I can’t write anything funny. At least not on purpose. And it really sucks, since I love to make people laugh. Both in person and on paper, I enjoy being the cause of people’s smiles. It’s a thing for me–I don’t consider myself successful in conversation until the person I’m talking to has laughed, in almost every circumstance. In fact, the only exception I can think of at the moment are telemarketers. Apart from that particular breed of unfortunates, who I’m sure would be doing anything else for a living if they could, if I don’t make a person I’m speaking to laugh, I’m convinced they’re either devoid of a funny bone, or under the age of four months. The latter of the two wouldn’t be reading what I write, however, and that’s what I really mean to talk about.

Writing funny is both difficult and easy. It’s near impossible if I’m trying too hard, even if I leave the piece I’m trying to be funny in to sit while I brood over it. Humour, in my experience, must be spontaneous. It comes out of me like wit, or while making up stupid scenarios over conversation with a friend. In prose it’s … well, I don’t want to say it can’t be done. One of the lines that still comes to mind of my father’s was his most romantic:

Your teeth are like stars; they come out at night.

You’d think with all the times a moment for the perfect joke comes along and goes whisking by, when I say to myself, “I should have said that!” that it would be easier to write witticisms, since I have more time on my hands to think about it. But the opposite is true. Maybe it’s because there’s no pressure when I’m sitting in front of a computer screen, as there is in a social setting. The funny is either there or it isn’t, and no amount of forcing is going to make it show up.

For today’s fiction piece in the A-Z Challenge, go here: http://lindaghillfiction.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/j-is-for-joy/