Erma Bombeck: Subversive Feminist

Nope, I’m not kidding.

Granted, hers isn’t the first name to jump to mind when you think of great feminist writers of the 60’s and 70’s. But for every one woman who plowed through The Feminine Mystique, hundreds LOL’d their way through her At Wit’s End columns. 

In case you don't know her, Erma Bombeck was a humor writer. She spent several years as a stay-at-home mother before beginning a small weekly humor column about housewifery. Her editor had his doubts about whether such a column would find an audience, but within a short time it was syndicated to over 900 newspapers. Erma became so successful, her husband quit his job to manage her career. In total, she wrote 15 books, most of which became bestsellers. If her humor feels a bit tired today, it’s only because subsequent humorists, including today’s crop of mommy bloggers, still work with updates of tropes Erma popularized.

But she wrote about being a housewife and mom. What's feminist about that?

1. Well, she said this: “Sharing responsibility is what the entire movement to free women is all about. If woman are ever to be appreciated, a husband should drive a car pool . . . just once.”

2.  She told the truth about cleaning. Advertisements and zen philosophy be damned, housework isn’t fulfilling work. It’s monotonous and boring and it's time away from more meaningful pursuits. “Housework,” Bombeck said, “is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop offs at tedium and counter productivity.”

She made it okay for women jump off that treadmill. Unfortunately, there’s been a pushback on this. With entire TV channels devoted to home improvement, it’s no longer enough to just keep your house within acceptable sanitation standards; it should be show home worthy.

3. She wrote honestly and humorously about aging as a female. The big kerfuffle about Renee Zellweger reveals how brutally women are still judged just for daring to have birthdays past 35.

4. And she wrote about just how hard it was (and is) for women to balance work and home life:

“Then one day in a leading magazine, I saw a story called, 'Today’s Woman on the Go.'”

At the top of the article was a picture of a well-stacked blonde at a construction site with a group of men around her while she read blueprints to them. I noted her shoes were coordinated with her Gucci yellow hard hat.

The second picture showed her in a pair of flowing pajamas standing over the stove stirring her filet-mignon helper (recipe on page 36) while her husband tossed the salad and her children lovingly set the table.

It made me want to spit up….

You have only to work once in your life to know that “Today’s Woman on the Go” is pure fiction. Maybe they got the captions under the pictures switched. Maybe she wore the long flowing pajamas at work and the hard hat at home. Heaven knows, home is a Hard Hat area.

Where were the pictures showing her racing around the kitchen in a pair of bedroom slippers, trying to quick-thaw a chop under each armpit….”

5. And she said this: “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’” Not I had a floor you could lick. Not I ironed my children’s jeans every day. But I used my talents. 

She helped a generation of mothers and housewives to know their personal dreams were legitimate and worth pursuing. That it was okay to want more than a husband and children and white picket fence.

Okay, okay, Erma was a feminist. But subversive? Really? Isn’t that a little… strong? We're talking housewife humor, here, not George Carlin.

Erma Bombeck let it all hang out, telling readers about her messy house, flawed children, body issues, imperfect marriage, and work/family balance struggles. She made readers laugh at her failures to meet societal expectations, using humor to reveal just how ridiculous the expectations were in the first place. “If you can’t change it, laugh at it,” Erma said. 

I'm willing to bet Sarah Silverman would agree: That’s a darned subversive idea.

Dried Up Psycho Mommies

It begins when their children are infants, this period when women who were once perfectly (I mean, borderline) normal become candidates for Psycho-Mommy Hall of Fame. Maybe it comes from inhaling bleach (I mean, nail polish). During this transformative period, a writer (I mean, fellow Mommy) can capitalize on the opportunity to observe these Psycho-Mommy creatures in their natural habit. For every encounter with any kind of crazy is story fodder. And it doesn’t matter if that story is a novel, a post or a tweet.

Recently I attended an orientation night for my high school freshman. It was one of those near-pointless wastes of my fugging time but still I wouldn’t have minded it—except for one thing: the other parents. Educators can be annoying enough with their million dollar egos riding on fifty-cent ambition. And by no means do I include all parents: many are that perfectly normal I mentioned above. And I mean that literally: perfect and normal. Those are the parents who follow their student’s schedule when the bell rings by reading the hall signs and studying the maps. Maybe they even asked their student ahead of time (the school takes up an entire city block, after all, so finding a classroom can be more like a pilgrimage). They enter the classroom and quietly take a seat, acknowledging other parents they know. They listen politely to the 10-minute rehearsed speech. At the bell, they efficiently move to the next classroom.

Those are the parents to emulate, but not to write about. A good writer has to pick crazy. They don’t have to be bat-shit crazy either. If I see a parent with needle tracks, I keep looking. That’s too easy. I look for the ones who don’t actually know they’re Psycho-Mommies (or Daddies, but they’re more difficult to track). The Psycho-Mommy of a high school freshman who, after 14 years, still doesn’t realize how fuggin psycho they are…

The Vainglorious – This is the mommy who hung back (blocking the aisle) to loudly announce to the teacher, “Hi, I’m so-vain, so-gonna-be-embarrassed-tomorrow’s mother.” Now just to put some perspective on this… There are 1,344 students in this high school. There are roughly 25 students in the class just during that hour and 7 hours in a day. We all had exactly 3 minutes to get to the next classroom. I’m probably not the only one in the room who thought, “Who the fug cares who you are? Get your fat ass out of the aisle.” The look on the teacher’s face neared confusion. It clearly said, “I have no idea who so-gonna-be-embarrassed-tomorrow is.” She smiled and shook Ms. So-vain’s hand anyway. Hey, Ms. So-vain! You’re oversizing your own importance just a tad. And I know your daughter. She’s a slut with unlimited disposable income. She’s the one who beams when the orchestra conductor praises a performance. She’s the one who believes he’s talking only to her, not the other 74 musicians. Then she laughs too loudly. She’s the one who the conductor was talking about during parent-teacher conferences last year when he said he gets annoyed by a few brown-nosers in the group. But you go right on a-thinking that the whole fuggin world revolves around you and your precious daughter. Maybe it does.

The Scourge of Stupid Questions – This scourge is really more like a plague here in suburbia. Again, maybe it’s the bleach (okay, nail polish). Maybe it’s that you Psycho-Mommy only went to college to get your Mrs. Degree and no longer uses that thing that’s 3 feet above your ass. Just stop with the fuggin dumb questions already. Read the fuggin paper that’s on the desk in front of you, or the sentence written on the board up front or use the common sense God gave you for shit’s sake. How come your husband isn’t asking if the cafeteria pasta is whole wheat? Because it’s a stupid fuggin question, that’s why.

The Viper – I actually love these Psycho-Mommies. Not because they’re cool, or funny (at least they don’t mean to be funny). I sat in one classroom where a frosted-tips, plunging-neckline, dried-up-piece-of-toast Mommy was being oh-so-friendly to Ms. So-clueless. Two rooms later? Dried-up Mommy was dissing not only so-clueless to another dip-dyed Mommy, but dissing the daughter as well. See, I love her because she makes everyone else look good. Despite the fact that she just spent an hour on her hair to come to a lame school event and looks around the room with imagined superiority. She’s looking for something to gossip about at gymnastics tomorrow. And she has no fugging clue that she’s the worst sort of person. You’re so lame, Viper, that you can’t even stand yourself.

The Dueling Divorced – I debated whether or not to use this as a category. I decided to because it is definitely a treasure trove of good writing material. When both parents of another poor gonna-be-so-embarrassed-tomorrow teen showed up in one classroom, the way they competed with each other was comical. No one else even tried to raise their hands during the 2 minutes of questions at the end—the divorcees started raising theirs before the teacher even got halfway through the 8-minute presentation. Really, if you want to prove to everyone in the room that you’re an attentive parent, then stay the hell married. Don’t try to one-up your ex by asking repetitive questions regarding logistics of your fugged up 2 family schedules. Because people like me sit in the back and watch you with amusement and think: “So…you would take a bullet for your daughter, but you refused to keep your family together for her sake.” Nice. You’ll be in my next book, hypocrite.

So don’t get me wrong, I happen to love Psycho-Mommies. I don’t want to hang around them or be their friend, but they are ripe entertainment for when I’m sitting in a gym, rink, field, etc. Try it next time you’re bored to tears at an event. Even if you’re not a writer. Pick someone out of a crowd, imagine what is going through their head right then. What did they do to get here tonight? What will they say to their children when they walk out of earshot or to their spouse when he gets home? What aspirations did they (or their own parents) once have before they became Psycho-Mommy?

Oh the book funk blues

So typically I'm a crafty lady, but today I want to talk about a book.  As any book lover is aware of every now and then you hit what some refer to as a book slump. For some reason, no matter what book you pick up you can't seem to get into it. You keep finding yourself reading a page and then putting the book down.

As you relax in the tub, candles lit, glass of wine on the tub lip, pickles in a bowl (yes I eat and drink in the tub, don't judge), your kindle wrapped in its special water proof case, bubbles up to your chin you feel ready. The setting is perfect to dive back into your book.

Even among this perfect setting you find yourself putting the book down. Never mind that this is the fourth book you've attempted to get into and still nothing. No stirring in your chest, no sweaty palms as you wait to turn a page to find out what happens next. Nothing.

Of course, you pop the drain, toss out the wine and put the pickles back in the fridge because what's the point of a relaxing in a bath if you don't have something to read. Okay, maybe it's just me but I only take baths so that I can have me time, and my me time always involves reading. And baths are the only way to get the kids to leave me alone.

Well, that was me in a serious book slump for the last few weeks. I tried over 20 books on my TBR and none of them could shake the book funk I was in. And I was trying books by may favorite authors, George RR Martin, Dan Brown, Colleen Hoover to name a few, and nothing. No sweaty palms, no tension in my chest just a deep seated sadness that I may never read again. I was starting to lose hope, thinking it was the end, that my life was over (yes I am that dramatic so sue me) and then one of my author besties recommended a book to me.

Of course, I was skeptical.

But sure why not, I'd tried everything else what was the worst that could happen?

So I picked up

And OMG, it was the book!!! Archer's Voice by Mia Sheridan was amazing. I missed an entire night of sleep so I could finish it. Not only did it throw me out of my book funk, but it moved to my top ten favorites. This was absolutely the most beautiful love story I've read in a long time. I cry reading books a lot. And this book made me cry first very sad tears because your heart will get ripped out trust me, but then at the end I was crying happy tears and a book has NEVER done that for me. As a matter of fact I read it twice, back to back, because it was that good. So after the good cry fest I reached out to Mia and gushed like a little fangirl to tell her how much her book touched me. Now over a month later and I'm still like this 

thinking about Archer's Voice. So if your looking for something that will give you all the feels then this is your book. I warn you though bring kleenex. And be prepared to fangirl, just saying. 

Where are the Urban Fantasy movies?

I've heard it said that right now is a golden age for fantasy movies and television shows. And it's true, there is more fantasy content out there than there has ever been. The success of The Lord of the Rings films (which I consider one of the best book to movie translations) definitely opened the door for fantasy. Now we've got the Hobbit films coming out once a year (coincidently I think they are rather poor as far as adaptations go) Game of Thrones and Once Upon A Time on TV. The Harry Potter movies dominated the box office as much as the books dominated the best seller lists. There's the Into The Woods movie coming soon. Maleficent was a big hit and Thor the Dark World felt a lot more like high fantasy than the traditional super hero fare. It really is a good time to be a fantasy fan.


Then why is one of my favorite subgenres pretty much nonexistent from screens big and small? I'm talking about urban fantasy. UF is a huge market when you're talking about books. Type the phrase into Amazon's search box and hundred of thousands of results pop up. For the uninitiated, urban fantasy simply means that the story features traditional fantasy elements in a (usually) modern urban setting. Fairies walking the streets of Minneapolis. A whole other city with it's own laws and relationship to magic lying below the below the streets of London. A seen-it-all wizard negotiating treaties between warring factions of mythical treaties in a pub in Chicago. That is urban fantasy. Though of course there are infinite variations.


The truth is that urban fantasy is all over popular entertainment right now, but it's hidden in plain sight. Nearly all super hero movies take place in big cities. And most recent paranormal movies and shows have been about the vampire or werewolf or what-have-you trying to blend into the modern world. They take the element that most defines a fantasy, magic, and call it super powers or a monstrous curse or a genetic mutation. The Syfy channel's Lost Girl is the only show I can think of at the moment not hiding what it is.


Two of my favorite urban fantasies, the Dresden Files and Neverwhere have already been television series. However both were severely limited by budget constraints. The Dresden Files show became little more than a police procedural with a minor magical element per case. While Harry Dresden does sometimes work with the Chicago PD in the books, the scope of the stories is much broader and often sees Harry and his crew traveling across dimensions and battling monsters that would need a Guardians of the Galaxy level effects budget to realize. Neverwhere was actually a BBC miniseries before it was a book. Neil Gaiman, who'd written the screenplay, was disappointed that what wound up on screen didn't match what he'd imagined (the original Neverwhere show while not without it's charms, makes the Dresden Files show look positively bug budget). He adapted it into a novel so his vision of the story could get out there. It's been at least a decade since either was brought to the screen. The time is ripe for adaptations that will truly to bring the books to life.


But those are just the tip of the urban fantasy iceberg. Hollywood has literally thousands of books to choose from. Someone just has to have the guts to be the first to take the plunge, like Peter Jackson was for high fantasy. Once the floodgates open, who knows what tricksters, ogres, and gryphons will fly out?

Tone (noun): a quality, feeling, or attitude expressed by the words that someone uses in speaking or writing.

Over the last few months I've noticed that people have responded negatively to emails I've sent.  I've heard people say things like, "Did you read Sylvia's email?  She was mad.  Don't mess with her." OR someone will respond, "You tell 'em, Sylvia!"  Well, I'm beginning to think that maybe it's the 'tone' of my emails that they are mistakenly taken as being mad, angry....bitchy.  Even when I have a conversation with a co-worker, it is often repeated, to someone else, like I was speaking in an angry tone,  "...and you could just see her wagging her finger as she was talking!"  I find that I'm misunderstood and need to find a way to correct this problem.

Case in point: I am a part-time worker and only work forty hours every two weeks.  I have an assigned cubicle.  Some of my co-workers are what we call "mobile workers," meaning they have no desk in the office, they work from home, and come to the office occasionally for interviews, meetings.  Although there are places set up for them, in various locations in the office, to plug in their laptops, they seem to like using my cubicle when I'm not there because it's well-stocked, quiet, and so forth.  Every time I come back, there is always something I have to correct or straighten out.  I've complained in the past, but...well, grown folks sometimes just don't care.  This last time I sent out a 'polite' email saying that, from that day on, if I find things left on my desk, they were going in the trash...staplers, three-hole punches, pictures of their kids, CDs, a realm of paper, ink cartridges (new)...everything, and anything, was gonna be tossed.  I didn't think it was a nasty email.  I thought it was very factual.  "You leave it. It's gone. Don't bother asking me what happened to it."  I get the feeling it was the 'tone' of the email that made them upset.  Not sure....

I have the same problems expressing my characters' thoughts when I'm writing.  I remember in my last book critique, one of my fellow Crazies pointed out that my characters were always shouting, shown by the large number of exclamation points I had after their dialogue. My characters are excitable people!  They shout! They yell!  Yet, I get the sense that I need to learn how to 'tone' down my characters' voices and teach them to express their feelings some other way.

Maybe have them hit each other with floppy bats as they talk.  That may lighten the tone.  Right?!!!

Sylvia

Six Degrees of Tawni

All right, I promised on my other blog to post about the surreal photo shoot Tawni O’Dell (my new idol) was subjected to back when she published her debut book, Back Roads. But I thought I'd include a Labor Day tie-in, since I was supposed to have this post done yesterday and it was Labor Day. Hmm, let’s see. Tawni O’Dell writes about coal miners. Coal miners have unions. Labor Day commemorates the economic and social contributions of workers over the years. Poetic. (Or merely an illustration that you can contrive a connection in anything…especially while blogging.)

     Anyhoo. If you’re unfamiliar with Tawni O’Dell’s books, I can’t recommend them enough. She has been complimented with phrases like pitch-perfect prose and authenticity of place, both of which are well-deserved. Her writing is elegant but never pretentious; it cuts to the bone. I think it’s amazing how she captures a male voice (in first-person narration, no less) in both Back Roads and Coal Run. As a matter of fact, that’s what got her into trouble. With Back Roads, her publisher figured she sounded so much like a male writer, she should opt for an androgynous pen name that might make people think she was one. Tawni wasn’t quite what they had in mind, since it brought to mind “biker chick” over accomplished woman with a degree from Northwestern. Her literary agency supported her in fighting for the right to use her own name and everything seemed fine…until the publisher hired a photographer to snap some publicity shots. Hailing from New York, the guy they hired had, how do I put this?—let’s just say he had a different vision of O’Dell’s artistic identity. Comical hijinks ensued. Or they might’ve been comical if they didn’t basically obliterate the strides women have made gaining respect in publishing (at least, I thought women had made strides) over the past ten years or so. Portal yourself straight to the whole story by clicking here: Stung By Gender Bias, Author Tawni O’Dell Stings Back (Alternately titled: How to Become a Wood Nymph.) 

     Tawni O'Dell has also been lauded for her portrayal of coal miners—and not just by the literati. She's received letters from coal workers and their families expressing appreciation for the pains she's taken to get all the details right. Within the framework of her stories she manages to call attention to the plight of men who perform a dangerous job with pride. She captures the quiet dignity of the miners as they face off with their own demons as well as callous corporate Goliaths, i.e., owners who at any moment might resort to cutting corners to increase profits.

Just released August 19!

As I embark on writing a mystery series set in Detroit, I see some parallels between O’Dell’s Pennsylvania coal country backdrop and the demolished urban landscape of my own city. They are structurally and cosmically, if not cosmetically, the same. And on this Labor Day, I wonder whether I’ll be able to grant the UAW workers who must populate any book set in The Motor City the same nobility and mystique of Tawni O’Dell's coal miners. Does anyone offer a workshop for that? Probably not. But--on the bright side--Tawni O'Dell has a new book out!

What We Love About Game of Thrones That We Shouldn't

We here at Crazy are writers and as such, have this um…problem. It’s like when my friend got a headache then learned on the internet that she was dying of dengue fever, unless the lymphoma got to her first. We writers go to the internet for advice about, you know…writing. The sheer number of “rules” makes us want to stop writing, because we’ll never get it “right.” Yet on every bestseller list sit stories which defy the rule creators.

 

The series of novels, A Song of Ice and Fire (beginning with the fabulous Game of Thrones), sits on a few of those lists. And the New York Times (July 14, 2011) goes so far as to suggest that "it's high time we drove a stake through the heart of J. R. R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings." {GASP!} Did GRRM earn that praise by following the rules? Well, some of them certainly. But no matter how hard I try, I can't imagine him surfing for writing advice.

I can imagine some random brave soul—even in the 1970s when he began writing for real—offering up some writing gospel (“Hey, you know what would be better? If you…”).

I can imagine GRRM applying the blank stare.

We read and nearly weep at the pure genius of the 3 interweaving stories. We marvel at the simple magic of the red comet—how the characters each feel a personal connection to it. We’re jealous that we didn’t think of it first. So what do we love about the series that we would think twice about before writing? Which of these “rules” are given the finger by GRRM?

 1.       Don’t kill the main character. Valar Morghulis. Every man must die. And every character can too (and uh, probably will). Even the main one, the best one, the brightest one. This is risky if the rest of your book does not scream to be read. Readers who are plunged into the cycle of grief are likely to plunge your book off a moving bus (sorry, but hitting the [delete] key on an e-book does not provide the same level of satisfaction). Yet, they tolerate it over and over again in this series. At some point, it becomes a game of morbid curiosity: “I hate this. I’m not reading it anymore. Who is going to bite it next?”

2.       Every sentence should work hard. Not every sentence contributes to the plot. Or does it? How do I know until I get to the end then read it again? Answer: I don’t. Say for instance that I get to the end and realize there were whole sections that were disconnected to the outcome. Writing advice says to cut those. Yet, now that I’ve finished, do I even care that those parts didn’t contribute? Maybe I spend an afternoon at the pool pondering the odds that I’ve been tricked. “They MUST have been part of the plot. I’m just not seeing it! What am I missing?” GRRM has won, because I read the book(s), I enjoyed the story and I’m at the pool still thinking about it.

3.       Write satisfying, realistic characters. Non-conformance to gender roles or other stereotypes runs rampant here! See? Even in a period piece, good guys don’t have to be handsome or strong. Girls don’t have to have girly moments. Other stories develop characters that might seem unique and non-conforming, but somewhere in the text, somehow, they eventually meet reader requirements. For instance, an ugly hero is eventually found beautiful by someone. A tomboy girl eventually brushes out her hair and feels feminine. Nope. Doesn’t have to happen, according to GRRM. And we readers like that. Little girls can kill men. And that’s okay.

4.       Don’t make the reader wait too long. If your story is good enough, you can create a cult following who will a) buy anything, and/or b) wait for a very long time for it.

5.       Start with a theme and keep it in mind. One of the more common themes out there is good vs. evil. Try to pick just one in A Song of Ice and Fire. I dare you. Power? Betrayal? Family? Justice and Judgment? Maybe this is like the red comet: for each of us, we “see” the theme we prefer.

I do not stand on the side of anyone who desires to drive a stake through the heart of J. R. R. Tolkien. Nor do I need to scour the internet for the unbreakable rules of writing. I will deal with my problem in my own way: by giving the finger to these rule creators and getting vaccinated for dengue fever. Then I will read more novels that I shouldn’t.