It’s believed that Ernest Hemingway once wrote a six-word novel: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." This guy really knew how to trim the fat, which is partly what made me want to write like him. His deceptively simple writing style had a childlike quality, and my attempts to emulate him read more like creepy children’s stories, so I went with that and wrote kid’s stories instead. I didn’t send them to a publisher because I didn’t need reminding that I was a failed Hemingway who couldn’t even write something decent about worms.
But then I had to put aside my insights on life as a worm and write a best man speech for my brother’s wedding. And that’s when I started writing some crisp one-liner jokes. That was way back in the year 2000, when the future started. I first set foot on the comedy stage in March 2001, and since then I have looked back. I have looked back trying to understand how I went from serious ad school student to market research telephone interviewer and worm author, to standup comedian. Maybe as a telephone interviewer I was practising talking into a tiny microphone to a stranger laughing at me, and perhaps as a worm author I learned to lighten up and become a kid again. This is partly the theme of my new standup comedy show: https://www.comedyfestival.co.nz/find-a-show/my-way-or-the-hemingway/
