“I know this is kind of a bomb” is what I imagine Bucky, my main character, would say to Julie, his love interest, in the critical scene of my novel. I explained to the security woman that this is what happens when a 42-year-old man who is to literature what a karaoke singer is to opera tries to put words in the mouth of a fictional 19-year-old.
I opened my laptop and showed her shining example after shining example of similarly awful dialogue. She understood that that word, b-o-m-b, was no reference to ordnance or terrorist weapons of any kind.
But my explanation wasn’t good enough for the three Dallas police officers who meanwhile had surrounded me — summoned, I supposed, for backup in case the dangerous character tried to write something even worse.
The whole editorial, gone from the Houston Chronicle, is available here.
(Houston Chronicle: “I write badly, therefore I am a would-be terrorist,” by Charles C. Green [July 2, 2004])