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The Women of Weinsberg. (King Conrad III occupied the town Weinsberg in 1140. The women carry their husbands after being granted to leave and allowed to take their belongings.) Lithograph, c. 1910. Sarotti-chocolate picture.

The “Problem” With Strength and Femininity

So a couple of weeks ago there was a little cluster of complaints again online about why can’t we just have women characters embracing their femininity instead of doing all these hero things.

This could be puzzling at first, because a lot of these complaints come from folks who also espouse things like “motherhood is the ultimate heroic act” which seem to suggest that femininity can be heroic, but of course the actual meaning is about traditional gender roles.

And this is boggling to me, because women can be pretty darned heroic while being extremely feminine.

The Women of Weinsberg. (King Conrad III occupied the town Weinsberg in 1140. The women carry their husbands after being granted to leave and allowed to take their belongings.) Lithograph, c. 1910. Sarotti-chocolate picture.
The Women of Weinsberg.
Lithograph, c. 1910.

I’ve covered a number of historical examples before, so this time let’s take the legendary women of Weinsberg. When their town’s conqueror announced the men would all be executed but the women could leave with whatever valuables they could carry on their own backs, the women marched out carrying their husbands. How many of those husbands, d’ya think, were up there piggyback thinking, “Geez, I wish my wife was more demurely feminine”? Or do you think he might have at that moment valued her extremely feminine protectiveness, strength, and even stubborn defiance of authority?The “Problem” With Strength and Femininity

"I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives." Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY

The Disproportionate View of the Negative

Two days ago I got the notification that the NYC Midnight Short Story contest final results were up. I delayed opening the email, because I knew my third round story had not been as strong as my first two and I didn’t expect to do well. I finally clicked through, scanned just enough to confirm that there had not been a miracle, and I closed the page. Another email came with my feedback — every story in the contest gets feedback from multiple judges — and I didn’t even open it. I was busy, it wasn’t going anywhere, and I already knew there were problems with my story.

Yesterday morning, I opened the feedback email. Their feedback format is to collate the positive notes first, followed by the collated critical notes. I read the first couple of sentences on what the judges liked, then read down — and I realized that I was barely skimming, skipping over all the nice compliments to look for the coming negatives on what the judges felt needed work.The Disproportionate View of the Negative

Start Panicking

Notebooks & Writers

I haven’t handwritten stories since… elementary school, I think. /thinks back/ Oops, no, there was some terrible self-insertion fanfic I wrote during pre-algebra back in middle school, before I knew that even had a name (because we didn’t have public internet yet, for which I thank God, or I might have posted it). Anyway, I adopted typing for storytelling early on, as soon as we had a Tandy computer from Radio Shack.

I do know some writing friends who handwrite their first drafts, however, and quite a lot who handwrite their outlines and notes. And there is evidence that writing by hand helps you retain more, if taking notes, or be more creative, if inventing.

Energel Pen affiliate link to Amazon
And it comes in glorious colors.

I resisted. But eventually I found a pen I loved, in an elegant metal form which feels so classy, which can be refilled so it’s environmentally responsible, and I discovered that I actually don’t dislike writing by hand nearly so much as I dislike writing with lame pens. A quality instrument made all the difference. I got a notebook, and then another, and I filled them with plot notes, lines to be tucked into dialogue, ideas, etc.

Notebooks & Writers
narrow snowy track through woods

A Winter Hike

narrow snowy track through woods
traversing a slope on the Knobstone Trail

Today the husband and I went for a walk in the woods.

Okay, it wasn’t a walk, it was a hike. We did about 8.5 miles of the Knobstone Trail, with our two dogs. (Yes, on-leash, of course, and of course we packed out all solid waste. We’re responsible people.) It was a chilly 20 degrees or so, and it snowed during part of the hike, which made it even better.

We started alongside a lake with singing ice. I didn’t catch it on video, but this is what I’m talking about:

A Winter Hike
Jodie Whittaker in 13th Doctor announcement photo

Doctor Who, Writing Female Characters, and Equality.

Jodie Whittaker in 13th Doctor announcement photo
Jodie Whittaker in 13th Doctor announcement photo

On the one hand, I can’t believe we need to have this discussion of how to write female protagonists and balance. On the other, since clearly we do need it, let’s have it.

With the announcement of the 13th Doctor as a female regeneration, the internet slightly exploded. I was actually at a fandom convention during the announcement and heard not only discussion of the announcement itself, but of reactions to the announcement.

We’re going to ignore those who were horrified to discover their Doctor now has girl cooties. They’re easy to ignore — or just borrow for humor, where they’re most useful. Anyway, the haters are vocal but seem to be a minority, or maybe I just have a better-curated network, and I don’t intend to waste blog space on that sort of thing.

But one repeated protest I heard repeatedly in several less-hysterical discussions was, now that the Doctor is a female, the male companions will be written down to idiocy so that she looks clever, and so everything will be less cool and the storytelling will suffer. I found myself saying or typing the same thing repeatedly, so let me just save time and put it here.

This is indeed a huge problem, only the problem is not the Doctor’s personal plumbing.Doctor Who, Writing Female Characters, and Equality.

"Male author" and "male doctor" are not offensive terms. It's simply a way to differentiate them from normal authors and doctors.

A Little Feminist Check Re Discrimination

I botched it tonight.

Someone asked our panel about writing in a traditionally male-dominated (both as authors and heroes) genre, as a woman. And several women writers were invited to answer, but with the clock ticking on the last moments of our chat time.

I was discombobulated by trying to formulate both a comprehensive and brief answer under the countdown, and even more so by another panelist’s previous assertion that white males were the cause of the downfall of society — a statement I found untrue as well as unfair to the white male panelists sitting on either side of me at the time, not freaking out about being outnumbered on the panel.A Little Feminist Check Re Discrimination

THREE disposable diapers abandoned in beautiful green forest. THREE.

Gross! Parents, Seriously.

Okay, warning, today is a rant.

I’ve had a few people think it was “dirty” that I have dogs in my house, or that I touch them regularly in my job as an animal trainer. Okay, not everyone likes dogs, that’s fine, and I guess if you’re seriously weirded out about them you can imagine airborne cooties flying through the room or something. (Though the service dog under the table is not a risk to your food and isn’t going away.) But the weird thing is, the people who voice such protests say nothing to or about parents doing actual gross stuff with their kids in eating areas.

I have long been disgusted by parents who change diapers on restaurant tables. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE, how is that okay, and it’s not like there aren’t legally-mandated changing tables in the restrooms just a few steps away. But I guess they figure they’re busy and special, and anyway no one should be stupid enough to eat off a restaurant table or have their eyes open while eating. If I didn’t want to see exactly how much nastier strained peas are post-processing, I shouldn’t have chosen a restaurant which serves families. And anyway, breast-fed babies’ diapers are so much better than formula-fed babies’ diapers, see the difference? so they don’t know how I could be upset.

Gross! Parents, Seriously.
The Songweaver's Vow

Revisions In Progress

The Songweaver's VowSo I’ve been chatting on social media this month about The Songweaver’s Vow, sharing tidbits for #WIPjoy. Right now I’m throat-deep in revisions, which is always a challenge but especially so with this book, as I did not write it linearly (start to finish, straight through).

I know a lot of writers who can write out of order. Apparently I am not one of them. These revisions are kicking my butt like… well, like Vikings trashing a fishing town.Revisions In Progress

crowd of business people and the woman in the red dress, from the Matrix

Writing Women.

Let’s talk about lady protagonists.

No, this isn’t another rant about needing more strong female characters, nor the problems with Strong Female Characters (TM). (That’s an easy problem to solve, really: you write good characters, and some of them are female. Done. Not every character needs to carry the impossible weight of universal representation.)

No, I’m going to talk about just the number of females, and my own part in the current state of affairs. Yes, this was partly prompted by Jo Eberhardt’s “The Problem With Female Protagonists,” but I think I’m going to add some additional data and personal takes.

First, let’s look at a statistical truth: There are more books and films with male protagonists than female. (The very fact that we call out but-look-a-female-lead! is proof of it being outside the norm. Nobody needs to point out gravity, because we’re all used to it.) But because we’re all neurologically programmed to notice the abnormal more than the normal, when we do start seeing “diversity,” it feels bigger than it is.

This is why research shows that if 17% of a given group is female, the men in the group report an equal number of men and women, and when the number of females reaches 33%, the men report a majority of women. The “excess” of women over the “norm” is what’s perceived, not an actual count.

Writing Women.
PALACE PUPPIES as KITSUNE-MOCHI

Seems Legit.

There is a phenomenon in which some skeevy lowlife steals a title and often a manuscript from a published book and re-publishes them on Amazon in his own account, trying to fool readers into buying his “edition” of the story and stealing royalties from the author.

Most of the time, though, they do a better job of matching a more plausible cover.Seems Legit.