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I'm going through a period of rejection for some of the comedy publications I submit to. I've gone through dry spells before, but this most recent stretch has now reached a few months of rejection, which is coming after a year of getting jokes published consistently. I feel like comedy writing can be so frustrating in its elusiveness of never knowing what will work. I'm not totally spiraling yet, but can't help but be plagued by doubts of whether I was even good at this to begin with. As someone who has a fair bit of experience writing comedy, any advice on dealing with self doubt and how to come out of the tailspin of rejection?
Measuring success differs depending on what you’re doing: A baseball player who hits .350 is considered elite. A zookeeper who misplaces fewer than half the gorillas each month earns a promotion, while any lifeguard would be thrilled if only a dozen or so swimmers got dragged out to sea during their shift. But this is all common knowledge. Comedy is more elusive. What yes-to-no ratio would validate all the hours you’re pouring in?
At The Onion, most of the headlines you bring into a pitch meeting will curdle in midair as you read them, including your favorites—especially your favorites.1 Those that cling to life will make the shortlist and receive a bullet in the brain there, except for maybe a small handful of headlines with an absolutely ferocious survival instinct. Those get published. But that’s just the typical rhythm of the process. I’d also have multiple weeks of ushering the most headlines into an issue, a real king shit showing, immediately followed by back-to-back-to-back weeks of face plants. I couldn’t explain it then, and I still can’t now. It may just be inexplicable. A lot of this might be.
So, sure, go ahead and conduct a self-audit not only of your recent work but also your life as of late. Maybe you’ve just lost sight of some humor fundamentals that aren’t quite second nature to you yet, correctable lapses that will reveal themselves when you reread your jokes. Or maybe something outside the writing is scraping at you just enough to compromise your focus. Not some massive preoccupation—you’d know if aliens were currently testing your eyeballs’ resistance to molten plasma—but something less urgent, something you’ve got a reasonable handle on but that’s still capable of gnawing at your wiring. It may have been lurking long enough for you to not even notice what it’s been up to. In other words, how are you, generally, doing?
But, also, as I said: inexplicable. What you’re going through may mean something but may very well mean nothing, just part of comedy’s fertile-fallow cycle that will, on its own, fix itself. That really does happen. Until, of course, it breaks down all over again. If you do this comedy writing thing for any length of time, you will be tormented and renewed continuously. I understand this to my bones, but it’s still an outrage when I struggle. And I do. I’ll be OK though, and nothing you’ve written suggests that, if you persist, you won’t be too.
But especially Bart.