Pages

To be taken seriously

Question for the day: why do I resist writing funny things? More importantly, why do I feel that writing funny things would diminish me as a writer?

I got a lot of feedback from the fine folks up in Minnesota (hi guys!) about how funny they thought my Tonka football posts were. They were good sports(1) about it all.

Why am I trying to constrain my writing to serious material? Am I trying to write the great American novel? What's wrong with making it funny?

I get told rather frequently that I'm a funny guy, and have been asked to speak, write and present based on that level of humor. Am I just afraid that it will fail me if I try to turn it on like a light switch?

Maybe I should stop worrying about *trying* to be funny, and just start saying funny things, trusting in my own voice on this one. Heaven knows my other, more serious literary voices are far less compelling.

1. Good sports... football, get it?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for leaving a comment. The staff at Landless will treat it with the same care that we would bestow on a newly hatched chick. By the way, no pressure or anything, but have you ever considered subscribing to Landless via RSS?