I have been enjoying humor writer Judy Gruen’s essays since she published her first collection of them, Carpool Tunnel Syndrome: Motherhood as Shuttle Diplomacy, and began an Internet newsletter to deliver her humorous column, Off My Noodle, to a wide audience. She has since written a second book entitled, Till We Eat Again: Confessions of a Diet Dropout, which was named best humor book of 2003 by the Midwest Independent Publishers Association. After reading a recent Off My Noodle essay, I emailed Judy questions about her career as a humor writer so I could share them with Writing It Real subscribers:

Sheila
When did you realize you were a humor writer?

Judy
Ironically, I don’t think I realized it until after I had been a published writer for many, many years. When I got the inspiration for my first humor book, “Carpool Tunnel Syndrome,” I think it hit me, and when I began to think about it, I realized that the first several freelance pieces I sold to newspapers and magazines years earlier were, in fact, humor pieces. But I didn’t think of myself as a humor writer as I was selling them. My career for many years was in health care PR, and so I thought of myself as primarily a health care writer.

Sheila
What inspired the book?

Judy
Strangely enough, I had been working on a comic novel at the time, but one day the title, or rather, the pun, of  “carpool tunnel syndrome ” popped into my head while I was driving. I thought the title was so funny it needed a book to go with it, and somehow I knew immediately what it would contain: so many ideas began rushing through my brain about funny things that had happened through the years with my own family, ideas that I thought would and could be generic enough to be relevant to other people as well. I became very excited by the idea and left the novel by the wayside, where it remains to this day. However, an old acquaintance with whom I was not really in touch any longer felt that I had taken his joke and not attributed it to him. He told me whenever our paths crossed that he had actually made this  “carpool tunnel syndrome ” joke years earlier in my presence, and he intimated strongly that I had copped his idea! Of course this bugged me enormously, as I don’t take other people’s ideas and use them for my own and had no recollection of this happening. It could have happened, but I had absolutely no conscious recollection of it. Just recently I saw him again, and he brought it up again more directly, and I told him the truth, which was I had no memory of his making that joke and didn’t copy other people’s material. In fact, while writing my two books I purposefully did not read others in the same genre for this very reason: I knew it’s possible to have something in your subconscious and then think the idea is yours, and I wanted to minimize that possibility.

Sheila
It does seem that things are sometimes in the air, though, and people think them up about the same time. It is hard not to accept an idea that pops into one’s head as anything other than one’s own unless we’ve read it or remember where we heard it. Did he write about this joke?

 Judy
No, he’s not a writer at all, just someone who has a clever sense of humor who thought of the same pun, apparently earlier in time. I knew I would not be the only person to think of this pun, but I did try to rush to get the book out before someone else also had the same idea!

Sheila
I think writers are thieves–our material presents itself to us, and we make something out of it, if no one else has. Even if he had made the pun out loud to you, it is perfectly legal to use the idea. We use what we hear around us in our writing. When we know we are using things we overhead or others said to us, we try to thank the person who helped us as we invented our material (or acknowledge them in the writing), but very often we don’t really know how our ideas baked or if the ingredients came from anywhere outside of our own experience and minds. It’s just the way the world works for us as writers.

On another topic: even after you started writing the humor essays did you continue writing the non-humor ones?

Judy
Absolutely. I began my journalism career writing for Jewish campus publications and editing the Jewish campus paper at U.C. Berkeley. I still write a monthly commentary on Jewish issues for Religion News Service, and have written for many Jewish publications and web sites. But as I noted, most of my career was spent on health care writing, which I still pursue aggressively and still enjoy enormously.

I’m a hard-working writer who tries to actually write for money whenever possible. Since I write my Off My Noodle column for free, I try to sell shortened versions of the columns whenever possible. I have sold them to REAL magazine (which is no longer “real” at all but is now called FitBody, which at the moment considers me its regular humor columnist); Family Circle; eDiets.com, and Gardening How-To. I’ve also sold healthcare and a variety of features to Woman’s Day, Friendly Exchange, Vim & Vigor, and Spirituality &Health. I do writing and editing projects for a major L.A.-based PR firm, mostly healthcare related. I’m also just beginning work on a new comic novel.

I’ve also written serious essays and have found that on occasion when I deliver them to my humor column subscribers, they often elicit huge response. I think this is true in part because it is unexpected but also, if I have done a good job, I have touched my readers. Most of those essays are about family life.

Sheila
How are the two kinds of essays the same or different for you as you are writing them?

Judy
The only similarity in writing humor essays versus non-humor essays is in always trying to write with the highest level of clarity and to keep the reader engaged. Of course, using anecdotes at the top of an essay is almost always a winning strategy, when writing humor or serious pieces. When writing humor, I also look for some dated, funny words, such as “mossback” or “jackanapes”, just to keep readers on their toes and to give an element of surprise, without trying to seem  “hifalutin ” in my use of vocabulary.

Sheila
Who were your mentors or influences?

Judy
As a kid I devoured Erma Bombeck’s columns and books. I used to always buy her books for my own mother as gifts! Now when I reread her, I am even more amazed at her gift for telling a story and yet delivering almost a laugh per line. I also read older, classic humorists, such as P.J. Wodehouse, S.J. Perelman, and others. Their gift for humor and creative vocabulary are always inspiring. In fact, when I realize how many successful humorists go by initials (including P.J. O’Rourke), I’m considering changing my name to J.L. Gruen. Who knows? Maybe the financial success and fame that has eluded me till now is just a few initials away!

Sheila
 Is it hard to be funny?

Judy
I don’t find it so, since so much that happens in the world and in life is absurd. For example, I just got an email about the passing of the inventor of the Bundt pan. There’s nothing funny about someone passing away, but there is something irresistible about eulogizing the inventor of the Bundt pan. One of my most recent Off My Noodle columns was also about a true experience with a passel of out of town relatives who arrived on my doorstep, almost all of whom were sick when they arrived for a brunch. I made a column out of it, and I think it was funny. It’s a matter of looking at a situation from the outside and seeing the absurdity in it all.

Sheila
Are you ever afraid you’ll come to the page without your sense of humor? Has this happened? What do you do?

Judy
Thankfully it hasn’t happened. In fact, I find the longer I do this, the more ideas I have for finding the humor in various situations. I read an essay in Writer’s Digest years ago that recounts a woman in a writer’s group telling the others:  “Oh, I’m getting divorced, my kid needs surgery, and I’m losing my job. ” The others say,  “Some people have all the luck! ” Writers need material, and we get it wherever we can. I find it’s everywhere.

Sheila
I know! Friends and family of writers must always beware! We use the material life throws our way, don’t we? It’s part of that “we’ll make something of it even if no one else does” syndrome.

Whatever we are writing, though, most times for most of us, it doesn’t seem like funny material. What is your best advice for others who want to write humor or at least incorporate humor into their writing?

Judy
Read the greats of humor and the greats of literature for that matter, to reacquaint yourself with fabulous writing and expansive vocabulary. Many of the most popular writers today may be great storytellers but their writing is prosaic. I like to read writers whose writing teaches me new words now and again or reminds me of creative uses for words no longer in common usage, but which are great words. I abhor humorists who rely on vulgarity for their humor. I think it’s cheap and juvenile, and appeals to the lowest level of reading consumer out there.

Aim high for your writing and for the element of class in your work, no matter what your genre. Also, humor is an incredibly difficult genre to break into in terms of marketability. Many magazines that used to run humor regularly don’t do so any longer. As with the market for essays in general, the paying market for humor writing is very small. I think you have to have a passion for it and, like any other writing specialty, be willing to put in a lot of work to make your own work shine and stand out from the
rest.

Sheila
Can you provide the name of another of your favorites who use words you enjoyed learning? Also, can you provide an example of a time you learned a word that was new to you and turned out to be great for humor?

Judy
Perelman is without peer, I think, in his use of language. It’s not so much that the words he uses are always new or different, though they often are; it’s how brilliantly he puts language to such perfect humorous effect. For example, here’s the first sentence of a story he wrote called  “As I Was Going to St. Ives, I Met a Man With Seventeen Wives: ”  “Now that the more feisty in our midst have left the table and gone off to Plato’s Retreat to loosen their inhibitions, perhaps those of us who have trouble staying awake after eleven o’clock would care to loosen their stays and join me in a toast. ” And later in that story, this:  “I myself, a raw youth resolved to learn all of Jimmy Durante’s routines by heart, was near-bankrupt from attending the club thrice weekly, while my betrothed sat by aghast, dreams of a European honeymoon fading as I cannibalized her dowry to pay for the research. ”

One word I learned from another writer (on a writer’s message board, appropriately enough) is  “gobsmacked. ” I instantly loved the word because it sounded funny and it meant what it sounded like. Funny-sounding words are good for humor.

Sheila
Where in your writing did “gobsmacked” end up?

Judy
Oh gosh, I can’t remember! But I have used it once or twice. I try to constantly use new and different words, and almost always use my Roget’s Thesaurus when writing humor, to find those funny, archaic, or just inventive sounding words or phrases.

Sheila
I have a special request. Could you give Writing It Real subscribers an exercise they might do to help them think humorously? Some way of digging into their experience for something funny to say even when they don’t think they have anything funny to say? You gave us a good example of how you did this for yourself when the sick relatives came to visit, but is there an exercise others can use to make their brains work the way yours does? Maybe some way you work with those odd words you come across.

Judy
Ask yourself  “What if? ” and also to just try to look at whatever situation you are in and get outside it to find the humor. The  “what if? ” question helps you get to that place of objectivity, for example, when I had the sick family members over, I did both: I took a true situation and exaggerated it. What if EVERYONE had been sick, and not just half the group? Instantly that made it funnier. Another example: I had my car towed away during the summer when I parked after 4 p.m. on a certain street. Of course this was not intentional, and it was aggravating and terribly expensive. But when I got to the towing place, accurately called  “Quicksilver Towing ” (there’s humor right there), they had me sign a sheet attesting that no valuables had been left in the car. I instantly thought: but I had six coupons for Bed, Bath & Beyond right on the passenger side of the car! How could they say that I had no valuables? To me that was a way of finding some humorous solace in an otherwise not funny situation. But I don’t know how to teach people to think in this perhaps twisted way. I actually took notes while paying my bill, trying to milk that experience for a column. Unfortunately, I didn’t get enough of it to make a worthy piece. Still, I am not hoping to be towed again just for the sake of a column.

Sheila
Would you be willing as a writer to fabricate some things to make the story funny even if you hadn’t gotten enough of the actual facts of the experience written down?

Judy
There’s no magic formula or percentage, so to speak, as to how much of a story needs to be fact-based for me to use it. It just depends on my inspiration! Once I play with an idea in my head, and it strikes me as very funny to exaggerate it, I will, but again, only if I think it will still resonate with readers as something they can relate to.

Sheila
Thanks, Judy. I like the idea of exaggeration as a tool. I think adding the making of categories to it can lead to funny writing. For instance, what if you thought of other “valuables” in your car the day it was towed? Maybe the humorous essay would be about things we keep in our cars because they are so valuable to us they have to go where we go–things we’ll never remember when we get there, things we never remember to throw away so they must have meaning, and things we can’t remember getting into our cars so the universe must have wanted us to have them, for instance.

I’m reminded of a Russell Baker essay, “The Plot Against People,” which divides inanimate objects into three categories. Each category is defined by how close the objects in that category are to reaching the highest goal of inanimate objects: not to work. Baker says there are: things that break down, things that get lost, and things that no one ever expects to work.  He uses a professorial tone, which is itself a kind of exaggeration: The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately to defeat him, and the three major classifications are based on the method each object uses to achieve its purpose.”

Judy
I think these are excellent examples of making something mundane into something funny, and I have read Russell Baker and he’s also a wonderful writer, full of humor and grace. I think women especially could have fun with writing about the  “indispensables ” they keep in their car, say, for example, a spare lipstick, diapers (if they have little ones), etc. Though who knows? Maybe guys have special stashes in the glove box, too – maybe things they keep secret!

Sheila
I like the idea of writing something funny that reveals a “secret” that lots of people share. I guess that’s an element of humor, too, that the humorist says out loud what most of us don’t think we should reveal or admit we think.

Judy
Absolutely. In my experience, the humor pieces that have struck a chord with the most number of people have been the ones where I share experiences that others relate to, and that’s normally what I focus on in my writing. For example, if I were an astronaut and a humor writer I’m sure I could write something funny about it, but as virtually no one is an astronaut the humor would still seem foreign, somehow. Writing about our everyday challenges, foibles, character weaknesses, small disasters, frustrations, and even triumphs can really land a bull’s eye when aiming for that funny bone because it will be so relatable. I have had so many people write to me after a column saying, “You were writing about me!” That’s a good feeling.

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If you want to ask Judy’s what-if question and apply the idea of exaggeration to explore the use of humor in an essay, try something like this:

Think about your worst fear coming true concerning a question that a colleague, spouse, child, parent, neighbor or service provider might ask you. Write that fear down. For instance: being asked by your cubicle neighbor if you have been leaving work early everyday for a week. Now think about at least three categories of responses you might make: for instance, the “Oh, I didn’t think anyone would notice” response, the “I had assignments other places” response, and the “So, what is new in your life” response.

Describe the scene between you and the person who you feared would ask the question and vividly describe why the question strikes fear in your heart. Then write as if all the categories go through your mind in that moment before you answer the question. Have any of the strategies you are thinking of using worked before in your life? When? How? Why do you think they will work now? Keep writing and in your desire to decide between being on the offense or the defense, you’ll exploration will probably turn out to be an amusing one.