What Makes Me Laugh

About 10 years ago I sent an e-mail to a group of friends from college asking them all for a list of the best books they had read that year. I did it to reconnect with friends who share a common interest (most of us were English Majors) and because I have trouble finding new authors and I figured they might have some great suggestions. For several weeks we swapped e-mails, sharing our favorites, and making must-read book lists for the coming year. Over time, it’s become a tradition, and after most of us joined Facebook, I created a group to make it even easier for participants to share. From my friends’ recommendations I’ve discovered some of my now-favorite authors: David Sedaris, Jeannette Walls, and Elizabeth Gilbert.

You can check out everyone’s picks for 2009 by clicking on this facebook link. I’d love to hear your suggestions – either on the facebook page or at this blog in the comments section.

My suggestions for this year included:

1. Memoir – “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia” by Elizabeth Gilbert. I like to include at least one book that someone recommended from last year’s list, so my thanks go to Liz Salan for recommending this great travelogue. After a nasty divorce, Elizabeth Gilbert embarks on a spiritual and physical discovery across continents that is funny and inspiring. She also wrote the article that was the basis for the movie Coyote Ugly (which I have yet to see, but is on my list this year).

2. Fiction – “People of the Book” by Geraldine Brooks: This book is both well-written and has a gripping plot,  a combo that is nearly impossible for me to find these days. I’m increasingly becoming impatient, skimming through books, but this tale of a rare Jewish book and the people who either make it or try to save it made me read every word. Geraldine Brooks won a Pulitzer for her book “March” in 2006.

3. Fiction – “One Shot” by Lee Child: Stuck in an airport over the holidays and out of reading material? Pick up a Lee Child book. His mystery/thriller books will keep you from going crazy while on standby. They are all told from the point-of-view of Jack Reacher, an ex-military man who has no home, but always ends up in a place or position to solve a crime (and then moves on). He’s smart and brutal, but I’m never disappointed in the ending, and I read every word.

4. Memoir – “Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life” by Steve Martin: I really enjoyed this tale about Steve’s start in comedy at Disney, his spare family life, and why he ended his stand-up career. A lot of great stories about other famous comedians come up in the book. It’s not really a funny memoir, but very illuminating.

5. Fiction – “The Other Boleyn Girl” by Phillipa Gregory: I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t compare it to that, but I can say that I normally don’t like historical fiction (or fiction that is based on someone else’s sense of history) but this book brought Henry VIII alive in a new way to me, and what it must have been like to vie for his attention. Plus, it was just a good old-fashioned romance.

         I’ve been working on finishing a book for about eight years now. If that seems like a long time, well, just think how my spouse feels when for eight years in a row, on New Year’s Eve, I say, “This year I’m going to finish my book.” And the funny thing is that it’s not just one book. It’s not one agonizing editing project. No, it’s about eight books with eight different plots. None of which have ever kept my interest long enough for them to be finished.

What happens is that I’ll get excited about an idea, work very hard on the idea, and then my life and work conspire to distract me for some time from the project, so that when I go back to it it seems old and stale and well, bad. Thus, a new idea begins, and the pattern repeats.

For inspiration, I’ve read every book “On Writing” that has ever been published searching for the magic formula. I’ve read Stephen King’s advice, William Zinsser, Annie Dillard, Anne Lamott, and many lesser known authors who decide to break up their own writing block with a book about writing. Some of these authors are more famous for their books about writing then they are for any other type of writing (e.g. Julia Cameron). Don’t get me wrong. I’ve enjoyed all of them, but they weren’t what I needed. 

At times, I’ve spent weeks sleep-deprived because of the odd notion that writing an hour before you normally would get up inspires genius and somehow taps into the right-side of the brain. I’ve filled journals full of “3-pages” blather (Julia Cameron’s advice) that I can’t seem to toss. I have notecards upon notecards with ideas from “Writing Down the Bones”. I’ve joined a monthly writer’s group to impose deadlines for production. I’ve outlined. I’ve not outlined. I feel envy when I’m in bookstores, and I listen to author interviews almost religiously. Imagine what I might have accomplished if I had put this kind of effort into writing?

I blame all of this lack of finishing on that great old beast — perfectionism. It’s a scary thought, finishing something that you care so deeply about, and risking its failure. It’s a scary thought that if I actually finish the book it may never see the shelf of a bookstore. You see, if you don’t finish something, well, you might not have to face up to the fact that it’s not perfect. It’s just always a work in progress.

Sigh. So this year I have committed to finishing, once again, only this time I’ve said that it’s ok if it’s not perfect. It just has to get done. Inspired by a friend who finished a rough draft of a book in a month by writing 1,500 words a day, I finished a very, very rough draft of a young adult fantasy novel earlier this year. The revision process killed me though. It was too rough.

So, I’m onto another project, only this time I’m doing something I’ve never tried before. First, I’m writing it with someone else, so I have someone to bounce ideas, edit, etc. on a regular basis. Second, I’m writing what I know. I used to try and write great literary research monsters, and now I don’t care about that. I just want to get my story down on the page, make people laugh, and tell the truth. I hope that’s enough to keep me going, one word at a time, one sentence at a time, until it’s done. I’ll keep you posted, and in a shameless plea for help, encouraging words are welcome.

I added a new page to my blog tonight with links to all of my favorite comedians, writers, and humorists. It’s admittedly still a work in progress, but will get you started finding people that make YOU laugh.

So, I just bought a new computer, which is why this blog is graphically uninteresting (so far). I’ve been struggling with a 7-year-old Mac that I was nursing along until its very end. Anyway, I’ve been setting up my new computer and transferring files and found this cartoon I thought I would use for powerpoint presentations a few years ago (I bought the rights to use it). I think it’s funny.

Which is always a good sign… at least for me … that something is truly hilarious. I’m going to Australia next month, and a co-worker of mine recommended reading books about the country before I depart (which is a very sensible idea). So, I went out and bought the obligatory Fodor’s and Frommer’s travel guides (why do both names sound like characters from Lord of the Rings?), and she passed on some heavy tome about the history of Australia. I ditched all of them in favor of Bill Bryson’s, In a Sunburned Country last night and had myself an immensely good chuckle. Bryson’s description of himself falling asleep in the car while being toured around by kind strangers on a sightseeing trip of Sydney made me nearly breathless with laughter. Even if you never plan on going to Australia, you should read this book.