Practice is important. It’s necessary to build new skills. Comedy writing is new for me, and I know that means I’m not likely to write a funny line any time soon, much less an entire story. But wow. This stage is depressing.

I’m continuing with The Comic Toolbox and I’ve reached Chapter 6: Types of Comic Stories. Vorhaus inserts exercises throughout the text, which I’ve found useful in engaging with the ideas and forms he writes about. These exercises have led to me writing several pages of truly bad comedic scenarios. Not only are they terrible, but they are also derivative, stereotypical, pedestrian, and cliched.

I have too much of an ego to list them in this post, even though absolutely no one reads my blog. That’s how embarrassed I am by them. I’m worried that imaginary future readers may find the scenarios in the archives and dismiss me as an unfunny hack, destroying my reputation.

The tiny glimmer of hope I can derive from my embarrassment with my current comedic writing skill is this: I must believe somewhere deep down that one day I will have a reputation as being funny that could be tarnished by the discovery of such terribly unfunny ideas.

I can take that as proof I should keep going with the exercises. If I start off with completely unfounded delusions about my future success, then I must be on the right track.