Jenny Lawson Talks Humor, Depression, and the Underrated Virtue of Kindness

Goodreads: First off, I have to tell you that your book just made my week. It’s really, really funny. This is your fourth book, right?

Jenny Lawson: Oh, thanks! Yes, I think this is my fourth book, but my third one was like a coloring book that I did. So this is my third book of essay/memoir, fourth book total.

GR: So, we’ve found that our readers are always really interested in process, in how authors go about their writing. Can you talk a little bit about your routine? Are you particularly disciplined about sitting down to write something every day?

JL: I struggle a lot with writer's block. In particular, when I'm dealing with depression, or when my anxiety gets too bad, I feel like I'll never be funny again. I'll never be able to write again. I’ve realized that that's just depression messing with me, but I will often go weeks without being able to write something that I really like.

So, this book took several years—I want to say four years, it might even have been more than that. The way I work is that I wait for interesting or funny things to happen to me, and then I become inspired by those. But until I know exactly how I'm going to write it, I tend not to start it. Because if I have something written down, and I don't like it, I will usually just delete it. So I'll wait, and all of a sudden, it'll come to me: Oh, this is how I write it, in list format! This is how I'm going to put this together!

Then I’ll yell at my family and be like, "No one bother me for 20 minutes, I've got to get this out!" Because I know if anyone interrupts me, I will never be able to find my track again.

GR: This reminds me of a quote by William Gibson, the science fiction writer. He said something about how, for the reader, a piece of writing looks like one of those cool-looking Chinatown parade dragons. From the outside, it’s all shiny and colorful and impressive. But the writer is on the inside of that dragon and knows that it’s actually just barely held together with glue and papier-mâché and balsa wood.

JL: [Laughs.] Yes, that sounds right. I write things down on Post-it Notes, each one of my chapters, and kind of what they're about. And then I have them up on my wall with the percentage that I have finished of that chapter. That way, at the end of every day, I can take one Post-it down and be like, "OK, well, this chapter was 23 percent finished, now it's 24 percent finished." And maybe it’s just one sentence that I wrote, but it still feels like I’m getting something done.

GR: Oh, that's so interesting. So you might be writing several pieces at the same time? I assumed these were old-school newspaper-column style, each written separately and compiled into a book.

JL: No, I usually have about ten things I'm working on at the same time, and I'm just kind of waiting for whatever inspiration: "Oh, this is how this one gets finished." Or, "Oh, I should move this chapter in this chapter." It’s very organic.

GR: You’ve been at this for a while now. Would you say that you still ultimately enjoy the act of writing? Or how has that changed for you over the years?

JL: Well, there’s a famous quote, I want to say it was Dorothy Parker—my dog is named Dorothy Barker—who said, “I hate writing. I love having written.” And that is exactly how I feel. To me, not writing feels very unnatural. It feels like it gets all backed up in my head. So when it finally hits, and I know what I want to write, and I get it out, it’s the most amazingly wonderful thing. In particular, if I'm writing about things that are very heavy or dark or difficult to maybe talk about. A lot of times, if I write them down, I'm able to close that chapter. That darkness can live someplace else, not just in my head. And I find that really comforting.

GR: You have a great central credo in the introduction to the book: “Be good, be kind, love each other, and f--- everything else.” I just adore that. Kindness is such an underrated virtue these days, especially in the public sphere.

JL: You know, I think one of the great things that comes with struggle—and everybody's struggle is different, whether it's mental illness or whatever—is that it helps you to have a greater empathy for other people. Developing that kindness toward others, it makes a difference in the world that you live in. It also makes a difference in what you're carrying around in your own mind. You don't have to carry around so much anger. I think one of the most important things is that we show kindness toward ourselves. The idea of forgiving ourselves is so hard, and it shouldn't be. But it is.

GR: I recently had a chance to speak with Luvvie Ajayi about her new book, which is great, and she takes it a step further. She says we all need to be proactively or aggressively kind. To stand up for others, stick together, and do the right thing. That seems to be something in the culture right now, do you get that feeling?

JL: I think so. I think people are becoming more confident in standing up for what they believe is right—standing up against racism and sexism and, you know, a million different things that are wrong with us. A lot of times, we might look out across the world and think, "Oh, there's so much bad going on." But in a way, it's sort of wonderful that we're so aware now. Because if we just looked at it and said, "Everything's great," then we wouldn't be focused on trying to fix the things that clearly need to be fixed.

GR: OK, I’ve got a writer-nerd question for you. You do some wonderful things with phrasing in your stories. You write these beautifully long run-on sentences, where you really need specific timing to make those work. It’s so hard to manage comic timing in text—do you find yourself thinking about punctuation a lot?

JL: I do! It's interesting, that is a very deliberate stylistic choice that I make. Because in my head, I speak in run-on sentences. When I write them out, I think there’s no way this is ever going to end up in a book. Any good editor would look at this and say, "This needs to be at least eight different sentences. Do you understand how semicolons work?" No, I don’t.

GR: No one does.

JL: [Laughs.] But what I have found is that people typically are willing to go with the run-on sentences because they're used to them, too. They have run-on sentences in their heads.

The other thing that I've found is that I'm just not for everyone, and that’s OK. For a while, I felt like I needed to change things because they were too abrupt, or too strange, or too dark. But I realized that when I do that, what I get is stuff that’s nice, and readable, and incredibly boring.

So now I just figure that, even if it's only 10 percent of the world that's as weird as I am and that get my jokes—that’s fine. That's all I'm concerned with. Those 10 percent are like, "All right, weirdo. I'm with you."

GR: Were you into reading books as a little kid? Do you remember the first books that kind of swept you away?

JL: Oh, yeah. My earliest memories are of the bookmobile coming to town, because we lived in the country. In the summer, we'd walk to the bookmobile to get our books. As I got older, I would steal my grandmother's books, and she was really into the dark stuff, so I’d read Stephen King and V.C. Andrews and Agatha Christie.

I would constantly be getting in trouble because of that. When I was in third grade, I did a book report about Pet Sematary. My mom was actually OK with it. She was like, "She's reading above her grade level." So, yeah, I've always loved to read.

GR: With humor writers specifically, do you have any particular favorites or influences?

JL: I would say my absolute favorite would be Samantha Irby. Her writing is such that, when I read it, I'll feel like we’re friends. I mean, we are friends, but I'll feel like we're more friends in books. Because I read her chapter, I'm like: "Oh my gosh, that's so funny. I want to tell you this story." There are so many chapters in my book that are really just conversations I'm having with other authors, that they have no idea about.

What else? Let’s see, I love Allie Brosh. David Sedaris is amazing. And Christopher Moore, I think he’s wonderful. Lamb is one of the funniest, most underrated books. You know who I really like is Jack Handey. I don't think enough people give him credit.

GR: Oh, totally. He’s figured out how to reduce jokes to, like, the atomic level. There’s just no wasted movement.

JL: Yes! He’s got a book, I think it's called The Stench of Honolulu: A Tropical Adventure. And, I mean, every single sentence is funny. I was like, "How do you do this?" There was not a paragraph that did not have some wonderful, terrible joke.