Two Kinds of Writing

I’ve been struggling to write material—that is, material for stand-up comedy, which I’ve performed at open mics for much of the year, peaking (or cratering) with a series of showcase spots at the Edinburgh Fringe in August.

I’ll relate my Fringe experience another time. My topic today is writing, though the term suggests more unity than we find. I am used to writing words for people to read: books, essays, Substack posts. With notable exceptions, I tend to be quite fluent, and I generally enjoy the task. “Writing material” is utterly different—so different, in fact, that we should coin another word.

If I had the imagination for it, I would. Short of that, an SAT analogy: writing is to reading as ______ is to watching stand-up comedy. Between writing and reading, there is editing and publishing. Between ______ and the audience, there’s practice and performance.

When I write for readers, I begin with a more or less definite idea, break it into parts, put them into words, and type them out.…