A teacher, a journalist, a former student, and a professor walk into a camper. No, that’s not the set-up to a rather strange joke, just how I spent my Friday night. I was there at the behest of the teacher, who’d gathered us into his driveway camper for what he’d dubbed a “one-hour writers retreat.” Our mission: to share a draft aloud of a work in progress with the hope of lifting each other up.

I was, perhaps, a little leery while walking through that camper door. Not only because it felt like a great premise for a horror movie (four writers on the edge of a forest on a dark and sort-of stormy night …), but because we hadn’t seen each other in months. I suspected our “retreat hour” would become a “social hour.” Which, while hardly the worst thing, would do little to fulfill our mission.

“Well,” said our teacher-host, calling us to order, “whose up first?”

What happened next – amid the snacks, beer, and soda – was something just shy of revelatory. As the four of us crammed around the table, a strange seriousness settled over the camper as we worked one another’s words to their finer forms. Together, we tweaked themes, dispensed with the drivel, and made short work of misfiring metaphors. We’d entered what Star Trek fans call a “mind meld” – a near-telepathic understanding of one another. All those hours of friendship had led us to this: a wormhole in the writerly universe that transported us from one draft to the next at warp speed. 

By hour’s end, we left the camper with our hearts thrumming and our hands filled with feedback.      

“Wow,” I said as we returned to the world beyond the camper. “I didn’t know how much I needed that.”

”

It took friends in a camper on a Friday night to remind me why writing is always worth the work.

BJ Hollars

author

Not just the snacks, drinks, and socialization, but the opportunity to welcome others inside my head. 

In recent months, much of my writing has centered on production – clawing my way from one deadline to the next. Yet amid all that clawing, I’d failed to reflect, refine, or pause long enough to think deeply about the words I’d plunked to the page.    

This “act now, look later” approach rarely serves me well. Indeed, it hadn’t days prior, when, on a lark, I’d killed some time at the YMCA filming myself shooting baskets in the gym. I flung one from the three-point line, then the top of the key, inching closer to the basket. No matter where I positioned myself, the result was always the same: the unnerving thunk of the ball dinking the edge of the rim. A few misses later, I adjusted my form – turning away from the basket altogether and hurling the ball over my head toward the hoop. Oddly, my trick shots were nearly as good as my more serious attempts, though ten shots deep, I’d sunk nothing. I was so impressed by the consistency of my failure that I posted the video to social media, along with the caption, “Practice makes nothing.” The peanut gallery was quick to chime in with advice: “Maybe don’t wear flip-flops,” “Are your eyes closed?” and finally, the best feedback of all, “I’m not sure what you’re doing is really practice.”

The last commenter was right: hurling a ball at a basket with zero success wouldn’t lead me to more success. 

Maybe there was some inadvertent wisdom in my quippy caption after all: perhaps practice, without guidance, really is nothing.   

All of which brings me back to that camper, that night, where I was able to put my newfound revelation to broader use. My writing wouldn’t improve with more “practice” in the privacy of my home. What it needed was a helpful nudging from three guys in a camper, all of whom were as committed to the work as I was. Hard as it was to admit, what I might have called my writing “routine” might have actually been a rut. Less a practice, than a procedure. Not a search for the right words, but enough words to reach the count.

It took friends in a camper on a Friday night to remind me why writing is always worth the work. Not for the product, but for the process.

One made all the sweeter with a little support along the way.   

“We should do this again sometime,” called my former student as he faded into the night.

We should. We must. 

Even if practice doesn’t make perfect, practice – plus guidance – just might.