You Want Me To Do What? Stand-Up Comedy and Other Pushed Boundaries

I love expanding my horizons. It helps me grow as a person. When I push past my comfort zone, I find a new place of normal, a new horizon, a new dimension to myself previously unexplored. Life has winked many a time I have pushed past those previous boundaries and found new ones.
Of course, sometimes I blow past my comfort zone then have to live with the deer-in-the-headlights feeling. It is often followed by me wondering how I got myself in that situation. Sarah, dude, what were you thinking?! It has always turned out awesome (probably why I keep doing it), but some of the hang time can fluster.

Personal growth . . . Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Enter When Words Collide (WWC). It is an all-genre conference held in Calgary for readers, writers and publishing types. I'm active in WWC. I love this conference. I love this crowd. I have a blast the second weekend in August playing with other writers and readers types. (It starts next week!!)

I have a solid line-up this year, including my third year on the Humor in Fiction panel. Our dear moderator is rocking it organizing us this year and innocently asked if I'd prepare a brief stand-up comedy piece.

After I picked myself up off the floor from laughing so hard, I looked at the computer screen and  realized he wasn't kidding. Crap. Stand-up comedy? Me? Deep breath . . . Good 'ol Sarah pep talk . . . Then sanity returned.

That's me, next to pilot.
This boundary pushing was pretty fun.
Well, until the weather got crappy.
But we made it. Another round
to personal growth.

And I realized some boundaries I wasn't ready to bump out. Then I realized there was personal growth in that, too.

A week from Friday, at When Words Collide, I will be a panelist for the 2014 version of Humor in Fiction, but I will not be doing stand-up comedy like a couple of my fellow panelists. (Whew!) I will be sharing how this past year especially, including humor in my writing has added depth and relate-ability to my characters, it has upped the human and emotional element, it has been an avenue for my author "voice" and it has been straight-up delightful to write funny characters.

Write on.