No posts yesterday, and probably none involving a lot of writing besides this today, because my literary efforts have been confined to, and concentrated on, our yearly Christmas letter.
Every year I pen (what I hope is) a funny Christmas letter. The first year, if memory serves, it was a Doctor Seuss parody. A year or two ago it was in the form of a report from an investigator from Homeland Security. Last year it was a quasi legal brief to Santa, arguing against the delivery of coal. The problem is obvious. Each year there is one less original idea, making it all the harder to come up with a hook on which to hang the letter. Worse, each year I feel compelled to at least try to top last year’s effort. Nor is that the only problem with the Christmas letter genre. Besides being funny, with some sort of originality, it must impart the necessary amount of information about our family. In other words, no matter what the hook, it must be true to the formula. Formulaic originality is not easy. Finally, it cannot be too bizarre, as it goes to some people we don’t know that well, or see that often, and I really don’t want people having serious doubts about my sanity. Better to keep such doubts within the core family group, I always say.
I’ve been working on it for a couple of weeks, but I knew this weekend was crunch time. For good or ill, it’s done for another year, and in relatively good time.
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