My mate Alan considers himself to be a funny guy. The fact that we get along so well is that we’re very similar, so it’s no surprise that I consider myself to be funny too.
He’s in Argentina at the moment, working as a teacher, but emailed me the other day to say that he’s thinking of coming home, and that he may take a comedy writing class when he gets back. I immediately replied saying that I would be up for that, and so am looking forward to what may be.
With this freshly in my mind, I emailed Alan back:
I have an idea. A good idea. A fun idea. An idea that nothing will stop me carrying out. Well, nothing barring apathy, laziness, indecision and a lack of commitment. That aside I’m well up for this idea.
You obviously fancy yourself as a funny and engaging guy. So do I (about myself. You can keep the confidence pick-ups to yourself for a while.)
I’m tapping this out on a phone by the way, so forgive me if it goes astray. My mind works quicker than my fingers.
There’s a web page out there somewhere that was set up by two friends. Each were artists. They started a friendly competition between each other based on their art.
They would choose between them, a word. They would then go and draw something based on that word. Something funny, or quirky, and sometimes loosely based around the word. For example, “bush”. One would draw a political cartoon based on Dubya, the other would draw one based on a woman’s privates.
Blame it on boredom, or blame it on caffeine. Hell, blame it on the boogie if you like, but I reckon we could do the same between us in a written challenge.
Pick a word between us, set a number of words limit, set a time frame, and then swap stories. Either between us or even somewhere online if you’re feeling adventurous enough.
What do you think?
He agreed with a caveat that he wasn’t sure if he’d be funny at it, and we’ve set a target of writing 100-150 words on the topic “blog” by tomorrow. Now I’m sitting here, devoid of inspiration, and I have just heard myself saying quietly “Blog… Ber-log… BLOG… B-L-O-G…” I think I may come back and try to write this later, for fear of going slowly insane…