More people write poetry than read it.
How do you write zero in Roman numerals?
Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage. I've always written in the long format, five, eight, 10-minute pieces rather than one-liners, so since writing books, the process hasn't changed much. A piece in my live routine can end up as part of one of my HBO specials, and it can also end up in one of the books.
Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage.
There was about a two-year period at the end of the '60s, when I realized I was in the wrong place and entertaining the wrong people with the wrong material and that I was not being true to myself. I went through a metamorphosis into something more authentic for me, a more authentic stage voice and writing voice.
It was the typical paranoid experience [to hide coke]. As soon as I knew my hiding place, I thought the whole world knew it. I'd write clues to my hiding places in code, then forget the code and spend the rest of the day looking for my coke.
I like to write without being stoned. I like to have a hit or two and then go punch up the writing. I just see different things and hear different things. But it's nice to be working from the base that I wrote originally and then come to it with a little buzz. I can have a little wine from time to time. I have a hit from time to time, but those are the only things I do.
Two things happened. The creative side of my career was harmed. When I'd sit down and write under the influence of coke, the ratio of pages kept to pages thrown out declined drastically. But onstage, when rapping about a feeling I already owned, I would sometimes get a burst of eloquence.
Comedy, although it is not one of the fine arts - it's a vulgar art, it's one of the people's arts, it's the spoken word, the writing that goes into it is an art form - it's certainly artistry.
I went to my old school, where all the kids I'd been with for eight years were about to graduate. But the sisters wanted me to repeat the whole term; so I went to the principal and pleaded with her to allow me to graduate with my class. She finally agreed on the condition that I write the graduation play. It was called How Do You Spend Your Leisure Time?Catchy title, huh?
Writing is really wonderful art. A lot of this is discovery. A lot of things are lying around waiting to be discovered and that's our job as writers is to just notice them and bring them to life.
If anyone e-mails you something "by George Carlin," there's a 99 percent chance I did not write it. I didn't write "Paradox Of Our Time." I didn't write "George Carlin On Aging." I didn't write a eulogy for my wife after she died. I didn't write the New Orleans thing. I didn't write "I Am A Bad American." None of them. You know what I've decided to do? I'm going to get a little cheap put-it-together-yourself website called NotMe.com.
The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the editors, and then to have a first draft and get it back and work to fix it, I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision.
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