A couple of months ago I did a post about supermodels. The gist of this was that it was utterly ridiculous for a group of people to be given the status of "super" merely for walking up and down wearing expensive clothes on their bodies and vacant looks on their faces.
This got me thinking a little bit more about who else we give the prefix super to. Obviously, the major recipients of this title are heroes. And superheroes really are great aren't they. For someone who writes humor, the idea of characters with a particular "power" that makes them extraordinary is fantastic writing fodder. I've had several goes at it myself. One of the favourites of all the comedy sketches I've written is about Procrasto-man, a superhero who never quite gets around to saving the day. I also had a go at creating a clutch of dysfunctional superheroes for a writing assignment in a short story class - which you can read on this very blog. And who can forget the wonderful Bicycle Repair Man sketch by Monty Python - an all time classic.
Silliness aside, what other sorts of people could we think of as super? In my supermodels post, I talked about superteachers and superdoctors. All very good and worthy. But what about us writers? We do extraordinary things all the time. We create whole worlds that never existed before. We control the fates of people in those worlds utterly. And, with the stroke of a pen or the click of a computer keyboard, we're always able to save the day.
But if we're going to call any sort of writers super, I reckon the most deserving candidates are all of the indie writers out there. We're the ones who have to be faster than a speeding publishing industry. We have to leap the tall barriers of the cultural gatekeepers in a single bound. We need x-ray vision to see through all those typos and grammatical errors in our manuscripts. And we're constantly battling against mega-villains, like The Agent, The New York Publisher, and the Mainstream Media Reviewer.
So to all you indie writers out there - grab a cape, stash on your utility belts, and put your underwear on top of your pants. And lets keep on fighting for truth, justice, and the indie way.
And, just to finish off, and because I want to, here for your enjoyment is that classic Monty Python sketch.
This got me thinking a little bit more about who else we give the prefix super to. Obviously, the major recipients of this title are heroes. And superheroes really are great aren't they. For someone who writes humor, the idea of characters with a particular "power" that makes them extraordinary is fantastic writing fodder. I've had several goes at it myself. One of the favourites of all the comedy sketches I've written is about Procrasto-man, a superhero who never quite gets around to saving the day. I also had a go at creating a clutch of dysfunctional superheroes for a writing assignment in a short story class - which you can read on this very blog. And who can forget the wonderful Bicycle Repair Man sketch by Monty Python - an all time classic.
Silliness aside, what other sorts of people could we think of as super? In my supermodels post, I talked about superteachers and superdoctors. All very good and worthy. But what about us writers? We do extraordinary things all the time. We create whole worlds that never existed before. We control the fates of people in those worlds utterly. And, with the stroke of a pen or the click of a computer keyboard, we're always able to save the day.
But if we're going to call any sort of writers super, I reckon the most deserving candidates are all of the indie writers out there. We're the ones who have to be faster than a speeding publishing industry. We have to leap the tall barriers of the cultural gatekeepers in a single bound. We need x-ray vision to see through all those typos and grammatical errors in our manuscripts. And we're constantly battling against mega-villains, like The Agent, The New York Publisher, and the Mainstream Media Reviewer.
So to all you indie writers out there - grab a cape, stash on your utility belts, and put your underwear on top of your pants. And lets keep on fighting for truth, justice, and the indie way.
And, just to finish off, and because I want to, here for your enjoyment is that classic Monty Python sketch.
