Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Of Pears and Cupcakes and Essays about Cats
I am one of 500 writers who submitted essays to the Erma Bombeck essay contest.
The rules are that you can submit in one of two categories – humor or human interest. Humor is a tough game if you hang around the Erma Bombeck crowd. I’ve been lucky enough to have a couple of pieces published by Erma Bombeck Writing Workshop, but I’ve never cracked the nut of winning the essay contest. So, I opted for human interest.
I went for broke. I wrote about my cat.
The submission was due on Monday. My writing group met on Tuesday. I decided to read my Bombeck submission to the group but not before I swept the floor. I had to tell everyone that it wasn’t my usual angst and peril-filled writing.
No one would fall out of a canoe or discover a teenage girl who’d broken into their home. There wouldn’t be any addiction or mental health issues, no hearing loss or weeping about aging. No long stories about boyfriends dead, buried, and moldering. I wrote about my cat, I tell them. And, because they are dear and supportive and funny and all that, they just nodded, like, hey, looks like Tolstoy to me.
Then, I told them the cupcake had already gone to the bake sale. So, their critique, as valuable as it would be, could have no impact. The submission had taken flight the day before.
So, I read my little essay – 450 words. And while I read it, I channeled Erma Bombeck and her wry delivery, her gentle humor, her ability to find the one perfectly ripe pear and hold it in her hand for a perfect moment. It was delicious. I almost don’t care if I win. Almost.
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12 Comments on “Of Pears and Cupcakes and Essays about Cats”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Good luck, Jan! You are funny! And you do great human interest.
Thanks, Vickie!
THANKS, JAN! You are SO good. I want to ask HOW you do this every day… AND, I know there are many answers and is no real answer. I just admire your wit, skill, and commitment (as I’ve said) Meanwhile, I want to write about old boyfriends – a couple of them (plus a husband) mouldering…
I pretty much exhausted my old boyfriend material along with a lot of other subjects and am now pretty stuck with what happened today.. Which is fine – all that mouldering was depressing.
good for you, and best of luck! I feel you might win – I went to the conference a couple of years ago and loved every minute. I submitted a story beforehand and didn’t win, but it did give me a confidence boost, just to commit to the act of writing and submitting it. as soon as they said the conference was for writers of humor and human story, as erma used to write, I was in.
It’s an amazing conference. I wish you were going this year. It would be great to meet you in person.
yes, that would be so fun, perhaps we’ll cross paths at some point. wish I was going too, it really felt like those were my people as soon as I walked in
Best of luck Jan!
Thank you!
Good luck. I am thinking that maybe you will win something
Erma Bombeck was the first thing I turned to in the paper!!
So hope we can see it. Would you email it to me? I promise not to tell!