About six months ago, I got an e-mail. Here's what it said:

Hi Dave, it's Steve Martin.

I'm hosting the Oscars this year and am trying to put together a team of geniuses to help me write it. Here's my question: do you know any? HA! I'm wondering if the idea appeals to you at all. You, me, Rita Rudner and a few others. Best Oscar monologue ever. California. Tickets to the show. Fame.

I know you won't do it, so go (bad word) yourself.

Steve

Needless to say, I was excited. I've been a big Steve Martin fan since he had an arrow through his head. To have him ask me to work with him was an honor.

On the other hand, I worried that I'd embarrass myself. I've never tried to write jokes for somebody else, and I knew the other writers on Martin's team would be show-biz pros. So I showed the e-mail to my wife, and told her about my concerns. She told me to think about it carefully, and make whatever decision I truly thought I would be comfortable with, as long as that decision was yes, because if I turned down a chance for us to go to the Academy Awards, she would kill me with a machete.

That was all the encouragement I needed. I e-mailed Martin that I'd do it. My exact words were: ``The Oscars? (Bad word) YES.''

Even though the first meeting of the writers was two months away, I immediately started trying to think up Academy Awards jokes that would be good enough for Martin to deliver to an audience of extremely famous movie stars, plus something like one billion TV viewers. It was intimidating, but within a few weeks, I had: no jokes. I didn't even have any funny-sounding words that might eventually be assembled into jokes. I had zero.

My wife, meanwhile, was making substantial progress. Within a few days, she had a new dress and a matching purse, and was actively pursuing earrings. She also had ordered a pair of shoes that cost roughly the same as a year in medical school. There was to be no turning back.

In November, I went to California for the first meeting of the writers, in a Beverly Hills hotel. We sat at a round table in a conference room. Martin was to my immediate left, taking notes on his laptop computer as the other writers tossed out idea after idea. This group process was unfamiliar and intimidating to me; I've always written alone. I tried to have an idea, but my brain had frozen into a cold, hard mass of lifeless tissue. For about an hour, the only coherent thought it could form was: I'm sitting right next to Steve Martin!

SHARING LAUGHS

But gradually my brain began to thaw, as I realized a surprising thing: These people were all remarkably generous. I'd assumed that they'd be competitive -- lobbying for their own jokes, maybe even criticizing other people's. But it wasn't like that at all. In fact, it was the opposite: If somebody came up with something good, the laughter around the table was instant and genuine; if somebody came up with a joke that needed help, everyone tried to think of ways to improve it.

Many jokes mutated through a number of forms, with various people coming up with various elements, until eventually there was no way to tell whose joke it was. This is the way it works in Hollywood; almost everything is collaborative. All of these people had spent many hours sitting in writer-filled rooms just like this, dreaming up stuff.

As I became comfortable with the process, I also got to know, and become friends with, the other writers, my collaborators. In alphabetical order, they were:

• Beth Armogida, an awards-show veteran who writes jokes for Jay Leno and for two seasons wrote for Drew Carey on Whose Line Is It Anyway?

• Dave Boone, the head writer for Hollywood Squares and a collaborator on four previous Academy Award shows, creating material for Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg.

• Andy Breckman, who has worked for Dave Letterman and Saturday Night Live; wrote a bunch of movies (including Rat Race and Sgt. Bilko); created the TV show Monk; and is insane (I mean this in a good way).