balding angrily

I just re-read the Cols post after a friend who knew Cols called it bittersweet. I really tried hard to take all the bitterness out of it.

When writing about a real-life situation that made me laugh or smile, it’s a real struggle to get you, the reader, to feel the humor, to get you to smile. See, I don’t hold with the “Aw, I guess you just had to be there” philosophy. I think it’s a failure of the writer if they can’t put their readers in a given situation.

On the other hand, I can’t hold a gun to your head and say, “Laugh, dammit! That’s funny shit!” I don’t have that kind of control, and I have to just let you come to a story on your own terms. And if you don’t laugh, that’s cool. Hopefully, you’ve still enjoyed the story. So I’m at peace with that struggle. I won’t stop struggling to make you smile, but I’ll never be hurt if you don’t.

Having said all that, I’m always surprised when I get a laugh at something I wrote because invariably its not at a place where I intended one. It’s when I turn a phrase that I didn’t even realize I was turning that Jerry goes, “that’s some funny shit right there.” And yes, Jerry is always my test-subject. God bless him.

That’s enough naval-gazing for now. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program on Monday, unless someone forwards me another unicorn video this weekend.