a guest post by Larry Brooks

Pop quiz: what do Chris Rock, Jon Stewart, Wanda Sykes, the Showtime cable hit Californication and Kelly Diels have in common?

Two dudes, two fine ladies, two people of color, one hilarious homosexual and an edgy television show.

Answer: they’re wicked smart.  More than killer punch lines, that’s what makes them both funny and worthwhile, which are mutually exclusive attributes.

Put them together and you have a sum in excess of their parts.

I know this is a little weird.  Frankly I’ve never seen a guest blog that sucks up to the host quite like this.  Kelly’s first impulse is gonna be to toss this, because we all fear the dreaded nametag of self-serving megalomania.

She didn’t know this was coming, I swear.

Then she’s gonna realize that doing what nobody else has the cojones to do can be a good thing.  Especially for writers.

Because Kelly Diels is smart.  Wicked smart.  Anybody with the chops to name her blog Cleavage is gonna get this.

I admit it, she got my attention with that title.  Call me shallow, but testosterone is one of the great motivators of the human condition.  But when I read her stuff, I not only saw that this blog has nothing to do with breasts – my disappointment lasted only moments — but the upside of the internet.

She made me laugh.  She made me think.  She made me want to reach out.

Which is what I did.  And here I am.  You and me, we’d have never met were it not for Kelly Diels being wicked smart.

Which makes Cleavage a success on every level.  This is why God created the internet.

And, breasts.

As a blogger, and a newer one at that, I’m pretty amazed by all this community stuff.  I’ve realized that it’s no different than walking into a party filled with people you’ve never met.

That’s a moment that defines you, by the way.

You’re initially drawn to the person who, at a glance, radiates positive energy.  An essence of cool, but on the warm side (a bit paradoxical, I realize).  It’s not just a smile or the way they laugh, it’s a sense of confidence that says hey, come on over here, let’s have some fun.  Let’s connect.

And then, when you get closer, you sense that what makes it work is a deeper take on the world than a pithy bon mot.

(Go ahead, look it up, I’ll wait.)

You’ve seen those types at this party, too.  Usually a guy – women are by nature much cooler and smarter than we are – a bit on the smug side, betting the farm on their wit, often at someone else’s expense.  Sucking all the air out of the room.

Kelly doesn’t do that.  She doesn’t take, she gives.  You can’t read her blog without getting something, a small gift from her to you.

The very essence of blogging.

Kelly has much to teach us as she entertains and enlightens with her brilliant talent.  She models what any writer strives for – an instant connection, wrapped in a grin, inviting you to think.

Now if Chris Rock would just return my emails.

___________

Larry Brooks is the guy behind Storyfix.com, an instructional site for novelists and screenwriters and anyone else who wants to know what makes writing work beyond the words themselves.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.