I love it when other people are funnier than I am, and I can share their humor. The following one-liners are borrowed - with permission - from Kristen Lamb's blog .   Kristen posts regularly with writing and marketing advice, and her sharp sense of humor makes her blog so much fun to read. Do check it out after you've read all the posts here and commented on every one. Okay, maybe just read mine.   You Might Be a Writer If… You’ve learned that regular people are cute, and no longer get offended with this conversation. Regular Person: What do you do? Writer: I’m a writer. Regular Person: No, I mean, what’s your real job? You’ve come to understand that writers are a lot like unicorns. Everyone knows about them, they’ve simply never seen a REAL ONE. You Might Be a Writer If… The NSA, CIA and FBI no longer bother with you. Likely, they know you by name and now outsource to the creepy ice cream truck to just make a few passes and check to make sure you’re stil...

On this dreary, gray day in my neck of the woods, I thought it would be good to cheer myself up. I miss the sun. I need the sun. And when I don't get enough sun, everything that goes wrong is magnified. Ever feel that way? Of course you have. The business of writing is sometimes wrought with frustration, and adding any stressers like daylight saving time and no sun, makes for screaming fits and hair pulling.  So let us take a moment for a deep breath. Here we go... slowly in, hold it, and let it out. Repeat ten times. There much better. Now for a chuckle or two. Enjoy.... This first cartoon is from Shoe by Gary Brookins and Susie Macnelly. Cosmo is digging through the usual mess on his desk - can we relate or what?   - and finds a ticket for a shoe repair shop. "Geez! The date on it is October 9, 1982. I wonder if ol' man Swettsock is still around?"  So Cosmo goes out and sure enough, the shoe repair shop is still there. He goes in and hands the ticke...

I don't know about you, but in the midst of some busy days for me - writing a new book, preparing for a signing event, running rehearsals for the play I'm directing, and taking care of all my critters - I need a few jokes to relieve the stress. Next to exercise, laughter is the best stress reducer, so let's have at it. Later this month we will feature a series of posts related to screenwriting, so I thought these first two jokes I borrowed from Karyn Hollis who first posted them on the Villanova University website were most appropriate.   A screenwriter comes home to a burned down house. His sobbing and slightly-singed wife is standing outside. "What happened, honey?" the man asks. "Oh, John, it was terrible," she weeps. "I was cooking, the phone rang. It was your agent. Because I was on the phone, I didn't notice the stove was on fire. It went up in just seconds. Everything is gone. I nearly didn ' t make it out of the house. P...

It's time for our mid-week, almost mid-month, break from the challenges and drudgery of writing to laugh a little. The following jokes were stolen... er, borrowed from a professor at Villanova University Karyn Hollis, who first posted them on the University website. A writer died and was given the option of going to heaven or hell. She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes. "Oh my," said the writer. "Let me see heaven now." A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers, chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes. "Wait a minute," said the writer. "This is just as bad as hell!" "Oh no, it's not," replied an unseen voice. "Here, your ...

Once again fellow toilers in the wacky world of writing, it's time for a chuckle or two to relieve some of the stress of lonely days clacking away on a keyboard. I would be lost without the comics, or "funny papers" as they used to be called. We should go back to that reference, I think. Much more descriptive, wouldn't you agree? To start us off, here is one from the strip Crankshaft : Crankshaft is sitting in the living room and his daughter, Pam steps up to the couch next to him. He says, "I spent $75 of my own money replacing the lottery tickets I lost." "So, did you hit the jackpot? "Naw… we hit the jack squat." I found this one on One Big Happy: Ruthie and her Grandpa are taking a walk. He notices her sour expression and asks, "What's wrong Ruthie?" In her most dramatic Ruthie-way, she says, "Everything grandpa. I tried to make friends with ninja Kitty. To rescue her, but that dang...

Ladies and gentlemen, and all the little children we pretend we wouldn't rather be sometimes, it is once again time to throw off the shackles of responsibility and deadlines and marketing and all that other stuff we writers have to do and just have fun. In recognition of the brutal winter we have all suffered through, I thought we'd start with a joke about the weather. Image Courtesy of StayForeverCrossFit.com In B.C . by Mastroianni and Hart, B.C. peeks out of his cave and sees that it is raining, so he goes back inside to get an umbrella. Then the rain stops and he comes out to see that the sun is shining, so he closes the umbrella and takes it back into the cave, coming back out with fishing pole in his hand. Then it starts to snow, which has him go back into the cave and emerge later with a pair of skis. Now the snow has stopped, and the sun is back out, so he once again goes into the cave, coming out with a golf club. As he steps out of the cave, the snow starts agai...