Now that the competitions are over I want to start building at least another 5 to 10 minutes onto my set. I know I have a good ten minutes of material that I’ve been working on for a while now and that I did all last week while hosting. I’ve kind of avoided doing completely new material except for at a few open mics lately. So it’s time to work on some new stuff.

Like I said in yesterday’s post, I’ve been using Evernote to work on my joke writing. It’s a simple way to be able to write anywhere I am, even on my phone, and my notes are synced to all of my devices.  I also like the “electronic notebook” style of it. I can organize my notes into books and build onto them however I like.

I also still like writing in a physical joke journal, a moleskin notebook that I carry with me mostly to work. I started writing in it as soon as I started doing comedy again last year. I love jotting down ideas in it and then coming back and discovering them later. Lots of comics are always busy writing in their journals at open mics. Inspiration doesn’t usually strike me in those places, but if it does I use the Evernote app on my phone.

Yesterday I found an idea I had written in my joke journal some time last year about pregnancies. A lot of my friends are pregnant right now so it makes it even funnier to me, but I’ve never done the joke on stage before because it’s just one single joke and I had nothing to add to it.

I have a pretty good joke in my act right now about adoption and having kids, and so it hit me. I could add the pregnancy joke right after this and make it work! I tried it last night during two shows that I hosted for Tom Clark at Hey Guys and I thought it did okay. The joke felt right to me and felt like it worked there so I’ll probably keep it.  The crowds were small for both shows but it got some laughs and I got some good practice telling it.

Building a set for the stage is kind of like building a wall for lack of a better analogy. You start with a single layer and just keep adding layers to it.