Deep Thoughts, Writer Version: A Jack Handey Homage

“If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let them go, because man, they’re gone.”

Submission alerts: Story magazine is accepting flash fiction up to 2,000 words; short stories 2,000 - 10,000 words; long stories 10,000 - 25,000 words. Submission portal here.

New England Review is open for “Staging Style: seeking essays 900 to 2,000 words that trouble the conventional prescriptiveness of ‘craft’ and instead illuminate the infinite possibilities beneath questions of style, time, sound, form, voice, character, image, setting, risk, genre, etc.” - Submittable window here.

AWP’s book prizes—novel, short story and poetry collections, and nonfiction—are open for submission through February 28. Guidelines and submittable link here.

Related literary news: Thursday, March 12, 5 - 7 PM Pacific: I’m teaching an online flash fiction class, Laugh Lines, focusing on humor for the great Grant Faulkner’s Flash Fiction Institute. The course is equally suited for new and experienced writers—anyone wishing to write comedy based on the everyday, the personal and the public, and all categories in between. More information and registration link here.

Next week’s post is February’s agent list. You can access a preview of January’s here. A fully accessible tutorial on writing agent query letters is here.

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It’s been another banner week for the demons compiling the list of future inhabitants of hell.

Many of us likely have whiplash from jolting upright in bed in the middle of night with dire thoughts about WTF is going on in our cities, towns, and halls of power. I hope you’re talking to friends and familiars, supporting causes you care about, taking walks, and doing the things that make it possible for you to get out of bed each morning.

In an attempt to distract myself from the news cycle, I put together today’s post. Doughnuts are on the menu too. This is the menu of the third-grader who still lives in me, which also features chocolate-covered marshmallows, Bugles, and Red Vines.

Source: Unsplash

In the 1980s and ‘90s, some of my favorite Saturday Night Live bits were the Jack Handey Deep Thoughts sequences. Handey’s ironic humor seems like the perfect candidate for some writer-related chestnuts. With that in mind...

Truisms for writers retooled in a Jack Handey style:

1. “On some days, even writers with the most visible markers of success feel like they’re not good enough.”

JH version: “Even the most successful writers feel like failures at times. That’s how you know they’re writers.”

Also: “Even the most successful writers sometimes feel like losers. I think that’s because success can’t read.”

Jack Handey Ex. 1

2. “You can be happy for someone and jealous at the same time. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

JH version: “You can be happy for someone and jealous at the same time. It’s like two feelings sharing an apartment but never speaking.”

3. “Comparison is the death of joy.”

JH version: “They say comparison is the death of joy. But maybe joy was just getting a little too confident.”

Also: “They say comparison is the death of joy. I guess that means joy was alive at one point, which is encouraging.”

Handey’s Deep Thoughts website

4. “If you don’t try, the answer is always no.”

JH version: “If you don’t try, the answer is always no. That’s probably why it feels so familiar.”

Also: “If you don’t try, the answer is always no. Which saves time.”

Jack Handey Ex. 2

5. “Success as a writer depends in no small part on good luck and persistence. One you can control, the other not at all.”

JH version: “Success as a writer comes in no small part from persistence and luck. If both fail you, blame your childhood.”

Some (actual) Jack Handey quotes:

“I remember that one time my uncle Claude was telling me about the power of positive thinking. Then the ceiling fan fell on him.”

“I think the monkey is the loneliest animal in the world. Because all the other animals are just monkeys with different costumes.”

“If you think about it, the entire history of mankind is a story of people trying to find someplace to sit down.”

“Instead of having ‘answers’ on a math test, they should just call them ‘impressions,’ and see if you get close.”

“I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.”

“I think in one of my previous lives I was a mighty king because I like people to do what I say.”

“If you ever catch on fire, try to avoid looking in a mirror, because that will really throw you into a panic.”

“Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’ll be a mile away, and you’ll have their shoes.”