Search the Community

Jokes About Writing Just because, I want a thread devoted to writing humor. So here it is. And, without apology, in Homeric shamelessness, let me kick it off. Q. Do you know why Shakespeare wrote with a quill and not a pencil? A. He never knew which pencil to use. He even put the dilemma in a play. "2B or not 2B. That is the question..." Michael

Hi, this is a very long post, and it begins by quoting myself at length from a 2011 magazine column I wrote for Alrroya Aleqissadiya -- one of the coolest jobs ever, 30 cents a word and guaranteed ink, published weekly opposite Paul Krugman. He was easy to oppose. Let's turn the time machine back to 2011 and talk about purpose: * * * * * * * * * * Okay, flash forward 6 years. I was never a major contributor to the family bank account. My wife was the earning champion by leagues and ratios best explained with exponents and polynomial expressions. My thing was writing, which paid small sums at best. The Abu Dhabi magazine was fun, but I also had full-time salaried writing gigs, $5600 a month as recently as 2013. It was one of those awful things people do, shave every morning and wear a tie. Zero personal purpose involved, when you take a corporate writing job. I lasted four months. The meaning of purpose is first in my mind these days again, as it was in 2011. Perhaps it's never been far from first. I recently changed the main picture on my Facebook page, a little inventory of my career, most of which was independent and creative. Corporate jobs were short-lived. I had a six-month contract at Crown Communications, but that was an exception granted by a brilliant creative boss. It was a pleasure to work for Marc Wright. Hmm. I was just reminded of directing, which paid well on occasion. There ought to be a law against auteur filmmaking, marshalling others to execute a personal artistic purpose. I was saved from vanity by blundering as a young director. It always made me crazy directing. The intense privilege of being instantly obeyed by a group of capable actors and crew was a little too rich for my equilibrium, being fundamentally shy and easily embarrassed. So I became a writer and feel most natural in isolation. Now then, about purpose (as a writer). After a lot of experience and nearing the end of my useful productive days, I've started a series of short novels, entitled The Case Files of Cable & Blount, with two nice books completed, confident that I can write three or four more with the same characters. Chris and Peachy are ideal people, expressing a settled purpose, which is unchanged. In the "movie of the mind" that good writing can achieve, Chris and Peachy are a collection of beautiful pictures, finally achieving the purpose I spoke about in 2011. Whether I will be empowered to continue writing is up to an agent and a publisher, which Chris and Peachy would simply shrug at. Their beauty is not blemished by quietude or death or the poor opinion of others. They love each other, and they earned the right to love each other for better or worse, in sickness or health. You couldn't pry them apart with a crowbar. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the meaning of heterosexual romantic love. When they met in A Portrait of Valor, romantic love was involuntary and right for all time, an ideal couple, equally courageous and vulnerable, driven into each other's arms by passion for the best that life offers. In a very real sense, Chris and Peachy got lucky, because they found each other in their late 30s, fully formed and tested, single, alive to the wish for true love. I cheated a bit, making Chris heroic and Peachy brilliant, murdering Peachy's billionaire father (the butler did it) so they wouldn't have to scrape the floor for crumbs and splurge on tuna casserole once a week. I am fully acquainted with poverty, and there's no happiness in it. My characters are like Dashiell Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles, fabulously rich, free to strike heavy blows against an evil opponent in my second book The Tar Pit. It's a fun series to write, whether I get to write another word or not. I'm on strike until an agent steps forward and a publisher opens her checkbook. Chris and Peachy shrug. They don't care whether I write more. Two happier people don't exist in literature. Purpose accomplished.