Write 100,000 Jokes

Plus, a reader Q&A about making money with your comedy writing on Medium.com

You probably know the 10,000-Hour Rule.

This is the idea that it takes around 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to gain world-class expertise at any skill.

Everyone’s favorite funky-haired popularizer, Malcolm Gladwell, popularized this idea in his 2008 book Outliers, citing research by psychologist Anders Ericsson.

Ericsson later clarified that quality of practice matters more than any specific number of hours. Since then, plenty of writers and psychologists have debated the rule and how much water it holds.

10,000 sounds a bit too conveniently round, doesn’t it? Malcolm? Hello!? Are you busy moisturizing your hair again, sir!?

But!

Regardless of how precisely accurate the 10,000 number is, there’s some spiritual truth to the rule: Getting better at any skill, including comedy writing, requires many, many hours of deliberate practice.

That’s why I propose that comedy writers think about the 100,000 jokes rule: to master joke writing, write at least 100,000 jokes.

Why 100,000? Well, the jokes should be written with the intense focus you’d give any deliberate practice.

And I think writing 10 jokes in a hour is reasonable. So 10 jokes per hour x 10,000 hours = 100,000 jokes.

Of course, those jokes can’t just be 100,000 random jokes written in any flippant manner. To get better at the craft, you want the kind of feedback and iteration that I describe here.

But all of that said: we should all write 100,000 jokes.

If you haven’t written your 100,000 jokes yet, then stop worrying or complaining about your comedy writing.

Instead, get back to writing your 100,000 jokes.

And I’ll see you on the other side in the 100K club! I’ve heard we get cool members-only jackets when we join.

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Reader Q&A: Publishing and monetizing on Medium

“So McSweeney's rejected my piece and thus now I'm going to try my luck with a Medium comedy publication. I've been reading your Substack posts plus the guidelines on Medium's own website, and I'm still confused, mostly regarding sharing the mysterious "friend link": I want my writing being freely seen when I put it on my website, my CV, etc. (because I freelance teach and this affirms my college lecturing credibility), but I also want netizens everywhere to pay me.

Is it possible to share stories with the friend link for unlimited uses? Like, it doesn't expire and/or only work for say 100 clicks? (That's my worry.)

And now I'm thinking I shouldn't publicly post the friend link on the website I'm making for myself because then, why read it through Medium's paywall when you could just Google my site?” - T.D.

Hey T.D., these are good questions. First of all, I commend you for pushing forward and wanting to publish on Medium after a McSweeney’s rejection. That’s the right attitude.

There’s an important lesson here: selective and super-selective publications will pass on plenty of good comedy pieces that could do well elsewhere, and that’s because (a) taste is subjective and editors are humans not gods, and (b) selective publications only have so many publications slots so they have to make hard choices.