Bruce Cameron

The Writer’s Lack of Support Group

W. Bruce Cameron

Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2007.

As a professional writer, I will do anything to improve my craft, as long as it doesn’t involve work. One of my favorite methods is to participate in a writer’s support group, wherein a bunch of dedicated and focused authors get together once a week to discuss baseball. We each bring samples of our current writing projects to the meetings, and occasionally someone will interrupt the flow of baseball talk to remind us that there are other, more important things to discuss, at which point we’ll sheepishly agree and start talking football.

We’re all there to strengthen our careers and drink beer, though so far there’s been far more progress in the latter. I, for example, want to sell novels (works of fiction where everything is made up) in addition to my humor books (works of non-fiction where everything is made up).

The chairmanship of the group rotates, and last week, when it was my turn to lead, a writer named Charley offered to read aloud from a chapter of his novel, leading to a rousing debate as to (a) whether two pages count as a chapter since one of them is only a title page, (b) whether it’s fair to ask the group to discuss the same chapter every week and (c) whether the Steelers will make the playoffs.

“Let’s let Charley read,” I suggested, “and then he can buy some appetizers.”

“Not again,” protested Larry, who is working on a book titled “Potatoes, The Tuber of the Tudors,” which he claims “has scandalous new information that will make Henry the VIII look like Mr. Potato Head.”

“He read it again last meeting,” agreed Jake, who is writing a novel about an argument he had with his mother.

“I changed one of the words,” Charley said smugly. “Ready? ‘The sun hung behind the cold clouds like a ball of ice.’”

“You didn’t change anything!” Jake accused. “That’s the same sentence you’ve been reading to us all year!”

“Not true. I added ‘flaming’ to the ball-of-ice thing, and then later took it out,” Charley explained.

“How,” Larry wanted to know, “can a ball of ice be flaming?”

“Exactly. A writer knows what to cut and what to keep,” Charley smoothly agreed.

“A writer also knows when to write more than one sentence in a book!” Jake fumed.

“I have writer’s block — it’s a professional condition,” Charley stated archly. “Besides, your first sentence is even worse.”

“‘My mother was not happy,’” Larry said, quoting the first sentence from Jake’s book. We’d all heard it several times.

“It’s a brilliant sentence! It makes you wonder why she was not happy!” Jake thundered.

“Your mother wasn’t happy because she’s never happy, Jake,” I said.

“But you don’t know that unless you read the entire book!” Jake responded.

“What book? All you’ve got so far is a list of complaints about your mother, and the No. 1 complaint is that she’s never happy,” Charley snorted.

I was uncomfortable with how rancorous the conversation was becoming. “Guys, guys,” I chided, “I think we can all agree that we should order some nachos.”

“In your book the sun is ice! We couldn’t live if it were ice, we’d all be dead!” Jake pointed out.

“Plus, it would be impossible to grow potatoes,” Larry added. As an expert in potatoes, he knows stuff like that.

“You’re not supposed to take it literally, you idiot,” Charley snarled. “The sun is ‘like’ a ball of ice, Jake, like a ball of ice. Are you forgetting six weeks ago, when I added the word ‘like’? We had this argument then. And if you hate the sentence so much, why did you steal it for complaint No. 9 about your mom?”

Larry grabbed Jake’s pages, flipped to No. 9 and read it out aloud: “My mother’s eyes are like ice.”

“Is no one else hungry?” I demanded.

“How could she see if her eyes were ice?” Charley jeered.

“You’re not supposed to take it literally,” Jake retorted.

In the end, we decided that Charley’s sentence was pretty good, and that he was ready to go ahead and write the next one. And who knows, maybe one of these days, he will.

To write Bruce Cameron, visit his Website at http://www.wbrucecameron.com. To find out more about Bruce Cameron and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at http://www.creators.com.

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