Is The Minions Movie Sexist?

So I just watched The Minions with my own minions AND I have a couple of issues.

Here there be spoilers.

It was a funny movie with cute moments, (Bob giving away the tiny crown. Bob and his Tim--basically all things Bob.) but it bugged the feminist in me, and here's why.

1. Where are the girl minions?

I googled it, (as one does,) and turns out there's an answer.

Here's a quote from that article.

In an interview with The Wrap, Minions creator (and director) Pierre Coffin explains there’s a reason we don’t see female Minions. Easy answer, they don’t exist. When he created the Minion world, he purposely didn’t include any girl Minions for one specific reason. Ready for it?According to Coffin, the Minions are all guys because, “Seeing how dumb and stupid they often are, I just couldn’t imagine Minions being girls.” 

Seriously. The creator of Despicable Me couldn't imagine a character who was zany and mischievous, stupid and lovable, and also female. I Love Lucy has been showing reruns for 60 years, and he couldn't imagine a girl as mischievous. Gracie Allen has been dead for decades, and he couldn't imagine a girl as stupid and lovable.

Also, if I may just add that the argument that a girl is too X to be included in Y isn't a compliment. It's an excuse said in a way that we can't get mad at for explaining why woman who aren't perfect can't exist.

I'd really like a girl Minion movie where the girl Minion cells evolve into following the most heroic boss they can and then meet and have an EPIC GOOD VS. EVIL BOY minions verses GIRL minions showdown, that features GRU. Because I missed you Gru!

2. Scarlet Overkill.


Why did Scarlet Overkill have to be the very first female Supervillain? I mean seriously? Why, Minions Movie are you erasing history? Scarlet Overkill calls herself the first female Supervillain in 1970s, WAY after Lizzie Borden, or Queen Ranavalona  of Madagascar,  or Catherine de Medici. But in this movie, before 1970's there were only male villains.

Which I guess is okay...that could be a story point...if, and only if it was actually used as one. This wasn't crucial to the plot...at all. There wasn't room to show a history of male villains that was changing. And if she was the first, why, for the love of peanut butter, did she have to be the only one? There was a Swamp Thing, and Sumo Dude, and a bunch of other awesome male supervilllain henchmen. Couldn't she have a few henchwomen she inspired? They had zero lines. Would it really have been that much more difficult to draw one or two other human beings as a girl?

3. Scarlet Overkill.



 She's a supervillian, but she doesn't get to do anything except wear a dress. Withing the first minute of introducing Gru, he had popped a kids balloon, freeze ray'ed a bunch of people and threatened to kill his neighbors dog. The only evil Scarlett gets to do is threaten the minions about what will happen to them if they don't, and she has to do it in a sing song voice while telling a fairytale...i.e. the least threatening way possible. She tells us she's bad, but she never shows us she's bad, and that's just bad storytelling.

Her husband, Herb, is the inventor, the designer, and the one responsible for her being the first female Superpower. So then, isn't she really just the first female puppet of a supervillain? How much cooler would it have been if she was the inventor, the designer, and the person in charge?

4. Scarlett Overkill.




Okay, so her entire goal as a character was to steal the crown so she could be a pretty princess like she wanted to when she was a little girl.

So to sum up, Scarlett Overkill is the first female Supervillain whose super power is wearing a dress. The source of her power is her husband who makes this dress for her, and whose only motivation is to be a pretty princess when she grows up.

Ask yourself one question, if Scarlett Overkill was a Barbie doll that Herb Overkill dressed up and moved around, then would the plot still work? The answer is sadly yes.

It's set in the backdrop of the 1970's, with hints of the Feminist revolution, with an "awesome" Female Supervillain played by the phenomenal Sandra Bollock. And she did a great job... with what she had been given. But it fails, in a zillion I've-seen-this-all-before ways. She's not a supervillain, she's a supervillain with a bow placed on her head. She's a flat uninteresting character, whose entire characterization begins and ends with she's a girl. She's a girl living in a world with no other females. She is the idea of a girl, and not an actual character.

And so, I'm going to design a better Scarlett Overkill.

Meet Scarlett V.2. 

She wants to be the greatest Supervillain of all time, and she has posters on her wall of awesomely powerful female villains; like Motherload, Lizzie Borden Ax Murderess, and her hero The Crimson Spike. She designed her own self propelled vehicle and armory belt/dress, which she rocks, thank you very much. She has friends who are female. She has rivals who are female. She makes choices, and decisions for herself, and when she is finally caught in her web of ice, by..... say, one young Gru, the freaking Queen punches her and takes back her crown, because she is the freaking Queen of freaking England, and she's not going to abdicate for her own son let alone a Yellow Twinkie in glasses, or allow that Twinkie to change laws so that an American could be the next queen, are you freaking kidding me right now? Even the Queen was shown as powerless. She is only shown with men; male guards, male carriage drivers, and even in the scene at the bar there are only male patrons, and she only wore pink.  BLARG.

In my version of this story, the queen would fight for her thrown, and Scarlett Overkill would have to be smarter to defeat the queen. She'd have to be smart and powerful, with allies, and obstacles and they'd go to war over this freaking crown.

It's possible I just described a Taylor Swift music video.

It's also possible I'm making too big of a deal about this. It's just a kid's movie about yellow Twinkies with goggles who don't speak human.

It's also possible that I sat next to impressionable little boys and girls who just learned that the only way for a woman to be powerful, is for her to wear a dress and be married to a powerful person.

And sure, that's a great way to be powerful. But does it have to be the only option?

I can't wait for that narrative to start changing.

~Sheena

p.s. how young is too young to take my kids to go see Mad Max?

Disney Channel and Body Images

We all know how TV and movies and even books usually feature thin, beautiful heroines, and we all know what kind of messages this inadvertently sends us.  I think most women have felt at some point in their lives that their worth measured by society is tied to their physical appearance.

 These messages come through loud and clear without explicitly being stated.  I know I have been affected by it, and the importance of beauty is embedded so deeply in me that I don’t think I will ever stop feeling inadequate in some ways for not measuring up to society’s narrow and unattainable view of beauty. 

 So Disney Channel, there is no need for you to send direct messages to our young, impressionable daughters that beauty is the only thing that is important.  Please stop doing that.

 My oldest daughter is moving away from cartoons to Disney live action tween shows.  She started with Good Luck Charlie which from what I've seen is pretty cute, and I have no problems with her watching it, but lately she’s moved on to two shows which I feel a little less comfortable with for many reasons beyond body image, but I’m only going to address body image here.

Jessie

Quick run-down:  Jesse is a Texan girl who goes to New York to make it in the entertainment business (acting or singing not sure which) and ends up being a nanny.

I really don’t like this show for so many reason, but a big part of it is the many, many jokes about how some characters look and dress.  The worst being the very ugly rival nanny named Agatha, who’s rather mean-spirited, in contrast to the main girl Jesse who’s very beautiful and supposedly very sweet.  However, when Agatha and Jesse take jabs at each other, Jesse always puts down Agatha’s appearance rather than calling Agatha out on her bad behavior.  The heroine, Jesse, takes the low road to cheap laughs by making fun of Agatha’s snaggle tooth, calling her the beast in Beauty and the Beast, etc. (not exactly as “sweet” thing to do).  This constant focus on Agatha’s appearance (which she has no choice over) rather than her actions (which she does) is sending a direct message to our kids (especially girls).  That what we do isn’t as important as how we look, and if you are pretty, you are good and if you are ugly, you are bad. 

Not good.

Shake It Up

Quick run-down:  Two teenage girls become dancers on a TV show called Shake It Up Chicago.

My daughter just started this one, but I haven’t seen as many problems as I’ve seen with Jesse (although that could change), but this one episode really aggravated me.  The two main girls imagine their future without each other, and each of them ended up as fat in their nightmarish futures.  Of course there were other issues of not having a great job or a husband (maybe, I can’t really remember), but the jokes that carried through the rest of the episode all focused on them being fat, like the worst possible future these girls could imagine was being a little overweight.  What kind of message is that sending to our daughters?  How does it make those girls who are a little overweight feel? 

I know these are just television shows, but when what is implied on TV is reinforced in real life, our impressionable, young children will internalize it.  I know, Disney Channel, you’re not the only one who is sending these messages to our daughters, but if you put a little more thought into your programming and stopped going for the cheap laugh, you could be that one bright spot on the television that does it right.  Think about it.

~MaryAnn

Have a Little Hope, Proser

For some of us, language and reading come as naturally as breathing, as a fish swimming, or as anyone with double X chromosomes craving chocolate...

But for some of us, language and reading don't come easily at all.

With school starting soon for everyone, I thought I'd share a tale near and dear to my heart, and hope it gives a little courage to kids who struggle (whatever their struggle may be), and to parents who worry about and fiercely love those kids.

Once upon a time there was a cute (and I do mean cute) little boy with white blond hair and root beer eyes. Before he was one year old, he babbled and knew a plethora of baby signs. He loved to point to pictures in his storybooks as mom and dad read to him.

Sometime before he turned two, he stopped looking at mom and dad. He fixated on drawing tiny, perfectly formed circles. He stopped talking. Speech therapy followed, and occupational therapy, and lots of tears from mom and dad and boy. But finally, after years, something clicked and the little boy began to speak.

When the little boy was five and six and seven, and ten, he struggled with his letters. Written words didn't make any more sense to him than spoken words had a few years earlier. His mind wandered. He doodled pictures. The parents met with teachers to find out what they could do to help this incredibly creative, incredibly unique child fit into the world. Intensive classes followed to train his eyes, his hands, his mind. There were lots of tears from mom and dad and boy. But finally, after years, something clicked and the boy began to read.

This past summer, this not-so-little boy who had once struggled to look people in the face, to speak his thoughts, and to make sense of words on the page, has devoured (and would recommend to all the guys out there):

Dead Reckoning by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill
The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer
Hive by Mark Walden
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
The Daniel X series by James Patterson
The Monster Hunter International series by Larry Correia

This summer he also finished his first 100 page novel, which his friends are wild about. He is head of social media for his school's ASB. He is generous, hardworking. loves to crack jokes, and is still incredibly, creatively quirky.

There have been, and still are, miracles in his life (and I offer my sincere gratitude to my Heavenly Father for them). Whenever it seemed he stalled out in his progress or faced insurmountable problems, people or programs were put in his path to help him overcome them. But one of the biggest miracles in his life has been his own perseverance through tears and frustrations and feeling like there was no way he could do it.

So, to kids who struggle (whatever your struggle may be), you can overcome. You can persevere. You can make today a little better than yesterday, and tomorrow a little better than today.

And to parents who worry about their kids, whether you are just starting the parenting journey, or are many years into it, you know your child better than anyone else in the world. You are your child's best advocate. As you seek out opportunities to help your child, answers will open to you. Today can be better than yesterday. Tomorrow can be better than today.

Young or old, I hope you take the opportunity to make the most of this school year before you.

How Writing is like Parenting

I wrote my first novel in high school, but I didn’t return to writing until I was pregnant with my second child.  So throughout most of my serious writing (in high school I was just playing) I’ve also been parenting, and I’ve seen a lot of parallels between the two.

Here are a few that I’ve noticed.

It’s harder than it looks

When I was pregnant with my first child, I wasn’t worried about being a parent.  After all, I had tended a lot of kids, watched nieces and nephews grow up, and read the books.  If all that failed, I had my mom who was a baby pro.  How hard can a newborn be after all they sleep all the time? 

Then the baby comes.  And for some reason, newborns can’t sleep.  You think that sleep is so important that it would be to our evolutionary advantage for babies to be able to go to sleep, but they don’t.   Not without constant jiggling and walking around, and once I do finally get them sleeping, the minute I put them down, they wake up.  But the difficulties of parenting do not end there.  There is potty training, disciplining, teaching them to share and get along with others, worrying about them falling behind in school.  All of this is so much harder than I ever anticipated.   

It never ends, and it never gets easy.

Writing is the same way.  I’ve read hundreds of books and watched hundreds of movies.  I was taught basic grammar and composition in school, so writing a novel should be easy.

Only it’s not.  Putting words together to paint images and evoke emotion is so much harder than the pros make it look.  Weaving plot points together and creating believable characters is far more complex than I ever imagined.  And I find myself staring at that blinking curser for hours wondering why it is so hard to express what is in my head.  And I begin to realize that even those writers who I thought were horrible are actually kind of amazing.

Advice is everywhere, but finding the right advice is tricky  

There is a lot of writing advice and parenting advice.  There are books and articles by professionals.  Other struggling parents and aspiring writers offer their two cents as well, and even people without kids or have never tried to write anything beyond a term paper have advice to offer.   Great advice can be found anywhere, but sifting through that advice and finding what actually works for me is challenging.

I’ve noticed that for parenting and writing some of the advice is like gold, a lot of it has to be tweaked, some I can’t figure out how to apply, others while good I just can’t use because it is so contrary to my personality, but very little of it is completely useless.

But figuring out how to apply that advice is tricky.  So many times I read an article and it sounds so clear, but when I try to implement it in my parenting or writing, I realize how complicated it really is.  I’d love to have Super Nanny or an awesome professional writer as a mentor standing over me and helping me to see exactly how to make the advice work, but I don’t.  

So mostly I’m floundering, trying to sift through all the great advice and figuring out how to make it work.

Never stop learning and growing

The thing a miss the most about my life before children was coasting.  When I started something new like a job or college or even marriage, my life was thrown in an upheaval, but eventually I adapted, figured out what I need to do to be successful and then went back to coasting.  There was far more coasting than adapting, and that is what I like.  I only like conflict and tension in books not in real life.

But in parenting, I hardly ever get to coast.  My kids are constantly growing and changing and getting smarter and smarter, and never seem to stop challenging me.  I’ve had to learn to accept a life of constant upheaval and adaption.

Writing is no different.  Every time I think I’ve got this writing thing figured out, I realize I’ve only scratched the surface.  There is so much to learn and different techniques to perfect.  Every story provides new challenges, and I’ve realized I’ll never be done learning.  I’ll never be able to just coast.

And honestly, I think that is kind of awesome.  :)

Comparing myself to others is painful and pointless

There is a mother in every neighbor who seems perfect.  Her house is always spotless, her yard weed-less.  She always looks amazing and so do her kids.  Her children are popular, well-behaved, athletic, talented, and at the top of their class.   The rest of us just stare at her and wonder if her house is in some sort of time warp.  She must have more hours in the day then us mere mortals.

Sometimes other mothers get overly critical and try to tear her down, or they compare themselves to her and feel inadequate and inferior and bad about themselves.  It can make them feel insecure and question all the decisions they’ve made and doubt all their parenting choices.   I hate to admit it, but I’ve been there.  No good comes from all that negativity, just hurt feelings.  It is a waste of time and energy and isn’t going to make you a better mother.

Writing is no different.  There will always be another writer that seems to have it all together.  Writes better than me, writes more than me, reads more than me (coughcoughSheenacough).  But comparing myself to that writer is pointless, a waste of energy that should be put into my writing.  So the best thing to do is to say, “You go girl,” and move on. 

In the end, I gotta be me

This was a hard thing for me to realize as a mother.  I was so used to finding solutions to problems, that I wasn’t ready for problems that have no one right answer or no wrong answers or sometimes no answers at all.   There is no magic formula for parenting.

There is no one in the world exactly like me, and there are no other children that are exactly like mine.  And what works for one parent or a thousand or a million parents won’t necessarily work for me.  In the end of this crazy parenting thing, I have to find my own way.  Become the best mom that I can be with my own distinct values and perspective.  I can’t be the mom in the parenting books.  I can’t be like the perfect mom down the street or my sisters or my mother.  I have to be me, and adapt my parenting style to fit my very awesome and unique children.

Now I’m not saying not to read parenting books or seek parenting advice; that would be foolish.  I’m not so arrogant to think that I don’t have anything to learn.   There is great parenting advice out there that will make me a better parent.  I believe I should learn everything I can, but adapt that knowledge to fit me and my children.  Knowledge is how we develop as parents as people as writers.  But in the end, we have to embrace the part of us that makes us different and turn that difference into our greatest strength.

Writing is the same.  It is important to read and learn about how to write effectively, but in the end I need to use that knowledge to learn how to accentuate my own personal style.  We are all unique, and it is what makes me different that develops that hard to define voice that all agents are looking for, that part that makes every story, even ones that have been told a hundred time before, really unique.  

Writing what I love and the way I want it to be gives my writing authenticity and can really make it shine. So learn all you can about the craft of writing, but in the end develop your own style and embrace who you are, and your story will be amazing.

That’s all I got, but I’d love to hear any of your insights.  What have you learned from parenting or life that is applicable to writing?

~MaryAnn

Yes, You Should Have Gotten a Flu Shot

But don't worry, Ryan Gosling's got your back.

It's been a wild week in the McCanless household. Under-parented children, over-medicated adults, and some kind of pink sugar-related holiday stuck in the middle of it all. I don't know if it's the flu or the Tamiflu, but I've been in too big a haze to even read, let alone write. So I'm keeping it simple tonight with ten things I learned over the last week:

1. Husbands are awesome, and mine is extra-super-special awesome, but they can’t be trusted to buy Valentines. That's why Kid #2 had to pass out Dora the Explorer cards to his mostly-boy Preppy Kindergarten class. There wasn't even any sort of compensating candy attached.

(Corollary: I do not like the little boy who refused to accept my child's offering because it was "for girls". He's on my poop list. I usually have another name for this list, but the kid is five.)

2. One day of gorging yourself on candy while your mother dozes in a semi-comatose state, with only her own hacking cough keeping her from complete oblivion, won't hurt your health. At least not measurably, in the short term, as far as the aforementioned mother can tell.

3. Argentine ants like to kick me when I'm down.

4. A five-year-old can figure out how to do his own temporary tattoos. So if you keep murmuring something about "Maybe later, honey, mommy's really sick," while he keeps asking for you to help with one of his Valentines, you may discover the next morning that he's got a tattoo on his neck. This may not strike you as terrible until you take him to his school in the slightly rougher part of town, where a significant number of parents have their own, permanent, neck tattoos. You may still decide that you are too busy sucking air into your gunky lungs to bother washing it off for a full 3 days.

If you're treating your fever like a slot machine,
that might be the fever talking.

5. Adults aren't allowed to run fevers as high as kids do. When you see your temperature climbing over 103, the appropriate response is to call the doctor. It is not to waste all of the (surprisingly expensive) plastic covers for the ear thermometer by obsessively betting against yourself on how high you can go.

6. The forehead-kissing method of fever detection does not work if the one doing the detecting also has a fever. This should be obvious, but somehow... Well, I apologize to everyone who comes down with this illness because I thought Kid #2 was fine.

7. How I Met Your Mother is funny.
8. I am blessed with people in my life who are kind and caring and there in a pinch. I couldn't have survived this week without friends covering carpools for me and inviting the kids over for playdates, teachers forgiving forgotten homeworks and missed volunteer shifts, and my husband being all-around wonderful even when he got the two days of sore throat and sniffles that were his version of "sick." (Corollary: I married hardy stock.)

9. Kid #2 is five now and not a baby anymore, but he's still the best little nap companion in the world. I mean, I hope he feels better and stuff, but until then... SNUGGLES!!!

10. I totally, absolutely, 100%, without a doubt should have gotten a flu shot.

Once I've sprayed the office with Raid and cleaned up the thousands of tiny dead ants, I will begin clawing my way back out of the hole I sank into this week. So, in the spirit of overdone Internet memes...

Kids and Imagination: Reading vs. Television

Go ahead and say it.
I'm demonizing television.

There are nefarious trades to be made, trying to combine writing and motherhood. This is a story of the dark side. The sinister underbelly of the writing life. One mother’s desperate, shame-filled dependence on help from a poorly screened, under-qualified emergency babysitter.

You may know this shady childcare provider by the name of “television.”

It happened the summer before last, when Kid #1 was six. Kid #2 had fallen asleep after a morning-long tantrum. I was desperate to finish a writing assignment for a class. So when Kid #1 asked to watch TV, I caved. We’d had a rough morning, leaving him in that hard-to-please mood where everything was bound to be a battle. I could have suggested he read a book or play Legos. But I was desperate for some uninterrupted writing time, and I chose the low road: Netflix.

The streaming selection seemed abysmal until I stumbled upon  James and the Giant Peach. Everyone loves Roald Dahl! It’s animated! It’s about a peach! And a boy named James! Game on.

So I haven't read the book
or seen the movie.
Come on. It's a peach.
How is that not a safe bet?

Kid #1 slumped on the couch. I hunched over my laptop on the armchair. The movie played. I edited like mad. He was mesmerized, if the fact that he forgot to whine for snacks was any indication. I hyperfocused, he vegetated, and we found a homeostasis that seemed to work.

John doesn’t like me showing the kids anything he hasn’t pre-screened, and with good reason: I tune out boring stuff better than anyone I know. For me, kids’ television usually counts as boring stuff. (When I was pregnant with Kid #2, John suggested he play the Thomas the Tank Engine theme song in labor, as it takes only a hint of Thomas to render me comatose. In the end we went with the more natural soundtrack of screaming. So much for epidurals.)

James and the Giant Peach was like soft classical Muzak in the background, actually enhancing my concentration.

When Kid #1 shifted position for the first time in eighty minutes, I realized the credits were rolling. Then I took in the sight of tears streaming down his innocent but angry little cheeks.

“How could you make me watch that?” he demanded, trembling. “It was really scary!”

His body started shaking with huge sobs, which he punctuated with proclamations that he would have nightmares forever. I held him on my lap and planned my acceptance speech for the Worst Mother in History award.

I should have known. Director Henry Selick seems to have his finger on the pulse of my child's deepest fears. Earlier that year, a poster for Coraline had sparked months of Kid #1 talking about how much he didn’t want to watch that movie. He would choose random times to remind us that he wasn't ever watching Coraline—in the car, at dinner, ten minutes after I’d put him to bed. This was a good clue that I should stay away from things Selick directed, but I wasn’t thinking clearly that day.

Obviously, he should have watched Jimmy Neutron.

Or, okay, read a book. Or gone outside or something. Whatever. Let’s not dwell on what should have been.

The book that made
reading an addiction.

At the time of the Peach Debacle, Kid #1 was a newly independent reader. He’d dabbled in Magic Tree House books before getting hooked on The Secrets of Droon, by Tony Abbott. It's about the same reading level, but less formulaic and with a richer and more exciting fantasy world. He tore through them until the 13th one, then stopped partway through. Something about that book scared him. He didn’t get upset or have any nightmares. He just moved on to Dragonbreath.

I kept meaning to read the book myself to find out what scared him, but I never did. If I’m not attentive enough to watch a show while I’m in the room with my son or to notice him trembling with fear for an hour and a half, I’m probably not getting around to reading everything he reads.

Cut to a few months ago. At some point he’d gone back to Droon and finished the series, no longer scared. He’d also finished the whole Harry Potter series, and Dragonbreath, and Diary of Wimpy Kid, and Big Nate, and at least a hundred others I haven’t kept track of. He reads his favorites over and over and over again. When he found an old copy Charlie and the Chocloate Factory on our bookshelf, he fell in love with that, too.

The back of the book had pictures of other Dahl covers, one of which was James and the Giant Peach.

When Kid #1 saw this, he was not pleased with the reminder of his unspeakable trauma, or with the idea that Dahl could somehow be responsible for it. He told me again, just so I’d be sure not to forget, that James and the Giant Peach was VERY SCARY.

“You know, Buddy, I bet the book isn’t scary,” I said. “Wasn’t it really how the people looked that upset you? If you read the book you can imagine them however you want. You’d probably enjoy it.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe,” he said. “But it’s too late now.”

He’s a fatalistic eight-year-old.

This movie got great reviews,
and I doubt it's scary to most kids.
My kid ain't most kids

This can''t even scare a McCanless.

Every parent has heard ad nauseam that reading is good and screen time is bad. I’m in no position to lecture here. But this experience gave me a new appreciation of what books can offer, beyond the whole brain cells and IQ thing. (Because let's face it, that’s been done to death.)

Kids are great little regulators. From the time they’re born, that’s one of the main things their nervous systems have to do in addition to crying and eventually taking apart electronics. They learn to regulate their emotions, regulate their expression of those emotions, regulate their responses to stimuli like sounds and sights and smells and touches. They are little regulating machines, and their imaginations are the foremen of the whole operation. They can decide how to picture something, how much to absorb, just how violent a violent scene is and just how mean a mean aunt is. A book without aid of imagination is about as engaging as a pile of paper, and as easy to put down.

Contrast that with movies and TV shows, where the always-moving pictures capture and keep their attention. My kids can’t even tear their eyes away from the televised State of the Union Address. I’m confident a transcript would not hold the same appeal unless we turned it into paper airplanes.

On screen, every detail is dramatized in a way that kids can’t shut out, and sometimes—even when you least expect it—it’s too much.

So here's my advice: If, in a moment of weakness, you decide to buy peace and quiet with television, think twice before sacrificing a great book in the process.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Kid #2 has had a bit too much Kung Fu Dino Posse...

The Other Reason I Sometimes Don't Write

We all know I love Vampire Diaries which sometimes keeps me from my writing. But there is another thing that constantly takes me away, okay three things.

An awesome husband who is immensely supportive. A pale-blue eyed girl who is a fierce Karate girl and has the sweetest heart I've ever known. And a tiny brown eyed girl who loves pigs and whose eyes blaze when you cross her and gives the best kisses when you please her.

My little brown-eyed girl is in the hospital today. Nothing too serious, but serious enough that it has me thinking about what is really important.

I would love to be a published writer. To make up stories for a living. I love reading and writing and sharing these stories in my head.

But the biggest bonus to being a professional writer is being able to work from home. To be there when my kids come home from school. To take breaks with them to work on homework. To be a mother and a writer.

So I don't regret time lost by playing evil princesses (yes some princesses can be evil) or cuddling on the couch watching an episode of My Little Pony for the twentieth time or all the cookie making and outings and birthday parties for stuffed animals.

Because the only thing I've ever wanted to be more than a writer is a mother.

~MaryAnn

On Gossip Girl and Growing Up

or Why I Haven't Gotten Anything Done Since Christmas

We television lovers know the holiday season, despite its joys, can be a desolate time. After eating yourself into a coma at Thanksgiving, you plop on the couch and... gasp! Re-runs. You can no longer lose yourself in an addictive, magical world full of perfect-looking 20-year-olds pretending to be unsupervised 17-year-olds exchanging clever sexual innuendo with 30-year-olds pretending to be immortal 22-year-olds who drink scotch like alcoholic 40-year-olds.

In other words, Vampire Diaries went on Winter Break. (Until last night!)

My older sister came to the rescue this year when she told me she couldn't wait to catch up on Gossip Girl while she wrapped presents.

Really? Gossip Girl? Isn’t that about high school students who, ah, gossip a lot? Secretly I thought, “Okay, sis, you've passed the 4-0 mark and you're watching high school drama that doesn't even have vampires. That's just sad.” And then, equally secretly, I checked Netflix to see if they had it streaming.

"Mind-blowingly inappropriate" - Parents Television Council.
What more endorsement could I need?

They did. They do. I watched the pilot while wrapping ten gazillion Legos. I'm hooked.

I'm not going to tell you how many episodes I've watched since Christmas. Fellow Proser MaryAnn is kindly waiting for me to send her the next batch of my behind-schedule novel for critque, and I will lose her respect forever if she finds out the actual numbers behind my procrastination.

So I'll just say this: After a non-stop writing focus through December, I took a break for Christmas and getting back in the swing of things feels like trying to hop on a moving zoo train filled with angry lions. So much easier to watch it ride off into the sunset without me while I sit on this comfy bench and fire up the Netflix.

Moreover, I really, really, need to see Nate and Serena get together. Or Nate and anyone. I don’t care. I’ll watch Nate kiss a tree. (I avoid reflection on what a creepy old lady this makes me by watching another episode.)

Still, as I sink into another 42 minutes of glammed-up teenagers non-chalantly ordering martinis at an exclusive Manhattan nightclub, the never-ending novel is in the back of my mind—specifically, a conversation I've had several times about my genre. It goes something like this:

Friend: What are you writing?
Me: Urban fantasy, I guess. Or maybe paranormal romance. I'm not sure where it fits yet. I don't know if it's quite a romance, but it's not quite gritty enough for UF. (Translation: My writing style just doesn't match up to the first-person, action-packed exploits of a bad-ass heroine with a tramp stamp.)
Friend: Why don't you write young adult?
Me: But I don't want to write teenagers.
Friend: Just make your characters 17 and then find a way to get school and parents out of the picture.
Me: That seems a little sneaky. Plus I want my characters to be able to get naked if and when I learn how to write a decent sex scene.
Friend: Forget that. Skip the sex and write YA. Your book sounds more YA. I like YA better than most adult books, anyway.

I write adults because I want my characters to be able to travel on a whim, buy and sell real estate, order liquor at a bar, have adulterous affairs, and pay their own bills.

I've never had a martini. Sad.

Photo: Microsoft Office Images

I turn on the television and find out—news to me—these are all things that teenagers do! Who knew?

And there's the crux of why I can't turn my characters into teenagers. Teenagers are kids, and kids shouldn't be doing the things my characters do, let alone what TV teens do. I think that Gossip Girl, as fun as it is, isn't really about kids, and it shouldn't even be for kids. What happened to kids having a different set of behaviors, a different set of rules to live within? Where's the drama in being a teenager if you don't have a curfew?

Sometimes I wonder: Are we portraying teenagers as grownups because they relate to it, or because adults do? Is it that we "grown-ups" really aren't so different from our teenage selves, except that losing the holiday weight has gotten fifty times harder? I don't wanna grow up... except for the money, sex, and alcohol please. Those are pretty sweet. But I'll keep the youthful skin tone, thank you. Whose fantasy is this?

One of the themes that makes Gossip Girl great—that keeps it from being just parties and fashion and musical beds—is characters constantly making mistakes that force them to question who they are becoming. Are their friends just stops on the way to a greater, more important destination, or are they the connections that ground them? What is the difference between having a social network that can get you into any party and having a friend who will come over in the middle of the night? They question their values, they question the roles that other people play in their lives, they flirt with independence and push people away, and they do stupid, hurtful things and then try to make amends.

They attempt to reinvent themselves, only to be haunted by their own most deep-seated beliefs about who they are.

Chace Crawford. Sigh.
Photograph by Christopher Peterson

I was always more Jan Brady than Serena van der Woodsen, but adulthood happened: I’m married with two kids, plenty of bills, and a doctor who now answers my physical complaints with, "Well, you're getting to that age..." Yet no matter how much reality I throw at myself, I’ll always relate to that person who longs for adventure and excitement and fairy tales. I’ll never stop being someone who would trade my right arm to be five inches shorter, I may never stop getting zits at the worst times, and I will definitely never stop trying to blossom into a different flower, trying to shape who I am into who I want to be. It’s in my nature. Perpetual teenager.

So bring it on, Gossip Girl. I’m with you all the way. 
And if I had a daughter, I might even let her watch, too... When she was 30.


But for my own writing, I'll stick with characters following the rules I grew up with, which means if they want to take adult risks, they'd better be adults.

XOXO
~Sarah

The Hack Job

After wrapping Christmas presents with my four-year-old (she’s my tape girl, and yes our presents look professionally wrapped), I made the mistake of leaving out the scissors while I started a load of laundry.

Three minutes later, she calls to me. “Mom, come look at this.”

I walk in and see her holding a lock of hair out with the pair of scissors positioned to cut. There are a few beautiful dark curls piled on the carpet in front of her.

I did my best to stay calm. “What are you doing sweetie.”

“My bangs are in my face, so I’m cutting them.” The lock she holds is nowhere near her bangs, but she’s doing her best.

Editing or Hacking?

Right now I’m knee deep in line edits. And I feel like a little girl trying to trim the hair out of my eyes, holding a lock of hair ready to cut, but unsure if that lock is even part of the problem.

Editing is tough. There is always the fear of editing out the voice, but I’m not delusional enough to believe that my fingers tap out golden, perfect prose as they masterfully move across the keyboard. I need to clean up my prose: get rid of those pesky words that don't add value, smooth out those awkward phrases, and seek and destroy all needless repetition.

I need my manuscript to be at a professional level without removing all traces of the quirks that make my writing my writing. I believe a strong, unique voice doesn't come from what is done right, but what is brilliantly done wrong.

Striking the balance is tough, and I'd certainly like some professional help. But if I want to be a professional writer, I need to learn how to write like one. So I’m stuck with trial and error.

Time to get out those scissors.

Line Editing Advice From Someone Who is Admittedly Just Learning


Before I edit, I always save an unedited version. So if I hack my voice to shreds, I can always go back to the original with nothing lost but time.

I always trust my instincts. If the word feels like it belongs there, I keep it.

Here are some things I look for when I'm editing. I usually do a "find" for these words or phrases, and read over the sentences a few times trying to decide if the word should be there or just somehow snuck in.

1. Meaningless modifiers like actually, somewhat, kind of, nearly, usually, almost, etc.

2. Adverbs, especially the ly ones. I do an "ly" search.

3. That

4. "There was" or "It was" at the beginning of sentences.

5. If you are doing first person or close third any filtering phrases like "he thought,” "he felt," or "he saw” can usually be eliminated.

6. "Was verb-ing." Usually the "was" can be removed and the verb changed to past tense.

7. Only, really, and still. Sure these may fit other categories, but I use them a lot, so I need to hyperaware of them. Otherwise they will be in every paragraph.

8. Catch words and phrases I seem to use too much like cold, chills, stomach tightening, etc.

At the end of editing, I read the whole thing backwards sentence by sentence to catch grammar mistakes. I’m sure I always miss one or two. :)

I also hear reading it aloud will help identify flow and rhythm problems. I'll be doing that for this manuscript.

Editing Advice from Professionals

SF author David Louis Edelman gives great line editing advice.

This advice from professional editor Lisa Torcasso Downing doesn't have to do with cutting out wordage but are things to look for in an editing pass. "Writing the reaction before the causal action" is one I found a lot in my MS, but all the advice is gold. Check it out.

If you have any other suggestions, please do share. I need all the help I can get.

Come on, give a girl some editing advice before I butcher my bangs. :)

~MaryAnn

ETA: Freelance editor Kristy G. Stewart stopped by and added a link to some great editing advice. I'm linking it here, cause it is well worth the read. Thanks Kristy. :)

Language, Metaphor, and 2nd Grade

Today I present, for your consideration, three seemingly unrelated incidents:

Nerdology 

Perusing the AbsoluteWrite message boards for a chance to offer one of my brilliant, life-changing opinions, I came across a person who asked if he had been justified in correcting a friend’s grammar on her website, where she claimed “over 20 years experience.” He believed an excess over a numerical value should be expressed with "more than."

Cranky responders pointed out that good grammar never makes you as popular as you think it will. I can vouch for this. I didn’t end a single sentence (written OR spoken) with a preposition in all of high school, but the boys never came a-knocking.

The friendlier replies were along the lines of, “Technically, you’re right, but it really doesn't matter.”

Somehow the answer seemed incomplete. I love rules, I love grammar, I love precision, and yet... And yet. I could only think about how fluid language is, how much awesomesauce you can miss by trying to put every word in its proper place.

Oh, the Humanity

My recipe guru, Aviva Goldfarb of The Six O’Clock Scramble (www.thescramble.com), has a recipe for savory sweet potato pie that is sublime. I have never liked sweet potatoes, but I can barely stop myself from eating this entire pie in one sitting.

Earlier this week, dinnertime crept up on me and I had nothing in the house except baking ingredients - flour, butter, sugar, eggs - and 3 sweet potatoes. It was the perfect excuse to serve savory sweet potato pie for dinner, along with a side of boxed macaroni and cheese I found at the very back of the pantry, which may or may not have been past its expiration date; I wasn't going to ruin everything by checking. I declared this, “Orange Night.” I presented Orange Night with great fanfare, despite the fact that the oven sprang a gas leak halfway through cooking the pie and it was a miracle we neither exploded nor passed out from the fumes.

In retrospect, I should have turned the oven off and ordered in. But that's not my point here.

THIS, I would have understood

Kid #1 is my picky eater. He's getting better, but this was a bad day. He was in a sour mood, and that sweet potato pie was the most disgusting thing he had ever seen. EVER. When he finally tasted it, the gagging started immediately. After a few false alarms, he managed to swallow the first bite, but not the second. He regurgitated that and subsequent bites into little piles of masticated sweet potato, amply seasoned with salty tears. We gave up and sent him to bed.


No One Understands Genius

Yesterday was my volunteer day in my older son's second grade class, where I helped out by correcting papers. One worksheet was a simple vocabulary test, in which the children were told to fill in the bubble with the correct definition for each word.

Now, an aside for shameless braggery: Kid #1 is my literary kid. He would rather read than do anything else, including eat, sleep, go outside, or interact with people. He's currently on his second run-through of the Harry Potter series because we failed to provide him with new books fast enough.
Sometimes he’ll ask me what a word means and I’ll have to look it up, because vocabulary has never been my strong suit. I've been figuring when he gets to the pesky analogies on the SATs, he'll do just fine.

The words were really basic. For example, "to taste." What 2nd grader doesn't know the meaning of taste? That's hardly a vocabulary challenge.

Except... The possible answers were:

1. to feel 
2. to wait for
3. to take a bite of 

I bet you see where this is going. My brilliant, literary, vocabulary-master kid got the definition of “taste” wrong. He chose #1, “to feel.”

When I was a kid, other kids used to try to convince each other that trees scream when you cut them down, and humans just can’t hear it. I sometimes tried to imagine what a tree’s terrified scream would sound like. Well, now I know. It’s the sound my heart made when I marked this problem wrong.

Every word has a meaning, or a range of meanings, that we try to encapsulate in definitions. It is always thrilling to find just the right word for what you want to say. Precision is everything in communication; "navy blue 2000 Honda Civic hatchback" gives a much clearer image than "car." What's magical about language, though, is that you don't have to be literal to be precise. Words have associations, images, and metaphor built right into them. When I say that after my second baby was born I looked like an old mattress tied around the middle, isn't that a more precise image than saying I had thirty pounds to lose?

For my son, taste is a feeling. That sweet potato pie felt like a nightmare in his mouth. The texture made him gag more than the sweetness or any individual reaction of a taste bud. Certainly for him, “taking a bite of” something doesn’t convey the horror of tasting it when it’s sweet potato pie. The bite isn’t the problem, it’s the chewing and the swallowing - and all the feeling that goes on during that terrible ordeal between teeth and throat.

Did I write more than two thousand words of my novel yesterday, or did I write over two thousand words? If I want grammatical precision, I wrote "more than." But what if the joy of creation was like flying away on a magic carpet into storyland, and what if paragraphs and chapters were the foothills and mountains in a fertile landscape of words? In that case, “over two thousand words” isn’t just an acceptable mistake. It’s exactly, precisely right.

Unless you’re in second grade.

~Sarah

P.S. I edited this post from the original when my husband vetoed "The Beav" as a nickname for our son. He doesn't veto much, so I try to be accommodating when I can. That's what makes me such a GREAT WIFE. Just saying, honey. Christmas is coming...

Wishing for Sleep

I have a confession to make: I am too tired to write this post. I am also too tired to drive, cook, operate heavy machinery, shop, converse, or guide the emotional development of a school-aged child.
 
I’m tired, I’m cranky, and I’m looking for someone to blame.

Suspect #1: Face-Cat

Face-Cat, a.k.a. Annie

I see an allergist with alarming regularity, given that she has been unable to find a single allergy. Last time I was there, I suggested a new theory.

“I think I’m allergic to cats,” I said.

“Oh?” She looked almost hopeful. "Why do you say that?"

“Well here's the thing: One of my two cats started sleeping on my face a few months ago. I think it coincided with my snoring getting worse."

“The cat is in the bed with you?”

“On. My. Face.”

The allergist gave me that look. I know the look. The one that says maybe you shouldn’t be letting your cat sleep on your face. People give me the same look when she parades along the kitchen counter or licks her delicate bits while sitting on one of our place mats.

“I can’t lock her out of the room or she’ll scratch at the door all night long and I won’t get any sleep,” I said.

My allergist is smart enough to recognize a reasonable argument. She just nodded. “The cat probably isn’t helping matters, but it doesn’t mean you’re allergic,” she said. “No one should have a cat on their face.”

I took that to mean that she did not have a miracle cure for COFS (Cat-on-face syndrome).

Suspect #2: Furnace-kid

My second child always seems to have a fever. The only way to know for sure (thermometers are for wussies) is to kiss the exact center of his forehead. This is his “cool spot.” If it’s hot, he’s sick. If not, he’s fine - but the rest of him will still be approximately 211 degrees.

After years of sleep independence, he’s recently begun visiting our bed at night. This kid is sneaky and quiet. I don’t know he’s joined us until I wake up, drenched in sweat, my body precariously balanced on the very edge of the king-sized bed. As far as I can tell, my back is pressed against the sun.

I try to scoot him over toward John, but that just wakes him up.

Yes, that's MY BED he's in

I’ve been sleeping with my mouth wide open, snoring like an old man, in a micro-climate of approximately 211 degrees. Water, I need water. I've just barely formed the thought when -

“Mommy can I have some water?” Furnace kid reaches across me to my glass of water. He coughs, snorts, sniffles, coughs again, and takes a drink.

Well I’m not drinking that.

I go to the bathroom and rinse out the glass, because at 1:00 am I somehow believe that a good rinse kills 99% of cold-causing germs.

I take furnace-kid back to his bed.

"Mommy," he says, caressing my cheek with his hot little fingers, "I might come back to your bed later, okay?"

“I want you to try to stay in your bed, Buddy."

“Why?”

“Mommy’s tired. She needs to sleep by herself. She needs her sleep in her own bed.”

“But I need my sleep in your bed.”

Touché.

I must make it back to bed, because that's where I am next time I wake up.

Suspect #3: Barf-Cat

Barf-Cat, a.k.a. Eugenie

Every cat owner knows this sequence of sounds:

1. The meow. 
2. Raspy, strained coughing.
3. Retching.
4. Rhythmic gagging.
5. Splat. 

Here’s the rub: Only steps 4 and 5 are guaranteed. When barf-cat barfs in the middle of the night, she wakes us up with step 4.

The sound invades my sleep, and then my first thought is, Crap, she’s barfing, gonna have to clean that up. My conscious mind makes the connection that the sound is coming from THE BED, and suddenly I bolt upright, heart racing, and throw barf-cat across the room mid-gag. This usually results in some degree of injury to me or the covers, as barf-cat tries to hold on. I can't really blame her. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be thrown while barfing. Then again, I have never been so rude as to vomit on someone else’s bed while they were in it.

Hearing the splat, I fall asleep and hope I remember to look where I step in the morning.

Suspect #4: The DREAM

I don’t dream much, or at least I don’t remember many of my dreams. But there’s one dream I have every night between 4 and 5 am. Every. Single. Night.

I am in a car, or in a class, or on a train, or at the movies. I have to go to the bathroom with a desperation unlike anything my body has ever known. I am fighting back tears, certain I can't hold it another second. Something tickles my throat*; I cough and nearly bust the dam.

Finally, I escape. A bathroom! God Bless Plumbing. Let the trumpets blare, my happy ending is here.

Except... I can't go. My bladder's a burning building, but all the fire exits are locked.

I’m dying here, I’m bursting at the seams, I’m a water balloon about to pop, and I can’t go. It’s some kind of medical emergency I don’t understand. I try to relax, take some deep breaths. I've just been holding it too long. Okay, panic subsiding. I can feel--

Chinese Lantern, a.k.a. Bladder Cherry  
You didn't want a REAL picture, did you?  

I wake up and say a small prayer of thanks that my body knows the difference between dream and reality.

Out of bed, and off to the bathroom. Where I will need to wash the cat vomit off my foot. And now that I know where it is I might as well clean it up.

During my brief absence from bed, face-cat has taken over my whole pillow. I move her, but as I am drifting back to sleep I hear her purring on my ear and then my whole head is soft and warm and my first snore jolts me awake.

The last thing I hear before sleep overtakes me is two little furnace feet padding down the hall.

Does Sarah have a point?

If you've made it this far, you are probably wondering what any of this has to do with writing.

To be honest, it's a tenuous connection at best. Hey, I'm tired. But here goes: Going over my manuscript, I've noticed I have a tendency to dwell on my main character's sleep habits. A lot. I write about her taking naps, about her falling asleep, about her dreams, about her waking up, about her drifting off again. I've probably cut 10,000 words of sleep-related prose.

So here's my writing advice for the day: If your characters are tired, maybe you should put down your pen and take a nap. You probably need the sleep, and your readers will thank you.

~Sarah

*That would be dander from face-cat.