What Happened Last Weekend: The Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop

Last week I was lucky enough, due to someone else’s cancellation (thanks, Anna!) to attend the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop at the University of Dayton. I sat through some wonderful, encouraging and challenging presentations on everything from finding an agent to finding your “voice” as a writer and using humor as a means to address heartbreak. The host of this last seminar was Wade Rouse, who read excerpts from his memoirs about growing up – and coming out - gay in the Midwest; after some discussion we were given a 20 minute challenge to write in a humorous manner about something that we feared. I was happy with what resulted from my own frantic scribblings so I polished it up a bit and posted it on this blog on the evening of the day I had written it. So far, so good.

The conference was exhilarating, inspiring and best of all FUN – I enjoyed meeting so many people interested in the craft of writing. I collected a stack of cards with email addresses, websites, and blogs. Everyone was excited to talk about publishing successes they’d had, and willing to share their work experiences. The spirit was great, the camaraderie was amazing. I felt encouraged. I was charged up and ready to write more. What a great experience.

So as you may imagine I was surprised to get home on Saturday evening and read the following comment someone posted after the blog entry about my Mom that was the result of Mr. Rouse’s writing exercise:

Didn't read your blog -- but love how you've managed to mention it in every Erma Bombeck session I've been in. Kudos and congrats on your blatant self-promotion. It's impressive. Again, props to you!

I was crushed. Completely shot down. Almost terminally embarrassed. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Had I been that obnoxious? Had I made a complete fool of myself? One person evidently thought so, and that was enough to shake my hard-won confidence. I’ve worked for years to be less socially backward, stupid, nerdy and geeky than I always thought I was, tried diligently to maintain conversations without the benefit of a dog or cat between myself and the person I was addressing – and here I’d unwittingly blown a cardinal rule of conference etiquette and some good person, evidently thinking to perform a service for the masses, took it upon themselves to let me know. Overnight my anxiety reached epic proportions and by about 3 a.m. I was considering moving overseas and setting up shop in a hut in Madagascar, only the volcano in Iceland was already messing up travel schedules.

Let me explain. We were invited to introduce ourselves when we stood up to ask presenters a question. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t. But on the three occasions when I did, and also mentioned the name of my blog, it was because the presenter had spoken of his or her pets – evidently a favorite subject for many writers - and I hoped if possible to strike a chord which might motivate some like-minded to folks to read the things I had written. Besides, we were invited to tell what we had done, what we had published. I wasn’t the only one. I was hoping for some constructive criticism. I did not expect vitriol. I did not bargain for anonymous, waspish snide remarks made by someone who lacked the courage to simply come up to me at the conference and say “wouldya shut the hell up, already?”

Analytical (and please note the very apropos first four letters of that word!) worry wart that I am, I can’t just let it go without a fight. Therefore, I find it necessary to pick this little bit of cyberspace excrement to pieces and give it the slow death it deserves.

According to my blog, the comment is from “M2.” M2? That’s not a name. That sounds like a pseudonym from some vintage cold war spy thriller. I can just picture “M2” sitting in front of ancient rickety table, pounding out smudged letters on crackling onionskin paper using a manual typewriter with broken keys in a cold little room somewhere on the east side of London, the room illuminated only by a single uncovered lightbulb flickering and buzzing at the end of a frayed wire. The haze from half a dozen stubbed-out cigarettes hovers in a cloud over this unhappy individual’s head as people on the other side of the wall rattle the plaster with an argument or loud sex, or maybe both. M2, indeed.

“I haven’t read your blog” – M2’s loss. Wrong thing to announce, since I’d give the complaint more credence if he/she had read it.

“Blatent self-promotion” – Hello? Speakers were promoting their books or website services. Aspiring writers were passing out cards, authors in the crowd were waving around their self-published books, everyone was asking everyone “what do you write?” “What have you published?” There was LOTS of self promotion going on, in case M2 didn’t notice (maybe no one chose to speak to M2?) M2, if you don’t believe in yourself enough to get your name out there, no one else is going to do it for you. Furthermore, to swipe a snippet of dialog from Pirates of the Caribbean – Jack Sparrow is being held by the soldiers, one of whom says “you’re the worst pirate I’ve ever heard of,” and Jack, undaunted as ever snaps back “but you HAVE heard of me!” M2 DID remember my blog.

In a wonderful seminar called Making Them Laugh On a Wednesday Morning, USA Today columnist Craig Wilson said someone once came up to him in the supermarket and announced “you’re a jerk!” and then walked away. If Craig Wilson can take it, I can.

So M2, if your plan was to hurt my feelings, you temporarily succeeded. But only temporarily. I stepped back into my normal persona on Sunday (or at least what passes for “normal” around here!); with my husband’s encouragement I climbed back into the saddle and brought home the first blue horse show ribbon of the season. In a phone call, a client whose dog had gone through a sudden illness that ended in euthanasia despite our best efforts waved aside my sympathetic wish that I could have done more to help and said “don’t worry, we’ll be seeing you again.” They had not lost faith in me. And a sixteen year old girl whom I’ve been mentoring, - a new mother with a passel of odds stacked against her – called me, excited that she’d been the only one to volunteer to dissect a cat in science class, and said “I figured I’d better do it now, if I wanted to be a vet like you.”

I don’t have to “lift up mine eyes to the hills” for my help – it’s all around me. What a blessing!

And as you see…I am still writing. Climbed back into THAT saddle, too.

By the way, M2 – what have YOU written?