2025 New Year's writing resolution: spend 10 minutes a day getting words on the page.

Today's 10-minute writing exercise is focused on comedy! We're mocking ourselves with imagery, and as usual your anonymish host is writing along. She hurt her own feelings a bit, but came out the other side just fine.

This is a no-homework podcast! Every episode, we build in ten minutes of time for ourselves to do the assignment, and the assignment is always to write write write.

You can write to our daily writing prompt, but you could also:

• journal
• brainstorm
• write for your work in progress

All that matters is that you do write and you don't cheat and you don't stop writing until the music comes in.

Gene Perret is a master of classic humor, and in Comedy Writing Step by Step he coaches the reader from a blank sheet of paper all the way to developing a standup routine. We're going to adapt a few exercises from the book this month, and today's exercise is one of them.

For today's ten-minute writing exercise:

Gene Perret says "not all audiences have a sense of humor about all topics." Take an aspect of yourself that may be sensitive for you or for other people with the same characteristic -- a facial feature, a belief, a funny walk.

Now, brainstorm visual images that exaggerate that characteristic to a comic degree: eyelashes so long they sweep spiderwebs from the ceiling, or a nose so drippy the owner walks around holding a bucket to his chest. If any of your images suggest a complete joke, that's great, but focus on coming up with striking and exaggerated imagery.

Our themes this month are:

• Love in all its forms
• Dialogue
• Comedy Writing Step by Step by Gene Perret

We will also write a complete work of flash fiction together in a week from Feb 17 - Feb 23. No pre-work needed, and as always, zero homework outside of our ten minutes a day. This month we'll use Dan Harmon's story circles method to plan out our stories.