Taking the Plunge!

I took a long walk off a short pier.  Can you tell?  I am all wet.  People, when they find out that I haven’t been to college, look at me like I just grew another head.  I’m well read.  My mind is thirsty for knowledge, and I know a lot more that anyone in my position should know.  Some things come to me very easily; others are like fitting a square peg into an electric socket.  I’m sure there is some genetic component involved, but let’s not talk about my parents, also not college educated.

In Junior High, I was already being called a “scholar” even though I wasn’t even sure what that meant.  I was quiet so I think I people got the impression that I was always thinking of a way to murder them.  They were right.  Being a fiction writing it’s easy.  It’s your world, and you make it.  I was making a thoughtful slasher film for Career Day! (I wanted to be a great directory, like Alfred Hitchcock, without all the weirdness)  It was great!  No one had a clue!  I loved the freedom.  I started writing parodies of films, for the fun of it.  I planned out my classmates, wrote specifically for their characteristics, and even imagined producing the film.   There was no doubt in their minds that I was going to put them in my movies, but having only an 8mm camera, there was going to be some issues.  Enablers all!

In High School, I moved on to writing plays.  None of them were ever produced, but they sit in the proverbial trunk.   Maybe someday I’ll pull them out, dust them off, and throw them into the fireplace. It’s something high school Ed would have wanted, after a proper burial.  Some of those stories have passed their prime, they were funny then, but now I can see an audience staring at the stage, drool dripping from the corners of their mouths, as they say, “HUH?”  I have enough of my readers doing that; I don’t need a whole audience of people to tell me that.  Besides, who knows what was going through my mind back then.  HECK!  I don’t understand most of the things I wrote back then, but it does make me laugh.

So on to the point that I’m making here, if you might say, the long way around the mountain.  I’ve started a college class on Sitcom Writing.  I know, if you’ve read any of my books, you would know that they are so serious.   There is some humor, but the topics are so dark.  What am I doing starting a Sitcom class?  First of all, how dare you!  I say that to my conscience, and not to the reader of this prose.   I can be a funny individual, as can all of us, at the right moment; coming up with a quip or one liner that makes everyone laugh.  What’s that line?  “Comedy is hard, drama is easy.”  Well, I’ve been working on the drama part and I want to expand my horizons.  I’ve had a mind for humor, and though I might be putting my head in a noose now, I think I can do it. It’s just a class.  I think of it as learning.  I’m sure I can use it in my writing.  It’s a win-win situation, and all that other winky-dink encouragement things that they say in the biz.

I’ve stepped off the pier.   I feel the water rising up to my neck, and I wonder if I’ll need to clean behind my ears today.