The Lisas are card-carrying cynics of the ‘nothing is sure but death and taxes’ camp, but we do believe in ourselves. We believe we will always strive for the amusing in any situation, even if it requires us to indulge in low humor.
Which brings us straight to today’s topic: Potty Humor. It never grows old with boys, and by extension, men. It is usually a big hit with young girls as well, but loses its appeal as women mature. Men don’t seem to grow out of it. One theory is women get stuck changing diapers, potty training children and scrubbing toilets (not to mention Aunt Flo), which can put a damper on the the enjoyment of even the most hilarious bathroom humor.
As writers of women’s fiction, you would think we’d keep the potty humor to a minimum, right? We try, but wonder if we’ve succeeded. Obviously we hang around too many guys. Then again, who’s to say men don’t read women’s fiction? TOL (The Other Lisa) claims to have secret knowledge of a surprising percentage of the male library population who are romance fans. Maybe we’re on to something?
If not, we can address our amazingly high number of underwear jokes to a truly appreciative audience. We’re re-revisiting our first collaboration, a humorous middle-grade story. In this tale, the Lisas have not shied away from the juvenile tastes we share with young readers. Give the people what they want, even the little people; especially the little people.
Oh, and just for clarification, we do draw lines. We draw plenty of lines. They’re just squiggly and ill-defined and always end up looking like ‘U’ which makes us think of underwear. And that takes us right back to square one.
Lisa & Lisa Write a Book 
Guilty as charged. I’ve been counting the number of times I’ve used the word poop in my last few blogs, and the total is rather staggering. I’m never going to look at a “U” the same way. Thanks!
You’re welcome! I think you are enormously brave to count–I’m afraid to look.
This is the main reason I write for middle grade (and my current projects are geared towards boys)…because of the potty humor! At home, I am also a huge proponent of the joke, “What’s under there?!” To which the reply is of course, “Under where?” (Get it, underwear? giggle giggle).
Okay, going to go mature now~
Hee, hee. Oh, why bother with maturity? It’s so much more fun when one is willing to use ‘chicken butt’ as an all-purpose punchline.
Hello Lisa’s! Loved the post! I am thinking of dabbling in the arena of writing for middle-grade kids (I spend my days working with them, so I should have lots of story-fodder) and was pleasantly surprised by what you had to say. Potty humour, hmmm , and I was going to try and enlighten the little beggars! Change of plan is in the works! Thanks.
We can’t tell you how thrilled we are that you’re considering emulation, however we feel obligated to point out we are still in the exciting, untested waters of pre-publication. You’ve been warned – now go forth and fart away!
Saw this and thought of you:
http://www.omnivoracious.com/2010/07/sweetening-the-deal-for-reluctant-readers.html 🙂
Aw, you’re so sweet. We saw cotton candy and thought of you. Then we ate it, of course.
“now go forth and fart away”!!!!
You are doomed!
Death of a stinky persuasion – we had it coming.
I will never forget checking the book, “Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets” out of the library for my eldest son. I swear that he found God in that book. It was inevitable.
Not a day goes by this Lisa doesn’t kick herself for not coming up with the copywrite for Captain Underpants. How for the love of all things skidmarked could we possibly have missed that golden opportunity?
GETTING A WEE BIT LAZY THERE?
No, we’re getting a whole lot lazy here. Actually, fewer blog posts translates to more book writing/editing/agent querying, which we hope translates to publishing and a wee bit of rolling in the dough. 😉