SHALLA CHATS with Gordon Kirkland

"Writing Ha-Ha Comedy"

by Shalla DeGuzman

First of all, who ’s Gordon?

GORDON KIRKLAND is a syndicated humor columnist for newspapers in Canada and the USA, and three-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Award of Merit for Humor for his books. He received the award in 2000 for Justice Is Blind – And Her Dog Just Peed In My Cornflakes (Harbour), again in 2005 for Never Stand Behind A Loaded Horse (Thistledown) and in 2006 for When My Mind Wanders It Brings Back Souvenirs (AuthorHouse). His fourth, I Think I’m Having One Of Those Decades was released in 2006. His latest book, I May Be Big But I Didn’t Cause That Solar Eclipse will be launched June 1, 2007 at BookExpo-America in New York, where he will be one of the featured signing authors. Gordon is a frequent guest on radio and television in Canada and the United States, and is in great demand as a speaker at conferences, conventions and corporate events.

Shalla: Hello Gordon, nice of you to be here. Congrats on Gordon Kirkland At Large, looks like it’s sweeping the nation, or should I say the world.

Gordon: The column tends to ebb and flow. At times it is in a lot of papers, and then it drifts back to fewer. Right now it is in papers in the US and Canada, and we just made an inroad into India that looks promising.

Apparently, my work was also getting published occasionally in a newspaper in South Africa, but someone else was submitting it with his name as the author. Plagiarism is alive and well.

One of the biggest problems facing syndicated columnists these days is the competition from amateur writers, who offer their work to newspaper editors for free. I’ve had several editors say to me that, while they would rather have my column, their budget constraints give these free pieces a significant edge. It’s something that has caused a number of very fine columnists to stop writing when their column income dropped below the point where it is worth doing. When I am teaching aspiring writers I remind them that writing is a profession. Professionals get paid for their work and amateurs work for free.

That said, there are papers that I am extremely happy to be working with. For example, the West Chester Daily local in Pennsylvania runs the column. That is the paper is where my friend and colleague Dave Barry got his start, writing sewage commission reports.

Shalla: Please tell us what else you’re up to these days.

Gordon: I am very busy these days getting ready to launch the new book. BookExpo-America attracts tens of thousands of book industry people, therefore it is a great venue for hosting the book launch. BookExpo-America is a fantastic event that every writer should try to attend at least once. It gives you an great overview of the sheer magnitude of this industry.

I am also please to say that I have just been booked as part of the faculty for the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop for my third time. It’s a great honor to be part of this program at the University of Dayton. I’m also very excited to have the opportunity to spend some time with Garrison Keillor, who will keynote this year’s workshop.

One of the things that gives me a lot of enjoyment is doing writer in the schools programs. I credit an English teacher in my senior year of high school for my desire to be a writer. She gave me the opportunity to meet writers, and learn that writing wasn’t just something done by ‘old dead white guys from England,’ despite what high school English curriculums at the time might have led you to believe. People who weren’t a lot older than me were getting their stories published, and some of the writers who she introduced me, such as Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje to have gone on to great things.

Shalla: Congrats on your three-time win of the Stephen Leacock Award of Merit for Humor. So, if anyone can help us with this question, I bet you can: What is “funny”?

Gordon: “Funny” is whatever makes you laugh. That can be very different for different people. For example, every so often you will see an article about the funniest jokes from different countries. Reading those articles shows you that what makes people laugh in East Wankerstan is very different from what makes people fall off their horses in hysterics in Upper Rubber Boot, Wyoming.

When I am teaching humor writing, I tell the students that the most important thing to strive for is to let your readers laugh with you and at you, but most importantly, you want them to laugh at themselves as they see elements of their own lives described in your stories.

It’s nice to hear a reader say that something I wrote made them laugh. It’s even nicer to have them say that they laughed because they could picture whatever I was describing happening to them.

Shalla: How can writers test if what they’ve written is funny?

Gordon: Probably the easiest is to give something you’ve written to a number of different people and watch them read it. If they laugh out loud at some point, ask them where they are in the story. I also use my appearances to test new material. Hearing an audience’s reaction to my material gives me a good feel for what is hitting the right note.

Shalla: Do you have any writing exercises you can share with us to improve our comedy writing?

Gordon: One exercise that I give my students right off the bat is to write the story of that point in their lives when they were suffering the biggest embarrassment they’ve ever faced. Odds are that, at the time, they said that they might be able to laugh about it ‘someday.’ It’s also pretty likely that the reason they were embarrassed was because everyone around them was laughing. One of my first published pieces was about my own most embarrassing moment.

Shalla: Are publishers publishing Ha-Ha comedy these days? Or do they prefer black/satirical comedy?

Gordon: A few years after I started writing humor someone told me that it was the most difficult genre to work in. I wish I’d heard that before I started. I could have gone into something like women’s erotic romance instead.

Publishers and agents often shy away from humor. The first time I ever went to a writer’s conference I asked the agents panel about putting my stories together in book form. A very snooty agent looked down from the podium and said, “You’d have to be an idiot to think anyone would be interested in something like that.” While, at that particular moment, I did feel like an idiot, I went home and looked at the bookcase in my office and decided that if she was right then Erma Bombeck, Lewis Grizzard, Garrison Keillor, and Dave Barry were all idiots. (I made sure I sent her a copy of my first book after it won the Leacock Award of Merit.)

Unfortunately, she was right to a certain extent (other than the part about me being an idiot.) Getting a publisher interested in a book of humor is a difficult task. That’s one of the reasons that for my last three books, I have worked with AuthorHouse.

Shalla: Lastly, any tips on writing publishable comedy? Any books you’d recommend? Any workshops? Conferences?

Gordon: First of all, read. Read everything you can get your hands on by other humor writers. As I said above, my office bookcase is filled with books by Bombeck Grizzard, Keillor and Barry. It also contains a great many works by lesser known humor writers. Some of it is good. Some of it is, well, there is a word for it isn’t there? Reading it all has given me a sense of what works and what doesn’t.

Secondly, listen. Listen to comedians like George Carlin, Jeff Foxworthy, and others. Go to comedy clubs and hear new comics. Listen to how they are telling their stories and what the audience is reacting to in their presentation.

Finally, write. I write the column every week, as well as rewriting those stories for the books and other writing. Keep a notebook handy to jot down things you see that make you laugh. Take it out every so often and write stories based on what you’ve seen. Read the newspaper for the stories that make you laugh, whether that’s politics, or just the plain old weird stuff that goes around.

One of the best conferences in North America is aimed at humor writers. The Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop is probably too much fun to be legal in certain states. Anyone interested in this genre should seriously consider attending it. For more information see http://www.humorwriters.org/.

Shalla: Thanks so much Gordon. For more on Gordon Kirkland, please visit http://www.gordonkirkland.com

Shalla DeGuzman's short stories have appeared in Poetic Diversity, the Mosaic Literary Journal, the Mad Hatters Review, etc.; her articles in The Scriptorium and L.A. Freepress; her skits at the Stella Adler Theatre. Her flash fiction The Fish In My Bed recently won the FISH AND PLANE Competition and is featured in Issue 6 of Mad Hatters Review. Shalla, a former writer and producer of a health and fitness cable show, is currently writing a novel. She is President of The ShallaDeGuzman Writers Group where she interviews literary agents, publishers, editors, etc. News! Shalla has been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. SHALLA Magazine, which features short stories and excerpts from top, award-winning writers, is here! For more on Shalla: www.shalladeguzman.com