So I am a strange person. If you’re reading this, you probably know that much already. I’ve grown somewhat used to and happy with the fact that I’m strange, it’s a lifestyle choice and it’s what has kept me sane, and generally happy with myself for years (at least happy enough to manage on a daily basis.) I’d like to think that in general I’m reasonably well-adjusted, not into the stalking, kidnapping, torturing, murdering, etc. Not my game, sorry folks. I know, I’m so dull.
Professionally, I work in I.T. I like doing this (clearly, otherwise I would have given it up long before now) but periodically I get a pang to work on something more creative. Such as:
- January 1998: Excuses, a weekly newsletter/list style humor publication. I was 12 at the time.
- 2000-2001: Excuses 2000.
- Early 2001: Started writing song parodies. Entered and won grand prize in contest for song/art/poetry contest for Pi Day. (Yes, even the creative pursuits are geeky.)
- 2001-2002: Excuses 3. Took a creative writing class and was member of the club for the school’s literary publication. For some reason never put these two pursuits together. The song parodies were waning by this point. In the interim I’ve written a number of them but never recorded any.
- 2004-2005: Excuses Four.
- 2006: Tried to restart Excuses again, wrote one issue and gave it up.
- 2010: Successfully restarted Excuses again, tried to get into doing some video/podcasting with limited success.
- 2011: Started Wacky on (Wednesday | The Weekend), a comedy radio show on an Internet station in the middle of Indiana. Still doing this to date, and enjoy it. Yes it’s a bit slapdash, but 1. I’m not getting paid, and 2. It adds to the charm. Kind of.
So you can see I’ve dabbled in numerous things which have some roots in media and entertainment, and that leads me to my point. I wouldn’t mind maybe doing something in this vein a bit more, and try to gain some exposure, but I have no idea how, or if I even should. So my question for anybody who has read this far: is this even something worth pursuing? I don’t exactly know what I want out of it all, but I’d like to get a feel for whether I’ve got any prospects in any of the areas of comedy writing, video, radio, podcasting etc. I know I sound extremely amateurish when posing this as a question, but I am aware of all the pitfalls and how things became popular (mostly luck, not what you know but who you know, million failures for every success, etc.)
So I’ll put it out there, and please add a comment if you feel like you’ve got something to add to my dilemma. Thanks for reading/commenting, and have a great day.
And if you’ve got a few minutes, the one video podcast I did for Excuses, totally not polished, but I enjoyed doing it and thought I learned a lot from the process.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZSwNr3M0mo[/youtube]
It’s hard to offer career advice, especially if you want to “monetize” the whole comedy thing, an industry about which I know nothing (except from enjoying). If you want to pursue it as a love or a hobby, that frees you, obviously, to do as you wish. (If you haven’t seen http://robdelaney.tumblr.com/howtomakeitincomedy, it doesn’t offer much concrete help, but what it says isn’t bad). Is stand up your thing? Or writing? I think we’re in something of a golden age for amateur comedy, with so many good and popular twitter accounts, not to mention the comments section on things like The Onion, proving that the audience is out there. If I knew how to make something go viral, believe me, I wouldn’t tell you, I’d be monetizing it myself, but hard work and persistence are the only ways there. The old design school aphorism “Good designers make 90% junk; if you’re afraid to make it, you won’t get to the good 10%” holds true for pretty much everything, as my backlog of quite deformed cakes demonstrates. You have to make a lot, and then more, and then still more to get to the good stuff. Once you define what you want to do, define a schedule for yourself, and keep at it. Predictability helps build an audience. Post something every day, and something longer once a week, minimum.