While he is well known in the Monadnock region for his beloved Yankee character “Fred Marple,” star of the “Frost Heaves” shows, Ken Sheldon of Peterborough says his talk at Monadnock Writers Group on Saturday will be a first.
“I’ve performed all over, I’ve done tons of bookstore readings, but I haven’t ever talked to writers about writing, and especially, about writing humor,” Sheldon said. “I’ve learned a few things over the years. When you think of the masks of tragedy and comedy, that’s what life is. You need both. I’ll talk about how to add that humorous bent to writing. Even for people who are writing in a more literary style, humor always has a place.”
Sheldon is the featured speaker for the March general meeting of the Monadnock Writers Group, which starts at 9:45 a.m. in the 1833 Room of the Peterborough Town Library. The talk is entitled “That’s Funny: The Craft of Writing Humor.”
“My first-ever published piece was for “Cat Fancy” magazine, and I thought, I’ve hit the big time now,” he said.
Sheldon’s latest book is “Udder Nonsense: More Tales from Frost Heaves,” authored by his alter ego, “Fred Marple” of fictional Frost Heaves, New Hampshire.
Sheldon says he has written “all kinds of things over the years,” including a series of children’s books and songs, a true crime book about an unsolved murder in 1940’s Jaffrey, and his most well-known venture, the “Frost Heaves” shows, which ran for eight years around New England.
“I wrote the whole thing myself, with help from the cast members,” he said.
Sheldon says one of his role models for writing humor is bestselling author Richard Russo, who is known for his books about small-town life, including “Nobody’s Fool.”
“Richard Russo has a great book of essays, ‘The Destiny Thief,’ and he talks about writing humor. What he says is humor is everywhere in life — you just have to be able to see it,” Sheldon said.
Sheldon said one key to humor is “commonalities everyone shares.”
“In ‘Frost Heaves,’ we would talk about things like, where do lost socks go? How do you end up with only one sock? We’re all familiar with little things like that, and we don’t really think about them, but then when we hold them up to the light, they’re funny,” he said. “Humor comes from common experience.”
Sheldon is the rare artist who has been able to make a living not only writing, but composing music and performing. After “Frost Heaves” became popular in 2008, Sheldon was contacted by Dublin-based “Yankee” magazine about writing a humor piece.
“It was so well-received that I started doing a regular column, and then I started to write for New Hampshire Magazine, doing short essays and stories,” he said.
Sheldon is also an accomplished composer and has even managed to insert his trademark humor into his musical career.
“Years ago, I sent a recording of a song I wrote, ‘Ice Cream Soup,’ to Scholastic, and they rejected it,” Sheldon said. “But then they asked me if I would do something else for them.”
Sheldon ended up doing nine projects for Scholastic in the “Sing Along and Learn” series, which was distributed to hundreds of thousands of children around the world.
“It really tickles me that so many kids grew up hearing my songs. They gave me a lot of freedom with that series, and there’s a lot of humor in the songs,” Sheldon said. “I wrote one song about the Boston Tea Party, and my friends always sing it to me. The songs were another outlet for my humor.”
Sheldon worked with several generations of young singers on the “Sing Along and Learn” series, which included 26 separate songs about the letters of the alphabet.
“The first kids I worked with have kids of their own now,” he said. “It’s fun to listen to the songs and still recognize the kids’ voices from when they were young. I kept having to find new singers, because they all grew up.”
Sheldon says he also gets inspiration from the World War II-era comedians of his parents’ generation.
“Great humor comes out of tough times. I grew up listening to Jack Benny, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, all of the greats from that era,” he said. “I started ‘Frost Heaves’ after the 2008 recession, thinking people needed humor. And people need humor again right now. It never goes out of style.”