The editor of a newspaper, who is an old friend, asked me to write a column. According to her, I cracked lame jokes all the time and read voraciously.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My aunt got me interested in journalism - she found an old typewriter, had it worked over, put it on the dining room table, gave me a stack of paper and said, 'Play like you're a writer.'
A lot of newspaper columns used to be written in a rat-a-tat-tat, fast-paced style - and they tended to be funny. They were a little relief from the grimmer, grayer parts of the newspaper, and one of the best people at doing this was Will Rogers.
I try to write as serious as possible, and then a joke slips in.
I tell you a joke to have you listen to me, and then maybe I will tell you another joke that we can laugh together and feel equal. And then I will tell you a story hopefully that will make you cry. So I think that's the way that I approach the columns, as a surviving tool in a way.
I write in reverse: Rather than come up with a narrative and write jokes for that narrative, I write jokes independently of the narrative, then I try to fit them in.
I used to like writing for comedians - I enjoyed the challenge of making other people funny.
I wrote a query letter to an editor - a friend of a friend. The editor called me an idiot, told me never to contact an editor directly, and then recommended three literary agents he had worked with before. Laurie Fox was one of them, and I've never looked back.
I'm not much of a joke writer.
Working on newspapers, you're writing to a certain length, often very brief pieces; you tend to look for easy forms of humor - women can't drive, things like that. That's about the level of a lot of newspaper humor. It becomes a form of laziness.
And, you know, I liked writing humor. Well, I should say, I wanted to write seriously, but it kept turning funny.