Learn how word sausage gets made at upcoming event
It begins with bongos at four in the morning, then again at 4:15 a.m. Sometimes it takes a third round of rousing, danceable beat to get things moving. Today, my brain was having none of it, and even though my alarm ringtone has been carefully vetted over time to be the one least likely to inspire an adverse reaction in the person sleeping next to me, even Kristin has her limits. When I reached for the snooze a fourth time, I was smacked in the head with a pillow.
“Alright, that’s it,” she growled. “I had just fallen back asleep!”
“But it’s bongos,” I pleaded. “Won’t it make you dream of dancing to the Rolling Stones?”
“More likely it’ll make me dream of smacking you with something other than a pillow. Now get up and get going — and take all these pets with you!”
This, my friends, is how the sausage gets made.
Sometimes, when I have a great idea for this column, I’ll get home from work, eat dinner and sit down at my desk to whip out a couple hundred words in the blink of an eye — and when I say “sometimes,” I mean never.
The truth is the creation of this weekly offering nearly always takes place very early in the morning on the day of the deadline. If some sort of little ditty isn’t in my email outbox and headed to the illustrator (Kristin) once I pedal off to my day job, I’ve just blown a 29-year winning streak.
And for she who wakes to read whatever mess I’ve concocted and must then rise to conjure up an appropriate cartoon companion with the deadline looming just hours away, whatever struggles face her are of little concern to me. After all, Kristin had the joy of sleeping in.
It was Kristin who got us into this mess in the first place. Nearly three decades ago, she waltzed into the newsroom of our newly minted town newspaper and fed the editor a complete fabrication of how I was a writer and that I should have a weekly column. Then she added the truth — and perhaps the true motivation for her spiel: “I’m an artist, and I can draw a cartoon to go along with the column each week!”
And the rest, as they say, is history.
If you would like to hear a little more of the ins and outs and ups and downs of the making of this weekly madness, please join us along with the Wooster Friends of the Library for 1,500 Weeks of Fun: Sharing the Humor of Everyday Life on Monday, Oct. 21 at the Wooster Main Library. The show will start at 7 p.m. (I’ll probably be up the entire night before getting ready for it!)
Kristin and John Lorson would love to hear from you. Write Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John at jlorson@alonovus.com.