What Did I Say?

I'm worried about my reader. He seems alienated, possibly by the whininess of the second-to-last post. I don't want to write things that would disquiet him. He's a sensitive person from what I can tell.

In any case, I've been wanting to explain: the thing I finished, after which I didn't feel I should have to write any more, was my "packet" -- a bound batch of your comedy writing that you give to people who are thinking of hiring you. I have a friend who met a writer for the Daily Show who said she'd look at my work -- or she said she'd "be happy to look at people's work." So in a welter of excitement I worked really hard on the pieces for my packet. Printing them all out was satisfying and getting them into a bound Kinko's sheaf was thrilling.

But then my friend and I were out of touch for a while, and then he lost touch with the friend who'd introduced him to the Daily Show writer and he felt a bit awkward about writing to her without his friend's (their mutual friend's) paving the way.

This is what's so anticlimactic -- not doing the little films and having them mainly delight family and close friends. I don't want my reader to think I'm so egotistical as to think a few YouTube things are worth hanging up my hat over. And I shouldn't have run out of steam after I finished my packet but it was the end product of tons of work and I did, I did run out of steam.

The writer's strike is complicating all of this. Why should this writer help a newcomer when her own job is unsure?

Speaking of that, what does it mean that Jon Stewart and David Letterman and others are going back on the air? Doesn't that weaken the strikers' position? I see Stewart's point -- we're in an election year, there's all this fantastic campaign material and he hasn't been able to tackle any of it. Also he's not using writers, I heard. Still, isn't there a solid leftist principle being flouted here?

A guy on Nerve advertised himself as knowing the difference between flout and flaunt. That almost made it worth answering his ad. But not quite.

DENIED

Laugh Clown Laugh

I'm sure my readership is wondering what's happened to my comedy writing career. Have I changed my mind yet again and decided to become a poet? No, but there seems to be little to say about comedy writing. I reached one of those weird plateaus that come after you complete something and nothing happens. You vaguely feel something should happen before you hunker down to write something else. Slowly it dawns on you you can't wait for anything to happen, you just have to write some more. It seems unfair and you struggle. "I can't write more. I already wrote. What about the payoff? Doesn't it ever happen?"

No.

I'm finding it very deadening to be an unsuccessful artist with a mind-numbing day job. Above all it's boring. Doors don't open so you sit at home. You have no access to the many worlds of lively conversation that people enter when they stop being marginal. Being marginal, you can't afford anything but margarine. You sit at home and eat margarine.

The mind searches for a way out. All the ways out cost money. So you go back to your ideas. There's a bit of life there. I'm making a short experimental film today with a friend who trained as an actor and is sharp and funny. Someone like her would probably only live in New York. I met her at my deadening day job. So you see, there is a little, tiny payoff, sometimes.