Writing

Since I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. The first time I ever tried to write was when I was 8 years old. I was obsessed with the Foxtrot comics. Something about Bill Amends style and the similarities between my family of 5 and the Fox's really struck a chord with me. In one specific series of comics Jason Fox, the nerdy youngest brother (ahem), wrote a series of murder mystery novels in which his sister is killed. It seemed so simple. Sit down, take out a pen and piece of paper, and write a novel. To this day, I still remember the worst sentence I've ever written in my life.

"It seems as if Janet had been killed, probably with a silencer."

Now, ignoring the horrific grammar issues with this, it is important that I tell you the setting of this story. Chicago: 1927. Leave it to an 8 year old, whose only real exposure to guns was from playing Goldeneye and whose only inspiration for writing this was some comics, to have a flapper offed by a gun with a "silencer." I believed that silencers were weapons and that they existed in the 1920's.

Hopeless from the start as this may have been, it got my pen moving. Every year I go through a writing kick. I'll pick up a pen, open my notebook and write a page or two about what's going on. I'll scribble poems or snippets of songs that I'll never finish in the corner of a page. I'll type a sentence into my phone that won't be revisited until weeks after I've forgotten what it means. But the important thing is that I write them. I get my mind working and create something that wasn't there before.

This summer I have been working at Comedy Central where I have been working with the creative minds behind Indecision, Tosh.0, Colbert Nation, and TheDailyShow.com. They are truly brilliant people with a knack for writing on the spot. Give them a topic and a deadline and they'll make you laugh. It's amazing what you can come up with under pressure. Considering that these are jobs I'll be applying for in the year ahead, this blog will be my practice for what jobs I may have ahead of me that will reach your computers on far more mainstream mediums.

Follow me as I create. Follow me as I find my voice.