Funny isn't good enough

I'm working on a humor piece. Hence my funereal tone.

A lot of the articles I write have humor in them. Their tone may even be an overall humorous one.

But I distinguish between writing something that may have some funny, and an article the whole point of which is to be funny.

The bitter wish list was a just-plain humor piece. The overachiever's quiz is the same. Sure, they have their points to make; but their primary work is to amuse and entertain.

In terms of writing pure humor, I don't think I'll ever have it as easy again as I did for The List. There were moments when I sat and stared into the middle distance, but they were just that: moments. On the whole, the ideas had been percolating for so long, and reflected so much that I'd heard and thought and been tempted to say, that once it was time to write and I had a premise I was pretty much writing as fast as I could type.

The quiz was more of a challenge. I had the vague idea for it for a very long time; getting to the premise took some time. Having the structure in place made it easier, but it was still real work. The List was a sprint I took after months of training; the quiz was an all-day hike, with a lot of breaks to eat, drink, and admire the view.

This new piece feels trickier than either of them, though if I could take a mental time trip into the past, I might find that the quiz was just as hard.

I think the premise on this one is good -- not as good as The List, but I don't expect to outdo myself there.

That sounds conceited. "Oh, I've written the funniest thing ever, so I don't ever need to be that great again." I don't feel like that. In a way, I don't even think of The List as "mine." I sat down and wrote it, and I used all my skill and I'm glad I had the writing muscle to get the job done; but the reason it resonates with so many homeschoolers is that I wasn't being creative when I wrote it so much as I was just listening. Listening to stupid things people have said, sure; but mostly listening to the homeschooling community. Everything I wrote there had already been said, in a way; it was just waiting to be collected and written down. I was lucky enough to get there first.

This piece I'm working on now is really struggling to be born. I think that the basic premise has the potential to have a certain "Oh, I've thought that, too!" appeal. But I keep freezing up.

I've started it twice: once as prose, once in a list format. Some of the prose seems like better writing, but the list format can be very appealing.

Unless it comes across as gimmicky. Aargh.

I'd love to write something that has the potential to get around a bit. The magazine could use some publicity.

And just funny isn't enough to do that. "George the Fish has the Worst Day Ever" is perfectly funny, and plenty of people have told me they love it. I like it, too. But it's one of the pieces posted online, and in terms of generating chatter, it hasn't budged. Nobody's forwarding it, or recommending it as a must-read to their buddies. Google it -- there's nothing there.

I don't want that to sound like a waa-waa. "I worked so hard and nobody likes it, waa." I don't mean that at all, because it isn't true. I mean that just plain funny isn't enough to generate viral appeal. For that, a piece needs to really tap into something special.

Which is the other thing that's making me freeze up as I write. I think that part of the reason The List came out as swiftly and as sharp as it did is that I felt completely free while I was writing it. I didn't think that many people would read it. I didn't think any civilians would read it.

I wouldn't change a word of it. But if I'd known at the time that non-homeschoolers would be reading it, I think I might have gotten cold feet. I'd have been tempted to pull some of those punches.

I'm wrangling with that on this piece.

I have some worries about this article not sounding as if I'm buying into that idea that homeschoolers have it so bad because we're with our kids all the time. "Oh, I could never do that" -- you know the drill. But at the same time, I do want to address the fact that what we're doing really is a big deal, and many of us might not have expected our lives to look like this, even if we did know early on we'd be homeschooling. And plenty of us didn't.

Time to go wrestle with my angel, at the risk of offending with a very non-secular analogy that I happen to like. It helped to hash out some of my feelings here.

"Just focus on making it the best piece it can be," my husband says. Which would be great, if only I knew what that was.