It isn’t easy being funny (thank you Louise Rennison)

Louise Rennison has passed away. And, after much wondering what to write, and knowing that I have to write something, this is that. The stopping of the clock.

It isn’t easy being funny.

Writing can be funny and mean, so easily; it can be quick and sharp and it can gain a space for itself at the expense of the other.

But it isn’t easy being funny. It isn’t easy being funny and warm and generous and whole; it’s not easy to write with heart and fun, it’s not easy to write books that tell you that it’s alright to be the vibrant sort of weird, the sort of different that isn’t easy to live with and yet is the source of your very heart beat, it’s not easy writing books that poke fun at life and make you want to live life, everything, nunga nungas, scottish wildcats and all.

Thank you Louise Rennison. It isn’t easy being funny, but your books were. They were so exuberantly, gloriously, wholeheartedly funny, and so, when there is nothing else to say, I say thank you. Thank you for the funny.