What does it mean exactly when someone says they “woke up in a cold sweat”? I've woken up sweaty, but it's never been cold. But it sounds wrong to say you woke up in a hot sweat.
Well, anyway. I just woke up in a hot sweat.
I've been listening to a podcast (unusual for me) that goes behind the scenes of a certain 2010s sitcom about quirky roommates living in LA. Sometimes they’ll have writers come on and describe what it was like in the writers’ room, and they all talk about the exhausting process of pitching and filming pages of alternate jokes for every episode. The sheer amount of material this would generate for a 24-episode season is staggering, but it does lend itself to a fresher and less judgmental environment. It pushes past the more cliche first impulses and gets right into the weird stuff.
In another life, I would've tried to make it as a comedy writer on a show like this. It would have been terrifying, but in a good way. Maybe. Like boot camp for writing jokes.
I wonder if I could finagle that type of environment for myself now. The urgency of writing to a deadline (i.e. before the baby wakes up); the freedom and pressure that come with pitching alts upon alts; trusting the editing process to bring the right combination together in the end.
My current process isn’t entirely dissimilar. Just that I’ve created an environment I’d describe as more agonizing than fun. For instance, is “tepid sweat" funnier than “hot sweat”? I think it is, plus it has that ear-pleasing assonance, but instead of putting several options in brackets and setting them to stew over a mental cookfire, I will stop mid-flow and obsess until it's RIGHT. Sure there's a dopamine hit when I solve the problem—if I can solve it—but the rigidity of this approach probably curbs a lot of creativity.
I can't recreate the collaborative nature of a writers’ room for myself, though. There's something to that instant feedback on a joke. I've tried reading bits to the dogs, but they just stare at me impassively. And Albie’s really in more of a physical comedy phase right now. I guess I could try co-working, but I imagine people would get annoyed if I kept demanding more punchlines about sweat while they’re just trying to do their spreadsheets in peace (clearly I have no idea what people with Real Jobs actually do).
[Edit from the next morning: The phrase is “break out in a cold sweat.” You wake up “drenched in sweat”—no mention of the temperature. That type of sloppy mistake would've never happened in a writers’ room!]
