Writing about Joking about Writing

In which I examine a joke by Ginny Hogan that I love very much

Oct 03, 2025

Dear friends,

I’m grateful for you!
Thank you for being here!
And now for another edition of my project in which I examine jokes and creative works that I love and that I’ve thought about frequently since first hearing them years and years ago.

The project began with a piece about one Mitch Hedberg joke and has continued with many great jokes from beloved comedians and friends!

Today’s comes from beloved comedian/writer/friend Ginny Hogan:

Me: I’m a writer
Them: so you write?
Me: let’s not get carried away
— Ginny Hogan

I love this joke.
And not just because it’s a nice accompaniment to the piece I wrote last week, entitled “On Doing and Being.”

I love it because it’s a great joke.
Which I know because I am a great knower of jokes.
So I know a great many great jokes? Let’s YES get carried away!

I’m a comedian, you see.
A comedian who does comedy.
A comedy-doing comedian.

Now, when I was just starting out, I would think things like this:

“I am DOING comedy, but AM I a comedian?”

And certainly, the more comedy I did, the more a comedian I became, is what it seemed.

Then, when the pandemic hit in 2020, I spent a long time NOT doing comedy.
More not-doing-comedy than I’d ever spent in all my years of doing comedy.
And yet, it still seemed that I WAS a comedian.

Also, even when I’m performing the MOST, how MUCH am I performing?
Every night, sometimes, sure.
Multiple shows a night, frequently, of course.

So, perhaps 2-3 hours of comedy in one night, at most, I would say?
And even if I don’t count the time that I’m sleeping, that’s still a small fraction of my life spent performing comedy.

But there’s more to doing comedy than merely performing.
There’s the writing, of course.
There’s the emailing.
Lots of emailing!
(IT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW! IF YOU’RE RECEIVING THIS AS AN EMAIL!)

AND there’s the living life.
Experiencing the ingredients that will be formulated into a creative recipe to be cooked up in the comedy laboratory.

You know how a joke often has a setup and a punchline?
And how the punchline is the “funny part”?
And the setup is the part that... sets up the funny part, even if it is itself not funny?

Well, much of the living-life-off-stage part of existence for me is often a set-up for the doing-comedy part of life.

A setup might not be funny but it’s an integral part of the comedy.
Similarly, living life might not be performing but it’s an integral part of the comedy.

So, am I a comedian a mere fraction of the time, only when I’m on stage?
Or am I a comedian an infinite portion of the time, all the time that I’m me?

To do comedy or not to do comedy? That is NOT the question.
To BE comedy, that is the answer.

So, this is all to say that I AM comedy (whether I DO comedy or not!)
And as such, I love this bit of comedy that Ginny wrote about writing.
It’s like a zen koan:

“What is a writer who doesn’t write?”

It’s funny because often, as we’ve seen, people go the OTHER way with this relationship between “being a writer” and “writing.”

People might think “I write, but am I a WRITER?” the same way that I used to think “I am DOING comedy, but AM I a comedian?”

Ginny is basically saying here “I’m a writer, but do I write?”
And she WROTE that.

Because she, like me, is comedy.

And now, because I also like sharing jokes that I’ve written, here are some jokes that I’ve written!

A) is for A joke about writing:

Every writer is an opinion writer.

In MY opinion.

B) is for Being in a rut:

Have you ever been in a rut?

Well, just imagine how many MORE ruts you might have been in, had you made different decisions with your life.

I’m thinking of writing a poem about this and calling it “The Rut Not Taken.”

C) is for Comedy:

Sometimes when the world is ridiculous, people say “the jokes write themselves!”

And to that I say, “Well, certainly a lot of BAD jokes write themselves!”

And that’s about it from ME.
But what about from YOU?
Here are some questions I have!
Feel free to answer in the comments, as an email, in your head, wherever!

1) How are you doing? What is new and good? How is your heart?
2) Are you, or have you ever been, a writer?
3) Do you write, or have you ever written?
4) What do you love doing? What do you love being?
5) How are you doing (or being) NOW?

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