J: How do your ideas for material come to you? How frequently or strenuously do you write material?
WC: I read a book, I think it was Jerry Seinfeld -- I’m already a type A workaholic anyway -- I remember reading a book about Jerry Seinfeld, that may or may not have been accurate, but from what I hear it’s completely accurate, that said he used to set his alarm in the morning and get up and write … for four hours and then go back to bed. Seinfeld was asked what he tells young people when they ask how to do comedy, what are the tricks and what is his advice. His only advice was ‘do the work.’ That’s all there is. There aren’t shortcuts or ways to move faster. It’s just do the work until you’re really good.

So I work every day kind of hard. There’s no comedians that we love and admire, that are successful, who are not [working]. The most successful ones are the most hardworking.

J: Do you follow that advice -- setting the alarm and spending three or four hours writing?
WC: I wake up early anyway, and in L.A. everything closes at 2 [a.m.], so it’s not like I’m staying out -- in New York, you’re out till 5 a.m. Here, I usually get up pretty early in the morning. I’ll listen to my set from the night before. I usually try to tape record if I can. I’ll listen to my sets, see what’s working and expand bits that are doing really well, and try to fix bits that aren’t quite working. At the Comedy Store, Sunday through Wednesday are nights I’ll work on new stuff and then try to do ‘A’ stuff on the weekends. On the road … A lot of comics are like that, because there’s so much time in the hotel room -- so I’ll work on stuff then. I’m always writing down premises, ideas and stuff that I usually don’t get to.

J: When you’re at home, does other life stuff take up that time?
WC: Yes. I audition during the day and pitch TV shows and other things that get in the way. I write for TV shows also, so sometimes it’s hard to get to my own stand-up. So it’s great being on the road. Whenever I get a gig that’s in the middle of Ohio, I’m so excited because I’m just going to be in a hotel room for five days and get to catch up on all the stand-up I want to work on.

J: Have you gotten any other good pieces of advice from veteran comedians you’ve met?
WC: ‘Do the work’ is probably my favorite. It’s so simple but also so empowering. People sit around and worry ‘Am I going to do this? What do I need to do to make it? Why aren’t I getting late-night spots?’ They sit around at the clubs for seven hours talking shit about other comedians. Just go write some jokes. [Seinfeld] worked the hardest out of his generation. It’s not an accident that he’s the biggest. It’s not a fluke.

Laugh at your own jokes. It’s not like laughing hysterically at your own jokes while you’re onstage but there are a lot of times when we sit down to write and think, ‘Do people think this is funny? People won’t think this is funny.’ If you think it’s funny, it will work. I used to agonize about wanting comics to think I’m funny, old people to think I’m funny, younger people -- they’re on Facebook or MySpace. … If something makes me laugh, it will play well on you and it will be fine. A comedian named Argus Hamilton told me that. He’s … a big Comedy Store guy from the 1970s. He saw me on stage doing a bunch of jokes, and said, ‘You didn’t think those are funny.’ … Argus has been on the Tonight Show more than any other comic to this day. … He was incredibly successful. He just saw me on stage and told me, ‘Those are funny but you don’t think those are funny.’ [laughs]. He always has really incredible advice.

Someone told me to watch Bill Burr. Out here, sometimes it’s hard to see all the New York comics. Someone telling me to check out Bill Burr changed my life.

J: I can tell you I’ve raved about him on [JesterJournal.com].
WC: He’s universally in any comic’s top three, easily. … It’s 20 years of really hard work. He’s whip-smart, not afraid to be smart. It’s just bulletproof. Even when I see him working on stuff at the Comedy Store, and it’s not developed, it’s still better than most people’s developed stuff. It’s just really great.  

J: You seem to prefer shorter things with a quick payoff, to longer more observational stories. Why is that?
WC: I don’t think there are rules, like having to be dirty to be funny. Brian Regan makes me cry, tears going down my face funny, and he is completely clean. There’s a comedian in L.A. who will be massive, Sebastian Maniscalco, who had a half-hour and has been on Craig Ferguson’s show a lot, and has just taped an hour. He’s just so funny. Hysterically funny – does not say anything dirty, does not ever talk about sex – just when you think dirty is funny, clean is sometimes funnier.  

Just when I think short, quick payoffs are funny, then I’ll watch Dana Gould or Paul Tompkins who will go off … or even Adam Carolla on the radio, will go off on these long stories that take four minutes, and then the punch is worth it. Or Jim Jeffries, who is on “Down and Dirty.” Everything’s different on everyone. I do not tell long stories. I never have. I don’t know why. My jokes are really short and have really quick payoffs because that’s what I think I enjoy. There are some really great comedians … and then there are comedians who do jokey stories, like Greg Giraldo, who tells a coherent story but it’s all these little perfect jokes.  

Dana Gould – I almost had to quit comedy when I saw him. He did this bit … he’s one of my favorites … about how he ran into his ex-girlfriend and he’s just talking, that she was with her new husband and they were good. ‘You know, I’m OK with it. They’re probably home right now watching TV. She always loves TV.’ That goes on for at least four minutes, describing them at home, their home life. ‘They’re probably sitting on the couch. They’re watching Lost. She’s eating some ice cream.’ Then he slowly starts getting into, ‘She’s probably wearing little cutoff jean shorts, probably barefoot.’ After five minutes of that, he screams, ‘Stop fucking my girlfriend!’ It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. He did t his whole … thing on stage with silence. I like to get a laugh every 20 seconds.  

J: That requires a lot of patience.
WC: John Mulaney is another really good example. He tells these long, incredibly well crafted stories. They are just awesome. Al Madrigal does that too. I don’t think that one [style] is necessarily better than the other. Good is good.  

J: How is Jim Norton’s show taped? Is it like a club performance or a little different than that?
WC: It’s a gorgeous theater in New Jersey. It’s about 800 seats. It was pretty massive and really a gorgeous theater. He really did it right. There was rusty steel on the stage. He had an awesome DJ and picked all his favorite dirty comedians. He did it his way. So many times I feel like comedians finally get their own show and they don’t even do it their way. It doesn’t represent them. But this was his essence.  

We taped four shows, two a day, in New Jersey. And two sets of four comics each day.  

J: Is your material that will be on there a little different, because in clips I’ve seen, it doesn’t seem like you’re like the rest of the comedians who are on there.
WC: Interesting that you say that. Of course, any clips that are on [other TV shows] will have to be kind of clean. I definitely think that I probably have the cleanest set of all those guys. It’s not because I’m a woman, because I have such dirty stuff. But funny is funny and I don’t want to compete to try to be the dirtiest. As a woman, I didn’t want it to seem like, ‘All the dirty guys are doing dirty stuff, and I’m gonna come out and try to do dirty stuff too!’ I’m still pretty dirty but I opted for … I will do what I think is funny, and a lot of it is very, very edgy. My first couple jokes weren’t even dirty because I had to get my own voice in there. If I came out and just did a rape joke off the bat, their tolerance for dirty is going to be so high at that point, because they’ve seen Norton, they’ve seen Patrice O’Neal, Artie Lange – so why? I did some cleaner stuff and then got into the dirty stuff. Sometimes as a woman you have to earn it. This is a very real thing. Sarah Silverman is a dirty female comic, and sometimes if I start too dirty people will say I’m trying to be like Sarah Silverman, so I try to just do my thing instead.   I definitely have been trying to be a little cleaner. I don’t say ‘fuck’ or dirty words. I just do a lot of jokes that are …  

J: It’s more the content than the language.
WC: It’s just a lot of jokes are about sex. I had a lot of rape jokes and didn’t do them [on Norton’s show]. They always do really well but I just wanted to do my favorite jokes.  

J: How long is your spot or all the spots on Norton’s show?
WC: It’s four shows, three comics get about 5 minutes, even though we taped about 8. Then the headliner gets 10. In the episode I’m in. … Actually there were four in each episode, but some people got cut out. [Now it’s three]. We each got … the people before the headliner. My set is cut to about 5 minutes. It’s such a cool show. I can’t believe no one has done this yet, but it makes sense, because Jim Norton is the only person who could do it.

J: What other things do you have coming out, including TV appearances?
WC: I co-host The Tony Rock Project which starts airing on October 8 on MyNetworkTV. It’s sketches and live studio audience stuff. It’s me and Tony Rock and John Heffron. That comes out soon [October 8]. I co-host it with Tony and I’m in all the sketches. That will be pretty fun. Then I’ll be on the road quite a bit.