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Over the past few months I have had the great pleasure of interviewing a fair number of authors, many of them first-timers. What I found interesting was a consistent theme, that of dissatisfaction and frustration with the publishing world.
Unfortunately most authors are unwilling to talk publicly about their experiences, no doubt wary that ‘stirring the pot’ will make their future projects even more difficult to bring to fruition.
Fearless stand-up comedian and writer Ian Coburn however broke the mold and agreed to discuss his experiences with the literary world. And a fascinating story it is.
On Getting Started
It doesn’t surprise me that authors would be reluctant to share their knowledge. In any art medium, artists often feel there is only so much work or space to go around; if they share their knowledge, they create more competition.
I often came across this mentality as a comedian. Many comedians did not want more people breaking into a business already oversaturated with acts. They were afraid someone better would steal their spots at clubs. So, comedians often recommended mediocre acts to clubs, in order to be certain there would still be work at those rooms for them.
This logic is totally backward. As a comedian, I can only work one club at a time. When I’m not at a club, I want the best possible act working there. I want the crowd to think he’s hilarious. That way the club will stay open. Hopefully, more clubs will open. If people see mediocre acts, they’ll stop going to the clubs. Clubs will close.
Comedy clubs have been struggling for years and there are far less now than there were in the 90’s, when there were less than in the 80’s. Comedians themselves are responsible for many of the clubs closings. Books meet with similar struggles. The industry is not geared to bring in new, fresh talent; it’s geared to keep it out. When someone picks up a book that isn’t mine, I want them to love it. I want that book to make them want to read more books. Quality books mean more readers which mean more venues for books.
Unfortunately, many of the books being published today are as likely to be written by pop culture stars 
with poor writing skills as they are by authors. Along with competition from technology, this is impacting book sales. In Chicago alone, where I live, Borders is trying to lease four store spaces out and close those stores. Not very encouraging.)
My goal, whether writing or performing comedy, is to entertain while sharing whatever knowledge I can. That’s why I wrote God is a Woman: Dating Disasters. To do that best, I thought I would recount my entire journey with God is a Woman to date.
The Great Vision
Last year I was frustrated. I had written two screenplays for hire, had one in development hell, and a bunch of others that were “just not quite right but really, really good.” At the same time, friends had been bugging me for years to write a dating advice book. I finally looked into the genre and became frustrated with the literature. Most of the advice in such books was very poor, advising women to “never return a guy’s call,” “pretend to like sports to catch a man,” and so forth. The advice in guys’ books wasn’t much better. The few books for guys really didn’t offer advice; they recalled tales of debauchery with women, offering little insight into how to meet and date women.
I decided to write a dating advice book. Unlike my screenplays, I’d get to see the results of my work much more quickly. (I was spoiled as a comedian; you tell a joke, the crowd laughs, there’s instant gratification.)
Some Lessons from Standup
When I was twenty, I was completely caught off guard by a crowd for the late show at a comedy club. Typically, the late show, beginning at 11pm or later, is full of drunks and young people. Imagine my surprise when the entire crowd consisted of a wedding anniversary party … celebrating married year number fifty. Yup, the youngest person in the forty-person crowd was eighty and completely sober. My job? To make them laugh for thirty minutes. It was awful.
I had nothing for them. They stared at me the entire time, interrupting occasionally to ask me why it was so cold, could I get the heat turned up, and what did I just say, could I speak up, please? I learned then that your material needed to be easily adaptable for appeal to different types of crowds.
I also learned a lot about people as a standup, as I met no less than hundreds of thousands of them in ten years with a couple thousand of shows under my belt. I learned what people wanted and hated in books, movies, dating, and government.
Armed with these two key pieces of knowledge, I thought about how to make the book.
The Concept Of The Book
What could everyone relate to when it came to dating? How did I learn to be successful with women? (I went from being voted sweetest guy in high school — i.e. biggest loser with girls — to very successful player and jerk in my mid-twenties, to the guy I am now, unruled by my own desires, instead seeking only truly satisfying relationships.)
What was the common-denominator? How could I find a broad audience? How could I keep it entertaining for as many people who read it as possible? The answer was clear: failure. Everybody, whether they just started to date last year or whether they’ve been married for sixty years, has had embarrassing dating and sexual failures. People could relate to such stories.
Those failures are where I learned how to be successful. I’ve had more failures than most because I took more risks and led a different lifestyle. In turn, those failures led to more success than most, in that different lifestyle where wondrous experiences can occur if you know how to play your cards. I learned how to make those wondrous experiences occur outside that world, too, in the world where most of us live everyday.
Great; the idea of using my failures as the core concept meant I could easily make the book humorous. I needed more, though; every good standup routine has a main idea (called a “bit”) at its heart. What more could people relate to? Ah, yes, God. Everybody knows about God. They may not believe in Him, they may not like Him, they may curse at Him, but they all know about Him. Not only that, but people are always bugging Him about dating.
“Why’s it so hard to meet someone, God?” “Why can’t I just have a good date? Is that too much to ask for, God?” I needed a twist. What if God was a woman? Yeah, now I could have fun with that throughout the book, and it would come in very handy to explain a lot of things, especially in the world of dating and relationships.
I had my bit, I was ready to go. (Stay tuned for more)
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