How to February

It’s a good time to introduce your new imaginary friends to your posse

Beautiful thing about writing is that you get to make shit up. You can invent anybody and when you tire of them there are lots of ways to uninvent them, too, some of which will keep you awake nights wondering if you’re normal when clearly you’re not even close.

Making a character is kind of like adopting a pet and you should really have to fill out forms and offer real-people references so you’ll take the responsibility seriously and not let your charges story-slip into inappropriate genres

Of course you don’t have to be a writer to explore these kinds of things but I don’t know how you can get very far doing it in your head. How on earth would you keep it straight? I mean I’ve invented entire communities in a single train ride but without keeping track, everybody just sort of stays on the train and I get off feeling a weirdly intense kind of loneliness almost as if some of my organs are missing, which those of you who are writers can maybe relate to?

And if not, I’m only kidding

But I def need to jot my shit down and then groom the jots, you know, so it’s nice and flowy to read and if I’m lucky or careful or a bit of both plus maybe something else, it grows from there and sometimes in unexpected directions which I might have mentioned is the fucking bomb.

It’s a nice way to explore things in life that you might not get a chance at otherwise

Take my Outskirts of Nowhere girl, Kate, for instance. Her father is a joke writer and he sends jokes to Hollywood, specifically Burbank Studios c/o Bob Hope, Don Knotts, Phyllis Diller, Rowan and Martin, and The Smothers Brothers in New York. Kate used to go with him to the post office where he would balk at the pennies he’d have to spend on stamps. Why Ken, he’d say, this envelope contains nothing but levity. I’m surprised it weighs a thing!

And BTW sometimes Kate would burst into her father’s study and find him twisted up with laughter and he’d look at her as if he were trying to remember who on earth she was.

This is the way Daisy often finds me

So yeah. Kate’s dad is me. And I actually write jokes for all those guys (and others) as practice, you know, just goofing around. Same way I write sequels to my fave books as practice and maybe also because I can’t bear to say goodbye. So Nick Carraway, for instance, doesn’t end on the last page of The Great Gatsby for me. And who could possibly think that Boo Radley and Atticus Finch wouldn’t have oh so much more to say and do. Also who wants to stop at A Hundred Years of Solitude? Not me, that’s who.

I am currently imaginary-writing for Garry Shandling but it’s not laughter I’m after, it’s more of an imaginary, pleasant hmmmm

There is so much about him that I adore and I don’t know if you’ve seen his Zen Diaries or not but I think he was a very stand-up guy who happened to be funny and fearless and full of heartbreak and trying in an excruciating kind of way. Judd Apatow directed and produced the doc and also wrote the book I am currently reading called It’s Garry Shandling’s Book which is more of a textbook, actually, and not something you can exactly curl up in bed with. It’s a big peek into Garry’s diary. Made up of scrawled notes-to-self, mostly, and there are extraordinary snippets of life and love and wonder and effort and important barely-staying-afloat bits.

BE MORE YOURSELF THAN EVER, he tells himself.

Now, finally, How to February: Dress for the weather, invent interesting friends (and worthy foes), and keep up the ruse in general!

And because I don’t like to end anything with an exclamation point, here’s another sentence.