OK, a bit of a bait-and-switch with the headline. This is a post about where IDEAS come from. Hey, if you’re a writer, ideas ARE babies.

Earlier this week a friend asked about the process in my head when I create humor. I wasn’t sure how to answer. I spend very little time thinking about the source of funny.

On her most-excellent blog, Jane Espenson recently posted about two kinds of comedy writers, people who say funny things naturally and then write them down, and people who analyze the shapes and patterns that make jokes and recreate them as they write.

I don’t think I’m an either-or. My brain works enough like an engineer’s that analyzing humor is very appealing. But I also have sufficient experience with improvisational acting to know that the magic of the moment can create humor that an outline and some graph paper simply will not produce.

I had two different experiences with housemates this week that very much demonstrated there is value in being able to think both ways:

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I’m not a poser. I’m not one of those wannabes who just says he’s a writer but who never actually writes, that much should be clear. However, to be fair, I can be a king of procrastination. In the struggle to find balance in “research” versus pen-to-page, my scales tip a bit too heavily to “research,” and the word has a broad definition. I am a fits-and-spurts writer, sometimes going weeks without a pen- or keystroke, then kicking out tons of pages in a few days. Yet my productivity is on par with the more disciplined writers who claim to write on regular schedules. I’m not sure how that works out… One of the problems with dedicating your life to writing is that each moment spent on NotWriting has a small twinge of guilt tied to it. I WANT to become the kind of person who has a certain number of hours dedicated each day, and who therefore can enjoy his NotWriting time, but typically haven’t found sufficient regularity of schedule. NotWriting sometimes has a mind of its own.

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There were two main arguments with which I convinced myself that, lack of Douglas fir trees or no, I needed to move to L.A. The first was simply that I couldn’t expect to become a television writer anywhere else. The second, admittedly smaller, was that the number of industry events here had to be at least twenty times what Seattle could offer.

My reality–as I’ve settled into a home I love, found methods to support myself, and learned the patterns of L.A. traffic–is that tutoring is rarely compatible with industry events. Tutoring is fantastic for my writing schedule, allowing me to scrape by with a low-hour, high-wage work week. However, most events are scheduled in the late evening, and it’s rare that I can finish with a day’s students and then get across town in time to catch events.

So I’m all the more excited to discover this workshop being held on a Saturday by the WGA on May 19th, called “Breaking Into the Box: Making Your Start in Television.” They’ve booked several big-name showrunners and built in time to mingle with other attendees. Sweet. Plus, it’s reasonably priced, especially in comparison to most of the steady stream of workshops in town. I just signed up. Anyone else going?

My only problem is that I was hoping to have my 33 1/3 birthday party that day. After all, you only turn 33 1/3 once. (Of course, I’M not really that old. Comedy writers are in their twenties. Like me. One of my students tried to guess my age yesterday, and he stated quite definitively that I must be eligible to audition for American Idol.)

Death may be the one aspect of life that shows up LESS on television than in reality (excluding, of course, those shows that start every episode with one, where it is featured far MORE than statistically plausible.) Death can be a taboo subject, perhaps harkening to more superstitious times when to name was to invite it. I thought I’d reflect for a post on how television shows through history have handled the ultimate facet of life. When TV is at its best, reverent or not, death is handled artfully. Of course, we know that when TV is at its worst… Here are my selections of notable storytelling surrounding the death of a main or recurring character. Because they really do fall into extremes, and to save me from sorting through which Sopranos character really had it coming, I feel like I have to break this Top Ten into five best and five worst:

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