I saw Jeff Dunham on the stage Wednesday night. For those of you who just went, “Who?” Well, do you know Achmed the Dead Terrorist? Short video…go ahead, check it out…

Yeah, the guy behind Achmed is Jeff Dunham. The ventriloquist.

Man, my smile muscles will probably hurt for days, I laughed so much. Haven’t had my facial muscles try to cramp like that since my wedding day! (Ohhhhh! I saw that snicker! Shut up! Not that!) (Man, I need to kick some pirate butt!) (Stop it!)

Anyway!

Watching Jeff argue and joke and chatter with himself for two hours, I found myself thinking… Writing is a lot like this…

Firstly, a ventriloquist is probably looking in a mirror one day and suddenly, starts to joke with his razor. Before he knows it, he has a new act with Pepe, the Blade. (Well, I imagine it’s like that!)

A writer? Well, our mirror is a computer monitor/screen and we probably don’t begin with a joke. (Though…) We come up with these people who have a story to tell instead of a joke. (Maybe…or you write with a joke, to each his own!)

Secondly, a ventriloquist is standing on a stage one day, with Pepe on a stool by his side, or on his lap, praying people will ‘get it’ when they start blathering to each other. A writer? Oh, yeah, exactly the same!

Okay, probably not on a lap.

Thirdly, and most importantly, at some point in the act, the ventriloquist must look at his creation and wonder, “Who is in charge here?”

Oh, so been there, done that! Whether it’s the muse I conjured up who is blathering at me or a character suddenly takes off and is running away with the scene… I’m often left looking at something I wrote and wondering who actually came up with that? Was it me? Or was it…the people on the page? Was I channeling an actual event from some other universe? (Okay, that one is probably only me, but the idea is still the same!)

Jeff would occasionally look at the doll next to him and I swear, he blinked as if things had gone totally out of control… (Let me state up front, that in a live show, as compared to a program on Comedy Central, there is a lot of stuff that is totally over the wall and out to sea in the live event! Out of control doesn’t go far enough!)

(And it’s really sweet how he is convinced he is so funny that sometimes he can’t stop laughing at his own jokes. That could be my fourth point, I’m often dazzled by my own prose…)

What about you? Are you the dummy or the figure behind the dummy? Both? At the same time?