I decided I'm gonna eat shit
That's right I'm going to take a big ol bite of my own fears and devour a load of crap. I'm going to face something really scary and eat big ol' bowls of shit, on purpose and IN PUBLIC. And I'm going to keep eating it until I get really good at it.

I'm not gonna eat actual shit, what the fuck is wrong with you people? No, I've decided to go back to stand up comedy. I did comedy when I was a kid, like sketches at summer camp when I was in fourth grade, or I did actual stand up sets in front of my peers in seventh grade through high school, like when I was a little kid! But then I sorta stopped. I stopped; I did some MC/hosting work in college, but I stopped doing comedy. Part of it was my other commitments and plans, part of it was bad planning and inexperience, but most of it was just fear.

My inexperience showed in that I didn't realize you didn't have to come up with new bits every time: comedians don't do that! They don't have to! They create material, then they work that material and hone it and shape it until they have a solid routine. I didn't know that!

I thought I'd have to just keep coming up with bits every time I went up! The guys that have new material every day? There's about four of those guys: they're called Leno, Letterman, Fallon, and Ferguson. And they have full writing staffs. So I jumped off that trip way earlier than I needed to. But I also had fear: what if my stuff sucks? what if I can't keep em laughing? Turns out, those are really normal fears for comedians. And it turns out no one expects you to be great right from the start. Well, assholes do, but I don't have to hang out with assholes.

So entirely in secret, I started doing comedy. I didn't tell my family, my friends, and I have decided to embrace my fear. I started working this task in July of 2011. I was driving home from a vacation; I was entirely alone and I spent most of the drive trying out riffs in the car. Over several hours I recorded thoughts and bits, and stories that I'd stewed on for some time. I tried out various and sundry premises and recorded them into my phone. Then I transcribed those into a document. Then I started working over the document. I started editing, adding, extending riffs. I worked on my material every day—sometimes for 10 minutes, sometimes for an hour. But I focused on writing something or editing something every day. Then I read them back to myself. Sometimes I laughed! If I made myself laugh I believed I could make others laugh.

I started hitting open mics. Minneapolis-St. Paul has a really strong open mic community. There's multiple open mics or booked shows every night of the week.

One of the very best comedy clubs in the country is Acme Comedy company. It's definitely top five, and they get tremendous talent there. They have a weekly open mic on Mondays which is an extremely solid show. That's the room I performed in first. It's kind of the pinnacle of the local scene and the hardest to get onstage at—if you aren't employed there, you get three minutes. The list for their open mic usually fills up completely every week—like 50-60 people sign up and they only have about 20 perform. They give first timers a shot, and then you have to keep coming back and put your name on the list hoping to get a slot. I know guys who get up at Acme every month, and others who got up once and never came back (they might have gone over their time. Never go over your time at Acme). I got up and was totally terrified and...I ate shit. The laughs were tepid, polite. I was nervous, and had trouble connecting to my material. I forgot things. I was too focused on the time. For a first performance though, it was about right there. Here's a transcript

Then I started hitting other rooms as I found them (here's a good list). I don't have a lot of time in the evenings, so I basically found rooms that fit my meeting or night-off schedule. That translates to about 1 open mic a week. Open mics are really like a gym for comics, and you'll often hear comics working new material, or half-finished jokes, or I even saw two different guys just flat out bail in the middle of a set and sit down—like the middle of a joke! The risk I'm taking is that I'm not getting up as often as other comedians, so it's hard to know if I'm progressing as quickly as I might be. But I AM progressing.

I really eat shit on a regular basis at Grumpy's. Grumpy's is the hardest room in the city, possibly the hardest room in the country. Every Wednesday night they have an open mic where I've been able to perform every time I've showed up. And there's very few audience members besides other comedians. And it's hard to wring laughs out of that crowd, boy. It is a workout, and sometimes it can depress the shit out of comedians. But we keep coming back—in the first place, the other comics may not laugh loud or long, but they aren't mean, they don't tell you you should quit or hang it up. And when there's audience, we play to them. You can hear local and national acts at Grumpy's, taking a few minutes to work their material, try out something new, and definitely eat shit. Even when I'm feeling good—great—about the quality of my material or delivery, I feel a little bit like casting my spirit into a howling void.

I've gotten a couple short sets in booked shows, beyond the open mics. That means the work is paying off, and that I'm not always eating shit, which means the first chapter of this task is drawing to a close, or evolving. (you can hear progress in my sets at the Monday Night Comedy Show 10/17 & 11/21). I'm still going to eat shit, probably even regularly, but I'm also going to settle in to myself, and see what happens as I work the material.

I've started a living document of my material, where I've captured either a transcript, recording, or both—from everything I've done the last five months: JonStarkjokes on tumblr. I don't know a lot of comics who are doing that, so I'd like to think my SFZero-honed instincts for documentation are serving me well here. I'm hoping it helps me break new ground personally and forces me to keep my instincts honed, my eyes on constant, naked development. You can also see my twitter stream, where I try out short form jokes just about every day @thejonstark.