off” policy when it comes to cats.
Similarly, we are not allowed to make jokes about the Blessed Virgin Mary or Joseph, ever, but especially during the Christmas season. In fact, we are prohibited from discussing Christmas at all, unless we toe the party line and dust off the old tropes about Christmas office parties, Christmas shopping and over eating during the Christmas season. If we cross the line and delve into deeper and more challenging themes, then we are deemed haters of Christmas and are not too far removed from those who would openly adorn themselves in cat skins and have sex with dead people.
The only time that it is appropriate to don the proverbial cat-fur lined gloves as a humor writer is when we are well-know comedians, thereby rendered valid in the eyes of the world. Only then is it acceptable and funny to refer to the BVM as “bovine” and her hapless husband Joseph as “brain dead,” a man who, let’s face it, did not display very good logistical skills when he decided to lead a hugely pregnant woman into the desert on a donkey,
As a new humor writer, who has not yet been validated, I am once again grappling with boundaries, an idea that I try to ignore so that I can go about the business of writing funny and original things.
I have spent my entire adult life taking the drubbing that is meted out to “creative types.” Being a born a creative is like being born with undescended testicles, or an extra breast that you are compelled to routinely expose to the world. As a creative professional you engage in the intellectual equivalent of public nudity on a regular basis. Sometimes you look pretty hot, standing there by yourself with your extra boob under a spot light, and sometimes the lighting isn’t so great, and you look like homemade shit.
Before I became a writer, I was a graphic designer and commercial artist. Being a graphic designer and commercial artist these days sucks the big hairy root. If I had a dollar for every clueless non-creative exploiter who has asked me to design their logo or website for free, I would be rich. A few years ago, I decided that if I was expected to work for free, which is what is expected of creative people, I would do it as long as I could exercise complete creative freedom and write what I want. My theory is, and has been, that if I write original things without second guessing myself, I will be a real writer who will some day get some traction.
What I discovered when I made that decision to be a devil-may-care humor writer, is that the only one holding me back from total creative freedom is me. The first year that I had my website, I would sit in front of the computer with the worst case of mental constipation ever, a creative paralysis caused by visions of scandalized readers running out into the street and rending their clothes at the horror of my words.
Then, one day last summer I stumbled upon a little blog written by a woman somewhere out in California. When I found her, she was on a seriously funny tear. She was laugh-out-loud funny because she was fearless. After reading her stuff for a few weeks, I grew my own pair. At the time, I had about 5 visitors to my site who had only ended up there only because of my URL which includes the word “mistress.”
I toiled in my vacuum for several more weeks and then with great trepidation and plenty of anxiety-induced insomnia, I started posting my crap on a humor writer’s group on LinkedIn. The world did not end, and since my design career was essentially nonexistent, I had nothing to lose professionally. I did get some encouraging feed back, and I started to connect with other humor writers.
It took months before I revealed to my family that I had resurrected my writing website, which was a necessary consequence of my terrifying decision to start posting links to my site on my Facebook page. I am not being hyperbolic when I say I was terrified to expose myself people I know on Facebook. Before taking that drastic step, I first expunged the various tangential “friends” from my account, such as my son’s friend’s mother and the vice principal of their high school who I worried about gratuitously offending. With my account whittled down to the people who I thought could handle my sense of humor, I posted my first link.
Yesterday I posted a story about Christmas in my home when I was growing up, and how it came to be that we now avoid the whole thing and go on a family trip each year. Suffice it to say, there were no sugar plums or children’s eyes filled with wonder at the magic of the season. There were a few jokes about the BVM and alcoholism, and discarded Christmas trees on street corners that reminded me of used condoms following the collective consumer orgasm that is our retail Christmas.
There was a complaint about the post. Shock was expressed at the idea that Mary, Mother of Jesus, was characterized as bovine, despite the fact that she willingly followed Joseph (who we have already established was a little simple) into the wild, and then gave birth in a barn. Inexplicably, a story that was entirely my own became a story about my offended reader, and I was filled with shame and mortification at having given offense.
I am not exaggerating when I say that the confidence that I have incrementally acquired with each post is now back in the toilet as a result of this one little complaint. I am a huge creative wimp and I am seriously upset with myself.
My readers most definitely have a right to their opinions. As I said, I am a veteran creative professional who has lived on a steady diet of rejection for my entire adult career, so rotten tomatoes are nothing new to me. What I find so upsetting is the fact that I am so spineless that I immediately trashed the post from my own site and another site that I regularly contribute to.
How does one explain to a non-creative just how hard and isolating and frightening it is to think up an original idea and smack it around until you think it is ready to make its debut? Those of us in the business of ideas must first have the idea and then tune it up. There is no safety net. Obviously, you are going to write humor and then try to get readers, you have be original, and risk-taking is the lifeblood of originality.
Writers need readers, just like an actor needs an audience, but damn, sometimes you just want to rough them up a little. You want to take them by the throat and say “hey, you, the smug guy on the righteous high horse, when was the last time you put something ‘out there’ or took a risk?” Being born creative is like being born gay—it’s not something you can turn off and on at will.
To my fellow humor writers who aspire to some measure of professional success, here’s my advice, the same advice I give to myself and am incapable of following: The story you write is your own story and is just a chassis on which to hang your jokes. Be brave. As long as you aren’t being libelous, it’s all good. Remember that. And help me to remember it too.
Great advice and great post, Liz!
Thanks Mario, now if I could only follow it!
This post spoke to me Liz McDonald. I listened because you were speaking truth and I heard and recognized truth and I enjoy truth.
Bless you Bill Y!
Enjoyed this. I had a revelation after posting a humor story about going to the dentist. A woman thrashed it while telling me about all the grief her father got at his dental practice. Her being offended was purely the result of personal experience. I didn’t respond to her criticism (never do) but I thought “go find a shrink and leave the rest of us alone”. As for growing balls, I recommend the ones you can hang from a trailer hitch.
I read that post and it was completely innocuous and funny. I would get those balls you speak of, but I don’t know where they are sold, and my toyota corolla has a Barack Obama LGBT sticker on the bumper so it could get kind of confusing.
Liz, you don’t need balls! As Betty White says: Testicles are weak, but a vagina can take a real pounding! You go, girl! I enjoy your posts and read them for the humor (although I DO enjoy pixels as well)!
Oh Betty! I love that. Thanks Mike!
I know intellectually that what you are saying is true, but in my insecure little creative heart, I quake and quiver. Thanks for the kind words yesterday. Once I grow some balls, I’ll need to get busy on cultivating a thicker skin!
It is hard to let go of the guilt that your writing might offend someone. That is going to happen and often it is in a post that you didn’t deem offensive to anyone. Instead of worrying about offending someone, focus on the fact that you might have given someone else a different point of view to think about or you made someone who really needed the laugh, laugh. That post was not mean or anything I considered offensive. It was very well done and often those who jump to write negative comments are people who just look to be offended. You can’t let them stop you from writing what is in your heart or mind.