On Humor

I just read a good book on humor. It's called And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft, by Mike Sacks.

As I read through the book I continually asked myself, "How is humor made? What are the precursors in order to create humorous material?"

So far, I haven't found the answers. Yet, piecing together things in this book and comments in other places, it seems the answers encompass a few things (at least):

--The person living a full, rich emotional life. That is, being in touch with his or her emotions.
--Taking in a lot of creative material. For example, essays, books, movies, plays, documentaries, etc. (The writer Ray Bradbury talked a lot about this in his book, Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity.)
--"Downtime" to let things marinate and allow humorous things to bubble to the surface.
--Reading lots of humorous material.
--Writing lots of humorous material.
--And lastly, a suggestion I've seen mentioned in a number of places, and maybe the most important suggestion: "Don't concentrate on becoming a better humor writer, just concentrate on being the best writer that you can become. If you're funny, the work will end up being funny." (John Hodgman)

I will try to take that to heart.