How to Teach Men to Write Women
(This popped out of my fingers during a discussion of last night's NCIS epsiode, Legend, wherein Ziva, once again, is written poorly.)
I've *got* it! They need to put the writers on the following regimen.
Bookcases stocked with the collected works of Dorothy Parker, Molly Ivins and Erma Bombeck. Also a complete edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (they're writers, they'll eat it up).
A full cookie jar, candy dish and mandatory hidden chocolate stash (it tastes better that way) to be provided on demand. Coffee, soft drinks and MacAllen 15 should be stocked at all times. Some writers may protest that they don't drink alcohol. Ignore them. They lie. If they don't drink when they start, they will before the week's out. Possibly before lunch if they've never even *tried* to write realistic women before.
Three weeks out of the month:
Breakfast (to be brought in on a tray): Bagels and cream cheese, a side of bacon, attractively arranged fresh fruit and limitless coffee. Once finished, the plates and flatware used for the bagels and bacon should be removed. The untouched fruit is to remain as a centerpiece and as a reminder that they really are more virtuous than it seems, but to break up the aesthetic lines of the arrangement by eating any of it would be criminal.
Moral: write the stories that work and don't add crap just because some authority somewhere said it was good for you, especially not if it's attractive and desirable as it stands.
Attempt to drag self away from the OED and open a new document on the computer. Put down the OED's way cool magnifying glass and begin to create a viable script to highlight a strong, independent female character between the ages of 30 and 50. Put magnifying glass in the drawer to resist the urge to shrink the font on the monitor just so you'd 'need' to use it. Type, print, read, cry; rinse and repeat until lunch.
Lunch: Choice of club sandwich, pastrami on rye or heart healthy veggie/tofu wrap served with Nacho Cheese Doritos (optional side of artfully sliced vegetables - sheeyeah, right). Order the heart healthy veggie/tofu wrap for yourself and the pastrami on rye because, of course, you're, um, yeah, you're expecting a visitor at lunchtime. Yeah, that's the ticket. Artfully redistribute the veggie/tofu wrap into the trash where you cover it with the pages you've already abandoned from the morning's writing session. Wolf down the pastrami on rye because, hey, it's pastrami on rye! (Damn, that's good eatin'.) Reserve the chips and wash down with soft drink of your choice.
Regret not having "two visitors" because you could really go for a second pastrami sandwich.
Decide you need inspiration and pull down a book at random. Put back the volume of the OED your hand unerringly found. You can't read that until you produce something. Select, instead, a collection of columns by Molly Ivins. Eat chips while reading about the trials and tribulations of covering the Texas Legislature. Try to dust out the Dorito crumbs before hiding the book under the sofa cushion and hoping no one will notice.
Spend 20 minutes trying to remember where you stashed the chocolate. Give up and decide to have cookies, instead. Take them to the computer and begin to work, hearing Molly Ivins' voice in your head while you work. Just as you're picturing her squaring off against Gibbs (and that's a smack down I would have *LOVED* to have seen - Gibbs wouldn't have stood a chance), you remember where the chocolate is and rescue it from the Dorito encrusted tome under the same couch cushion.
Write virtuously until dinner.
Dinner: Screw looking like you're eating properly. Request KFC, wedge fries and a chocolate silk pie. Threaten to shove the rather tired looking fruit plate where the sun don't shine if you don't get fed and get fed *now*. Wash it down with coffee and follow it with three fingers of MacAllen 15. Oh, shoot. Just keep the bottle on the table.
Decide you need more inspiration.
Grab the copy of Erma Bombeck's The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank and read with no little horror about the travails of suburban life. Drink more. Vow to never move out of the city proper. Read more. Realize with horror that you, too, write notes with crayons on old receipts covered in coffee stains and the odd small finger print outlined in grape jelly. Drink more. Begin to realize the ideas for your magnum opus that will free you from the sweatshop that is television writing *is* sitting at home on a collection of restaurant receipts, your children's old home work papers and that weirdly erotic birthday card from your brother-in-law. Realize you're either on the verge of an artistic epiphany or you're just really, really drunk. And why would he send you a birthday card with an eggplant on it in the first place?
Attempt to save your work, but you might have just emailed it to everyone in your addressbook. Manage to get the cap on the MacAllen, tuck a volume of the OED under your arm and stagger to bed.
Thus endeth the first day.
Rinse and repeat for three weeks.
In the fourth week, your diet will consist of hunks of raw zebra thrown through the door and as much chocolate, caffeine and alcohol as you can stomach. You won't write a word, but by the end of it, you'll have Dorothy Parker memorized and will have built a shrine to Erma Bombeck out of empty Dorito bags and empty chocolate boxes. Every bite of zebra will be followed by recitations of the idiocy of the men involved in Texas politics as told by Molly Ivins.
The dawning of the fifth week will be your salvation. For now, you will have absorbed all you need to write female characters that real women out there watching your show will recognize, embrace and love. (Hint, if you can get Gibbs and DiNozzo into a clinch at least once an episode, those women will likely offer to have your babies... ha! Gotcha! Like that's gonna happen. But they will send you brownies and booze and thank you notes written in crayon. Just ignore the grape jelly on the back.)
I've *got* it! They need to put the writers on the following regimen.
Bookcases stocked with the collected works of Dorothy Parker, Molly Ivins and Erma Bombeck. Also a complete edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (they're writers, they'll eat it up).
A full cookie jar, candy dish and mandatory hidden chocolate stash (it tastes better that way) to be provided on demand. Coffee, soft drinks and MacAllen 15 should be stocked at all times. Some writers may protest that they don't drink alcohol. Ignore them. They lie. If they don't drink when they start, they will before the week's out. Possibly before lunch if they've never even *tried* to write realistic women before.
Three weeks out of the month:
Breakfast (to be brought in on a tray): Bagels and cream cheese, a side of bacon, attractively arranged fresh fruit and limitless coffee. Once finished, the plates and flatware used for the bagels and bacon should be removed. The untouched fruit is to remain as a centerpiece and as a reminder that they really are more virtuous than it seems, but to break up the aesthetic lines of the arrangement by eating any of it would be criminal.
Moral: write the stories that work and don't add crap just because some authority somewhere said it was good for you, especially not if it's attractive and desirable as it stands.
Attempt to drag self away from the OED and open a new document on the computer. Put down the OED's way cool magnifying glass and begin to create a viable script to highlight a strong, independent female character between the ages of 30 and 50. Put magnifying glass in the drawer to resist the urge to shrink the font on the monitor just so you'd 'need' to use it. Type, print, read, cry; rinse and repeat until lunch.
Lunch: Choice of club sandwich, pastrami on rye or heart healthy veggie/tofu wrap served with Nacho Cheese Doritos (optional side of artfully sliced vegetables - sheeyeah, right). Order the heart healthy veggie/tofu wrap for yourself and the pastrami on rye because, of course, you're, um, yeah, you're expecting a visitor at lunchtime. Yeah, that's the ticket. Artfully redistribute the veggie/tofu wrap into the trash where you cover it with the pages you've already abandoned from the morning's writing session. Wolf down the pastrami on rye because, hey, it's pastrami on rye! (Damn, that's good eatin'.) Reserve the chips and wash down with soft drink of your choice.
Regret not having "two visitors" because you could really go for a second pastrami sandwich.
Decide you need inspiration and pull down a book at random. Put back the volume of the OED your hand unerringly found. You can't read that until you produce something. Select, instead, a collection of columns by Molly Ivins. Eat chips while reading about the trials and tribulations of covering the Texas Legislature. Try to dust out the Dorito crumbs before hiding the book under the sofa cushion and hoping no one will notice.
Spend 20 minutes trying to remember where you stashed the chocolate. Give up and decide to have cookies, instead. Take them to the computer and begin to work, hearing Molly Ivins' voice in your head while you work. Just as you're picturing her squaring off against Gibbs (and that's a smack down I would have *LOVED* to have seen - Gibbs wouldn't have stood a chance), you remember where the chocolate is and rescue it from the Dorito encrusted tome under the same couch cushion.
Write virtuously until dinner.
Dinner: Screw looking like you're eating properly. Request KFC, wedge fries and a chocolate silk pie. Threaten to shove the rather tired looking fruit plate where the sun don't shine if you don't get fed and get fed *now*. Wash it down with coffee and follow it with three fingers of MacAllen 15. Oh, shoot. Just keep the bottle on the table.
Decide you need more inspiration.
Grab the copy of Erma Bombeck's The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank and read with no little horror about the travails of suburban life. Drink more. Vow to never move out of the city proper. Read more. Realize with horror that you, too, write notes with crayons on old receipts covered in coffee stains and the odd small finger print outlined in grape jelly. Drink more. Begin to realize the ideas for your magnum opus that will free you from the sweatshop that is television writing *is* sitting at home on a collection of restaurant receipts, your children's old home work papers and that weirdly erotic birthday card from your brother-in-law. Realize you're either on the verge of an artistic epiphany or you're just really, really drunk. And why would he send you a birthday card with an eggplant on it in the first place?
Attempt to save your work, but you might have just emailed it to everyone in your addressbook. Manage to get the cap on the MacAllen, tuck a volume of the OED under your arm and stagger to bed.
Thus endeth the first day.
Rinse and repeat for three weeks.
In the fourth week, your diet will consist of hunks of raw zebra thrown through the door and as much chocolate, caffeine and alcohol as you can stomach. You won't write a word, but by the end of it, you'll have Dorothy Parker memorized and will have built a shrine to Erma Bombeck out of empty Dorito bags and empty chocolate boxes. Every bite of zebra will be followed by recitations of the idiocy of the men involved in Texas politics as told by Molly Ivins.
The dawning of the fifth week will be your salvation. For now, you will have absorbed all you need to write female characters that real women out there watching your show will recognize, embrace and love. (Hint, if you can get Gibbs and DiNozzo into a clinch at least once an episode, those women will likely offer to have your babies... ha! Gotcha! Like that's gonna happen. But they will send you brownies and booze and thank you notes written in crayon. Just ignore the grape jelly on the back.)