The creative process in action.

Being a writer is a pretty easy job, right up until the point when you have to actually start writing.

There are other elements of the process of course; putting off writing, pretending that you're writing, making up excuses for why you didn't write, Guitar Hero breaks from not writing, calls from your parents wondering why they bothered to fund your college education, etc. It's a serious grind.

But at some point or another you really do have to bite the bullet and sit down to put words on paper, that is if you don't resort to suicide first. With less than two weeks before our first taping the time has come for us all to buckle down and decide on a final script for the show.

It all happens tomorrow in the writer's room; five men go in, one comes out. To get coffee. Then goes back in again to see how everyone else is doing.

Generally, there are a few things one wants to bring along when undertaking on such a grueling process, some basic necessities that need to be covered so that the creative juices can flow:

1. A blunt object.



Because sometimes it's just the only way to demonstrate how right you are.

2. Wine.



Not because we're drunks mind you, just to appease the cyclops who lives upstairs. Yes, a cyclops rents the apartment over our work space. We'll be honest, it's not an ideal creative environment, but this is the city and you take what you can get.

3. Tranquilizer darts.



Because someone always thinks it's funny to bring a tiger. Yeah, I know, that doesn't even make sense, but I'm telling you, it happens every time!

4. A test audience.



You know, someone with an objective point of view who we can bounce material off of. Provides valuable perspective.

5. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Comedy Writing.



Which quite frankly involves way more reading than we would have expected from a book specifically marketed to idiots.

6. The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Complete Idiot's Guide to Comedy Writing.



For those who found the first book too cerebral.

For the record, and in all seriousness, I didn't know that #5 actually existed. Until I Googled it, I assumed that it was something I had just made up.