FROM THE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER ISSUE OF WRITER’S DIGEST MAGAZINE

MAKE NO MISTAKE

The grand-prize winner of the 93rd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition, Matt Strempel, shares his approach to incorporating humor into his writing and why having a trusted writing mentor matters.

BY AMY JONES

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For Matt Strempel, creativity has always been part of his life, but the bug for writing didn't really take hold until he started working with his grandmother.

She was “becoming frail in her wrists. And I said to her, ‘You can either teach yourself how to type ... Or I can type up your handwritten notes, and anything I can’t read, you just tell me‘. We skipped the handwritten notes, and she just went straight to dictating. I realized that at first, I was typing out her stories, and then I was sort of trying to help. I saw an opportunity to make something better, or just to spitball ideas with her. And I was like, this is so fun!" Strempel never looked back.

Now, he uses his weekly commutes to and from his home in rural New South Wales to his job in Sydney for his writing. "I deliberately take the train even though it's a lot quicker to drive;' Strempel says, "because it's productive time I get. If I don't have a pressing deadline, that's my writing time:' Fortunately, his day job is also grounded in creativity. With a background in graphic design and experience writing copy at an ad agency, Strempel now runs a creative agency where he gets to "scratch the writing itch by doing a lot of copywriting, headline writing, and short- and mid-form copy. He used all this knowledge to write, design, and selfpublish his first novel which he called a "fairly dark ... historical drama.”

Yet Strempel won grand prize in the 93rd Annual WD Writing Competition for his short story entry in the humor category. In “Botched” a husband and wife celebrate their wedding anniversary each year by one-upping each other with the most creative gifts associated with the traditional anniversary themes (e.g., first anniversary: paper, second anniversary: cotton, 25th anniversary: silver, etc.). As their 38th anniversary approaches, Richard, the husband and narrator, struggles to find the right gift, until he lands on something that would solve both of their aging body-image issues: his and hers cosmetic surgery in which some of his extra weight could be used to reverse the effects of gravity for her. As the title suggests, those surgeries go comically awry.

Learning that Strempel‘s first novel was so drastically different from this story begged the question: How did you get from dark historical writing to something so funny? Strempel explained: “It was a pretty serious book, and I found it really hard going, a bit of a slog. When I sent it to one of my mates—probably my most trusted writing mate and mentor—he said, ‘Look, it's good, but your writing really sings when you tell jokes: And it was sort of the encouragement that I needed just to lean into the lighter side of fiction.”

But for Strempel, writing more humorously doesn't mean there's a lack of substance in the content or less attention paid to craft. He looks to some of his favorite writers, such as David Sedaris and George Saunders, for inspiration, saying, “They make you giggle, but their writing is spectacular.” Likewise, Strempel's goal for his writing isn't to write slapstick comedy, but rather, "There might be a slapstick moment somewhere, but typically it needs to be balanced with that pathos ... I think that funny writing works best when it's come off the back of a little moment of poignancy."

In the case of “Botched” that moment of poignancy (which we won't spoil here) is tied to Strempel's inspiration for the story: “I had this idea of what greater gift could a man give to his wife [laughs] when she was feeling a bit self-conscious about the shape of her body, and he had the solution attached to him. He [Richard] was like, I’ve got it. And in this idiot's masculine lizard brain way, he went, This is such a romantic idea. I can't believe I haven't thought of this. I can't believe more men haven't thought of doing this.” To read the full story, for which Strempel won the $5,000 grand prize and more, visit WritersDigest.com.