Tonight’s set was okay. For a bunch of mostly up-and-coming (or completely green) comedians, the crowd was pretty supportive.

I bungled the wording on one of my early jokes and just ended up doing a speed run through the rest of my act. The emcee told me that my stuff was funny, but just as people were starting to laugh, I moved on to the next bit, cutting off their laughter. He said, if I just take the time to pause for a couple of seconds after the jokes, I’ll get more laughs.

I’ve had this problem from time to time. My brain moves really quickly. So, in a fit of nerves, if audiences don’t instantly get something, I instantly move on to the next thing. My brain sometimes even moves faster than my mouth, which is why I occasionally have a stutter. There are also times that I forget basic words and all of their synonyms; so, I end up trying to describe the word with body language. My brain knows the full meaning of the word but completely blanks out on any words to describe it. (Example: a couple of days ago, I couldn’t remember the word “involved” and ended up making strange hand gestures to unsuccessfully get the same point across.)

I want to have good energy on stage. I don’t want to be a boring comic. So, to fix my problem, I think I need to give myself something to do physically to give myself pause to let the laughter happen. It could be something as simple as continuing an expression on my face to keep the feeling of the joke going while the audience (or my mouth) catches up.

This is all stuff that I’ve known but haven’t truly learned or put into practice. Hooray for growing as a person!