a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://www.availableimages.com/images/previews/Stepmom%20%281998%29.jpg”img style=”margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;” src=”http://www.availableimages.com/images/previews/Stepmom%20%281998%29.jpg” alt=”” border=”0″ //aspan style=”font-size:180%;”span style=”font-weight: bold;”I/span/span was in a store Friday getting a photo album made when I mentioned to the clerk that the album was for my stepmother.br /br /”Oh, your stepmother,” she said in a voice dripping with understanding fueled by Disney cartoons.br /br /”No, no,” I protested, “I really like my stepmother.”br /br /The clerk was surprised. It was the second time this year I’ve seen that look on someone’s face when I’ve expressed my admiration for the woman my dad married after the divorce. My Not-So-Wicked Stepmother is a sweet, loving, wonderful person, the total opposite of the wicked woman in the Cinderella story.br /br /Which made me wonder about the ways in which we use stereotypes in both our writing and our lives. Stereotypes are easy for writers to fall back on. They’re cookie-cutter, culturally accepted ideas. Also, once in a while you require a spe price for viagra 100mgt and at some point any old specialist will do. This remedy doesn’t solve the issue of men when they are stressed. generic viagra buy Sexuality is all about cheap cialis australia expressing and experiencing the erotic feelings of being highly sexual. With erectile dysfunction medication that contains PDE5-inhibitor, these enzymes are destroyed slowly and gradually, curing the impotence buying cialis in spain in men. Stereotypes are simple and sometimes useful.br /br /But what if we, as writers and people, look beyond them. Instead of the easy snap judgments, what if we take our time and get to know a character or a person. How much does it enrich our lives and our writing to see things fresh?br /br /The local weekly here strives to show — rather than tell — that the homeless are people with its regular feature profiling a homeless person. The stories are varied and not always what you expect.br /br /I love that about it. I love that they dare to turn our conventional wisdom of who the homeless are upside down simply by telling their stories.br /br /And in the fictional realm, it makes me want to work harder to learn the stories of my characters, especially the main antagonist, so he doesn’t simply fill a mold.
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Meta
Recently I’ve taken a break from reading romances because I was stumbling on too many stereotypical characters. It was like the two us finding ourselves in a frat party in college. (If you knew Jen I back then, you’d get the joke.)BR/BR/In fiction, writers rely on stereotypes as a shorthand. (And I don’t think its only romance writers but for there must have been a contagious rash making the rounds.)BR/BR/Anyway, some readers will think, “ahh yes, I know someone like that,” and the work is done. But I think that’s sloppy stuff and I try to resist the temptation.BR/BR/Cheers,BR/Mary
Resisting the temptation is right. It is sloppy stuff. It is so much harder to reach, but it makes our stories so much better.BR/BR/I’ve been watching The Wire with my DH and that’s a series that doesn’t make the easy choices. It’s been teaching me a lot.BR/BR/Thanks, Mary.BR/BR/Jen
I appreciate your post above on The Wire (amazing show) and especially this post … as both as writer and a stepmom!!
I just happened to come across your blog today, and had to make a comment about this particular post. I am a stepmother myself, and a writer/maniacal blogger. I absolutely adore my stepkids, and weirdly enough, they like me, too. 🙂 It’s refreshing to see a stepdaughter write something about her stepmother to defy the stereotypes. I’d love to see you write more on that…BR/BR/There’s not much out there for me and my fellow stepmothers – not a lot of literature is written in our favor, nor do you see us in a positive light very often. We’re sort of the forgotten piece of the parental unit. Swept under the proverbial rug, if you will. In fact, my husband and I host a tailgate every Saturday home game at my stepdaughter’s university. In the bookstore, I noticed that there are t-shirts made for Moms and Dads, aunts and uncles, cousins even….NONE existed for the stepmother/stepfather. So, I had to actually MAKE one in defiance and a spirit of uprising – just to show that we exist, too. And some of us cherish our role and take it seriously.BR/BR/It’s a new age of blended families. I’ve never had children of my own, so I consider myself blessed to have been able to “inherit” two wonderful teenagers. I commend you for expressing your appreciation of your stepmother. She’s a luckly woman to have you in her life.