Years of writing for an invisible, unknowable audience. Then, once, by pure accident, I got to actually watch the joke land in real time.
Something happened on the train this morning that I do not think has ever happened to me before in close to a decade of writing humor professionally, watching a complete stranger sitting across the aisle actually, genuinely laugh out loud while reading one of my own pieces on her phone, a specific, direct experience of witnessing my own writing land with a real reader in real time that has left me thinking, all day, about how strange it is that this is the first time in an entire career it has actually happened to me directly.
I recognized the piece almost immediately from the specific layout visible on her phone screen, a fairly light, absurdist essay I published a couple of weeks ago about a genuinely mundane household frustration, and I spent the following several minutes doing my absolute best not to stare too obviously while she read through it, watching her expression shift, watching her actually laugh, twice, genuine, audible laughs rather than the polite, internal amusement I usually have to simply imagine my writing might be producing somewhere out there in an entirely invisible, unknowable readership.
This is, I think, one of the genuinely strange, underdiscussed aspects of writing humor professionally compared to performing it live, a near-total absence of any direct, immediate feedback about whether the material is actually working. A stand-up comedian gets instant, visceral confirmation every single time they perform, a room either laughing or not laughing, immediate and unambiguous. A humor writer, by sharp contrast, publishes a piece and then, typically, receives nothing more concrete than eventual page-view statistics and the occasional comment or email, an entirely mediated, delayed, and abstracted version of audience response that bears almost no resemblance to the direct, immediate experience I got to have this morning, purely by accident, watching one specific reader actually encounter my own words for the first time.
I think I had, without ever fully realizing it until this morning’s accidental encounter, built up a slightly abstract, almost theoretical relationship with my own actual readership across this entire career, writing consistently for an audience I have never actually watched respond to my work directly, a strange professional condition that this morning’s brief train encounter suddenly made vividly, viscerally real in a way years of more abstract feedback never quite managed.
I did not say anything to her, obviously, resisting a genuine, strong urge to lean over and explain that I had actually written the piece she was laughing at, a moment of restraint I am still slightly proud of given how strong that specific urge was in the moment. I simply sat there, quietly delighted, watching a complete stranger genuinely enjoy something I had made, alone at my desk, weeks earlier, with absolutely no idea, at the time of writing it, exactly who might eventually encounter it or how.
I have been thinking, all day since, about how much this one small, accidental encounter has already changed how I am approaching a new piece I started drafting this evening, a specific, renewed awareness that somewhere out there, an actual, specific person is eventually going to read these exact words I am choosing right now, a person with her own particular sense of humor and her own particular Tuesday morning commute, rather than the considerably more abstract, faceless readership I have apparently been writing toward, without fully realizing it, across most of this career so far.
I do not know if I will ever get to witness this exact thing happen again, and I suspect the rarity of this morning’s experience is precisely what made it land with this much genuine, lasting weight. But I am genuinely grateful for it, a small, accidental gift that has recalibrated, in a way I suspect will actually stick, how real and how specific I try to keep the imagined reader in my head every time I sit down to write something meant to make a stranger laugh.
I told a few writer friends about this morning’s encounter over the course of the day, and more than one of them admitted they have never had this exact experience either, close to a decade or more into their own respective careers, which has left me feeling genuinely, specifically fortunate rather than simply assuming this kind of moment must be a fairly ordinary, regular occurrence for anyone doing this job long enough. It apparently is not, which makes this morning feel like an even rarer, more valuable gift than I initially appreciated sitting there on the train trying not to stare.
I keep returning, writing this tonight, to her specific laugh, twice, genuine and unguarded, at words I chose alone at my desk weeks ago with no idea who might eventually encounter them. That is, I think, the whole strange, invisible transaction at the heart of this job, made suddenly, briefly visible by pure accident on an entirely ordinary commute, and I do not think I will ever quite take the imagined reader in my head for granted in the same abstract way again.
More from this author at Violet Woolf, prat.uk.