Women Write

Flash Fiction Prize

2008-08-14T17:02:00.000-07:00

Contests are a great way to hone one's writing skills. I learned yesterday that my story Dispose of the Evidence is an Honorary Mention in the Women on Writing (WOW) Spring Fiction Contest. This means I get published on the WOW site and receive a nice prize package. Really, you can't beat that. The story will be published in either late August or early September. Naturally, I'm thrilled. A number of other short stories were or are being entered in contests, across the Internet, so who knows where this will end.

The Scourge of the Plastic Bag

2008-03-27T15:13:00.000-07:00

Writing doesn’t always mean developing a book or an article. Writing can also mean composing a letter, especially of the persuasive variety that relates to a cause you’re passionate about.

In the last year I’ve done a lot of research on plastic in our environment. For example: The global use of plastic bags amounts to at least 100 billion bags a year, according to the Film and Bag Federation. Other groups contend that number is far higher, approaching 100 billion plastic bags per year in the United States alone. The environmental impact of so much plastic is staggering, particularly given the fact that a petroleum-based bag takes 1,000 years to degrade. Even worse, plastic bags don’t degrade completely, but break down into smaller, toxic particles.

Those are harrowing statistics and I began carrying a canvas bag for all of my smaller trips, particularly to our neighborhood CVS Pharmacy, where I shop several times a week. Employees quickly got used to me showing up with my own bag and often noted that they too, would use a canvas or cloth bag if they could find one of the appropriate size. (I use a Holland America cruise bag which measures a roomy 17 1//2” wide and 12” deep).

Today I began writing letters, starting with the CVS Corporation to persuade them to offer cloth bags with their logo to customers and employees. Next on my list is Minnesota-based Target Corporation, another company that like CVS prides themselves on community involvement and corporate responsibility. I would argue that being an environmentally responsible citizen is part of that equation as well.

This is just the beginning – I have a list of organizations and companies I’d like the opportunity to meet with and discuss how they might become more environmentally responsible, starting with ways to greatly reduce or eliminate plastic bags and other petroleum-based products like plastic bottles, plates, containers, etc. I have no idea what kind of success I’ll have, although I believe the time is right. But what I do know is that the process can’t begin without writing a letter.

Fantastical "Memoirs"

2008-03-04T18:36:00.000-08:00

In less than a week, two authors have admitted to fabricating memoirs. Margaret B. Jones, a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, confessed Love and Consequences, her memoir of growing up in South Central LA as a foster child raised among drug-running gangbangers is complete fiction. The same is true of Misha Defonseca’s Holocaust memoir, Misha: A Memoire of The Holocaust Years, detailing her horrific childhood living with wild wolves, trekking 1,900 miles across Europe, and killing a German soldier in self-defense.

Before we run out and blame the victims, might over-anxious agents and publishers looking for fantastical “true” stories bear part of the blame? Every writer knows landing an agent is tough, but more and more it seems the stories that make it into print, particularly under the category of “memoir” are beyond belief. From the moment I heard the episodes recounted as true in James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, I was suspicious. Not because Northwest Airlines immediately refuted his account of boarding a plane battered and bloody, but because it simply did not ring true. As Stephen King noted in an Entertainment Weekly column later that year, he didn’t buy it either, because King wrote (I’m paraphrasing here) addicts are the best liars the world has ever seen.

Still, agents and publishers gobbled up all three of the stories and apparently without question. And maybe that’s the real problem – knowing that agents and publishers can’t get enough of bizarre “memoirs” (the more outrageous the better) some authors are more than willing to bend their words to tell great fiction they then pass off as “truth”. In the end the public and authors who write legitimate memoirs suffer. Agents and publishers would do the industry as a whole a favor to investigate before they print.

The Rake Ceases Publication

2008-02-26T15:00:00.000-08:00

In another sign of changing reader habits and disappearing print publications, the Minneapolis-based magazine The Rake is ceasing publication. As recently as two months ago, The Rake was featured in one of the e-zines of freelance writing markets I subscribe to. The March 2008 issue currently on the stands will be the magazine's last.

The Rake's web site will remain, however; out of 16 employees only one will stay on to oversee online operations. This is another sad aspect in the vastly changing world of writing and print publications. Editor Tom Bartel noted that declining ad revenues are the main culprit for The Rake's demise, but its small size also made it vulnerable.

And The Oscar Goes To . . .

2008-02-20T14:43:00.000-08:00

Women and Minnesota have a lot to be proud of this Oscar season. Four women have been nominated in the screenwriting categories (the most ever) and former Minnesotans on the list include Joel and Ethan Coen and Diablo Cody. My picks for the main categories are below. And the Oscar goes to . . . .

Best Picture
Joel and Ethan Coen’s cinematic version of No Country for Old Men

Best Actor
Daniel Day Lewis – There Will Be Blood

Best Actress
Julie Christie – Away From Her

Best Supporting Actor
Javier Bardem – No Country for Old Men

Best Supporting Actress
Rudy Dee – American Gangster

Best Director
Joel and Ethan Coen – No Country for Old Men

Best Adapted Screenplay
Joel and Ethan Coen – No Country for Old Men

Best Original Screenplay
Diablo Cody - Juno

Northern Illinois University Shooting

2008-02-15T10:51:00.000-08:00

Any multiple shooting is tragic, (and there have been so many lately) but even more so when the images being broadcast around the world are so personal and familiar. We lived in the DeKalb, IL area for 11 years before moving to Minnesota. My husband worked on the NIU campus at the Newman Center and I spent several years working at the university as well.

To see places you’ve lived and worked, and people you’ve known become part of a national tragedy is truly devastating. One NIU student interviewed said a shooting like this shouldn’t happen here. True, but it shouldn’t happen anywhere. And yet it does, with increasing frequency, touching more lives.

In December the mass shooting at Westroads Mall in Omaha was close to home because Nebraska is my home state. This time it’s even closer. What’s been interesting over the last few months is the silence on the part of gun control advocates with each new shooting. But perhaps they don’t need to say anything, and let the mounting toll of victims tell the story.

Juno Rules

2008-02-11T19:25:00.000-08:00

Juno, the small independent film about a smart, sweet, and ultimately wise beyond her year’s teenager who makes some unconventional choices after she gets pregnant, sailed past the $100 million mark and is still going strong.

Made for a paltry $6.5 million, the film and its heroine has become the rare cultural phenomenon that speaks directly to teenage girls, their mothers, sisters, even their fathers and brothers. If Hollywood has an ounce of common sense, the studios will FINALLY get the message that women are movie-goers too.

If Hollywood isn’t quite ready to trash the business model that targets the majority of movies towards adolescent males, then studios at the very least need to get serious about providing well-made, relevant entertainment for a female audience, from teenagers on into adulthood. With Diablo Cody’s smart, sassy, script about the choices one young girl makes, perhaps the studios will at last understand that women matter. And we matter a lot.

Four women were nominated for Oscars in the Best Original and Best Adapted Screenplay categories, all with great stories to tell and various perspectives to tell them from. They deserve the chance to tell those stories and others. Juno rules and here’s to ushering in a change of thought that’s long overdue.

A Screenwriter's Dream

2008-02-04T12:31:00.000-08:00

It was a Hollywood screenwriter’s dream. In one corner, The New England Patriots looking for football immortality with a perfect season and Super Bowl victory; the stellar quarterback with the leading man good looks and model girlfriend; the gruff coach with questionable methods; history was in the making.

In the opposing corner the New York Giants, a scrappy band of players who had finished the regular 2007 season 10-6 then started playing like champions in the playoffs; a good but not great quarterback just this side of nerdy, still under the shadow of a talented and much more famous older brother; the odds totally against them.

And as in the best of underdog vs. the powerhouse scripts, the New York Giants came together and stopped the mighty Pats in their tracks, pulled a miracle catch out of thin air, and won Super Bowl 42. Cue the theme from Rocky and roll the credits. Only this time it was true.

Women and the WGA

2008-01-30T12:20:00.000-08:00

On Monday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s TV critic Neal Justin wrote an article on writers here in Minnesota affected by the WGA strike. Reading the article, two things jumped out – all five writers interviewed were men, and four were white.

Writing Neal Justin about the lack of diversity in writers represented, his reply was illuminating:
“I couldn't agree with you more. Sadly, there are not that many female WGA members in the area. I reached out to two, but didn't hear back from them. Believe me; I pushed the deadline in an effort to get a female represented.

“This is a great year Oscar wise for women. How ironic and depressing it would be if the ceremony didn't take place because of the WGA strike.”

Unfortunately it remains a source of frustration that women writers still have to jam their foot in the door and shove it open with a good, hard kick to even get acknowledged as writers in Tinsel Town.

Women Score Multiple Screenwriting Nominations

2008-01-22T08:07:00.000-08:00

The Oscar nominations were announced this morning, and what a very nice surprise to see three women in the Original Screenplay category and a fourth in the Adapted Screenplay category. The nominees are:
Diablo Cody for Juno
Nancy Oliver for Lars and the Real Girl
Tamara Jenkins for The Savages
Sarah Polley for Away from Her (Adapted Screenplay)

Screenwriting still tends to be a very male dominated field, so four women being recognized for their superb contributions to film is way overdue. Congratulations and may the best woman win!

Customer Service At Its Worst

2008-01-11T13:40:00.000-08:00

No one likes bad customer service, and some might say the U.S. Postal Service has been unfairly maligned in this regard. However, in the six years since returning to Minnesota, the Woodbury, MN Post Office has taken bad customer service to an entirely new level of ineptness.

I was expecting a certified letter that required my signature. Assumptions are never a good thing, but I did believe this meant the postal carrier would come to our door for said signature. The mail truck was chugging up our street at 2:30 so I went outside. I should have stood waiting at our mail box, but honestly, I thought our carrier would actually stop long enough to make an effort.

When he didn’t stop at our mail box, I assumed the letter wasn’t in today’s mail. Opening the mail box, the first thing I saw was a card heralding, “Sorry We Missed You”. So now I’m running down our street, waving my arms frantically to get the carrier’s attention. Every time I catch up, he hits the gas and takes off. After a half block I reach the truck yelling at the top of my lungs for him to please stop. He starts up AGAIN, and I’m running alongside the truck, banging on the window.

Only then does the postal carrier stop. When I tell him he has a certified letter for me that I’ve been waiting all day for, he replies without making eye contact, “Oh, sorry about that”. I sign and get the letter HE HAS WITH HIM IN THE TRUCK and say again, “You know, I arranged my whole day around being available to sign for this letter.” Not a word.

I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that this mail carrier had no intention whatsoever of getting out of his truck so see if someone was in fact home, waiting for an important piece of certified mail. The Woodbury Post Office has proven itself again and again as tops in bad customer service (yelling at customers, giving out the wrong information, closing stations when the lines extends out the door), but I’m still in shock. I stopped going to the local post office years ago to avoid this kind of hassle, which is the best I can do. They say a person is their own Better Business Bureau, I only wish I could avoid the post office permanently.

American Politics "Down Under"

2008-01-09T19:35:00.000-08:00

We spent the holidays traveling Australia and New Zealand. During those three weeks I thought we would get a reprieve from the constant white-noise, bombast, and hyperbole that has become the American campaign process. Silly me. There was the International Edition of CNN breathlessly following candidates and particularly the Iowa caucuses as though the fate of the world teetered in the balance. Every newspaper published stories as well, and sometimes it was if we’d never left home.

After the caucus results were in, I dared to hope we’d spend our last few days “down under” free from the next phase of what has to be the longest electoral process in human history (after all it will easily be two years by the time votes are FINALLY cast on November 4, 2008). Again, I was mistaken. Sitting in our Auckland hotel room, we discovered live coverage of the New Hampshire debates, being carried by the Australian Sky News network.

I’ll be the first to admit that voting is a privilege and not a right, one I’ve proudly exercised since first getting the opportunity at age 18. However, with the campaign process growing longer and more expensive with each election, I can’t help but believe the British handle elections better – a 10 week campaign season, everybody votes, the results are calculated, and life moves on. Certainly America holds an important place on the world stage and perhaps other countries are genuinely following the process. Short of participation in a much more compressed campaign season (I can dream, can’t I?), it would have been nice to catch a break from politics. If only for a day or two.

A Size Two Is Not Fat

2007-12-13T15:05:00.000-08:00

Jennifer Love Hewitt is not fat. Neither is Tyra Banks. As Lynn Grefe, CEO of the National Eating Disorders Association notes, “It’s painful to see the constant pressure on girls to be a certain size. It’s so demeaning to people to keep apologizing for having a healthy size.” Especially women.

Absolutely true, and more women are taking a stance. Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, America Ferrera, and Nikki Blonsky are just some of the actresses wearing their curves with pride. Now if we can only get People magazine, which ran this week’s cover story on Hewitt, “Stop Calling Me Fat!” to stop running equally demeaning ‘Body After Baby’ features, will society continue making positive strides about women’s body image. A size 2 is never fat, but then neither is a size 10, 12, or 14.

Misogynistic Behavior, Free Speech, and Politics

2007-12-10T16:00:00.000-08:00

Would it be okay to publicly fantasize about John McCain being raped by an elephant or sexual violence being visited upon Mitt Romney? I’m betting not, but that’s exactly what two of the web sites focused on sexist diatribes against Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign offer up (only with a donkey rather than an elephant).

The article is today’s paper, “How offensive can Hillary foes be?” points out that degrading Clinton in the most vile sexual terms says more about her misogynistic detractors and free speech than it does her, but it also reveals the fear of the female still prevalent within society. Even more frustrating is the idea that these same patriarchal fears of women have been in existence for thousands of years, and nothing changes. This was one of the main premises of Hollywood and Catholic Women, and it's obvious any movement away from fearing females, especially those who are smart, strong, confident, and willful, are many lifetimes away.

Water Landings

2007-12-09T18:12:00.000-08:00

My husband and I are in final preparations for our trip to Australia and New Zealand. We started talking about the flight (a very long one at that), which then led to getting off an airplane in an emergency. I’m not a big fan of flying, enough so that I actually read the emergency procedures card in the seat pocket in front of me, locate my closest exit, and know for a fact that floor illumination system isn’t going to come on for anything beyond a hard landing.

Terry mentioned we may be seated in an exit row which is fine by me – open the door and you’re zipping down the inflatable slide. We moved to the “in the event of a water landing” drill we’ll get and it suddenly occurred to us that we’ve never even heard of a plane making an emergency landing in the middle of the ocean, deploying the rafts, and having passengers safely rescued. That is, except for Airport ‘77. Only a writer, of course, could come up with that scenario and throw in terrorists and the Bermuda Triangle for good measure. Bon Voyage!

Doonebury Goes to War

2007-12-03T11:43:00.000-08:00

First it was BD and now it looks as though it might be Ray. Garry Trudeau, the brilliant cartoonist and satirist, has done more than anyone to bring the horrors of war home, right into the comfort zones of American kitchens and living rooms. As BD's story of losing a leg and painful rehabilitation has unfolded, Trudeau has honored those who have sacrificed so much with grace, dignity, anger, fear, and biting wit. If Ray becomes another casualty of this war, I'll do what I did when BD was wounded - cry.

Why The Writer's Strike Is So Important

2007-11-17T13:02:00.000-08:00

As a writer, I'm closely following the writer's strike, now entering it's third week. This interest goes beyond just being a writer. First, there's the realization a prolonged strike will shut down my favorite TV shows. That's even worse for me as I'm no fan of reality TV, which is sure to fill programming schedules once the networks run out of scripts.

But beyond missing favorite programs and the understanding that movies will eventually be effected as well, is the key issue about writer's getting fairly compensated for what they create. Regardless of who you write for, this is a crucial point. Screenwriter Douglas McGrath writes in the November 13, 2007 issue of Newsweek about why he's on strike and deftly notes what writer's are fighting for. He writes, "With their costs substantially reduced, this would be the right time to correct the old imbalance of the DVD rate and give writers a share more fairly in line with the level of our contribution. But the studios are not looking to find a more equitable residual rate—it seems they are hoping that the new media will allow them to do away with the idea of residuals altogether.

Right now, if you go online and watch a streaming version of a TV show, the company that owns that property is getting paid by the advertisers whose commercials appear at the top of it. Just like TV, but with one difference: the writers are paid no residual, not even the four cents. The companies say they don't need to pay us for this: it's "promotional." By that I suppose they mean that it promotes the size of their earnings from smaller to larger.

The companies keep saying, "We don't know yet what the new media is." But the concept is very old: movies and TV shows will appear on a screen of some sort (TV, computer, iPod, phone) and people will pay to watch them, either through a direct downloading fee or by watching ads. The companies will make money doing it; otherwise they will not do it. If the companies really thought there was no money to be made in "new media," they'd give us a percentage of it. "

I encourage you to read McGrath's entire article and understand what's at stake. Technology has changed the business of writing for all writer's, and its only fair that we get compensated, and fairly, for that which we create.

Paris In Springtime

2007-05-23T13:16:00.000-07:00

“The little end of nothing whittled down sharp” is how my great-grandmother would have described the vapid, self-centered, and unbelievably stupid piece of humanity that is Paris Hilton. As most the world knows, the hotel heiress, socialite, and incredibly bad actress will begin serving a 23-day jail sentence at the Century Regional Detention Center in Los Angeles if she reports by June 5. Normally, I don’t care a whit about the likes of Paris, Britney, and Lindsay, but as a former alcoholic, I have serious issues with a woman who has at least one DUI on her record and isn’t actually serving time for that offense, but for driving on a suspended license.

If I ran the world, here’s how Ms. Hilton’s sentence would be handled. First, she wouldn’t be serving 23 days of a 45 day original sentence she’d be serving 90, a good solid three months to give her time to contemplate how she endangered others by getting behind the wheel of car while drunk. And there would be no tagging her with an alarm to protect her from other inmates (Did the far more likeable and intelligent Martha Stewart need protection? I don’t believe so). On top of that, I’d insist Hilton not only get treatment for her alcohol problem but require that she spend the six months AFTER her release speaking to groups of young people on the dangers of driving drunk and being too dumb to open and read your own mail. Finally, I’d impose a probation period from three to five years. If Hilton so much as looked at alcohol, she’d be in lockdown so fast she wouldn’t know what hit her. And I’m not talking Promises in Malibu.

The real problem with the inconsequential Paris Hilton’s of the world is that somehow they become role models, while having done nothing to benefit society in any conceivable way. I have a 21 year-old niece who follows the escapades of Paris, Britney, etc. al. with bated breath, believing the shenanigans these women engage in not only matter, but deserve to be emulated. And I’m here to tell you that the little end of nothing whittled down sharp isn’t something most people would ever aspire to.