Mama lost her pen today, but she’s working on a post about her current configuration of childcare and work and how things are shifting…soon. Please stay tuned.

In the meantime, I wanted to share news of the next hour-long She Writes webinar with the GwP community, because it holds a special place in my heart.

My editor from Sisterhood, Interrupted and Kamy’s agent from I Do But I Don’t: Why the Way We Marry Matters are teaming up to offer a candid conversation about what happens INSIDE PUBLISHING. It’s a 2-part series, though you can just take part 1 (From Submission to Sale) or part 2 (From Sale to Publication). The webinar will be offered both live and as a download, after the fact.

It’s the kind of thing I SO could have used when I was a graduate student in Madison, WI harboring dreams of publishing a book, when the world of publishing was still utterly foreign to me and I pretty much had no clue. Or the kind of thing I could have used mid-book, when I was in the dark about what would be happening around the bend. I learned as I went and will be forever grateful to Amanda for showing me the ropes. So I love that Amanda and Erin are now pulling back the curtain and letting others in, too.

Here are deets:

INSIDE PUBLISHING: Your Book, from Submission to Publication (a 2-part series)

With Erin Hosier and Amanda Johnson Moon

***INSIDE PUBLISHING Part 1: From Submission to Sale -May 7, 1-2pm ET***

***INSIDE PUBLISHING Part 2: From Sale to Publication – Aug 11, 1-2pm ET***

Want the inside scoop on what happens when your book proposal gets submitted to editors? Have a proposal ready to go, but want to know more about the publishing process and timeline before you jump in? Or do you have a book deal, but you’re still confused about what happens next? And how about several months after publication? What happens inside your house then?

In this revealing webinar, the first in a two part series, literary agent Erin Hosier and editor Amanda Moon pull back the curtains to shed light on what goes on in a major publishing house once an editor receives your book proposal, how the editor and agent work together on a project, and what the heck a ìP & Lî is. Find out why working with a freelance editor might be the best investment you’ve ever made for your book proposal, and how you can feel empowered and prepared with answers going into a process that’s often shrouded in secrecy.

Through a lively exchange, Erin and Amanda will speak candidly about what you need to know to be a savvy and informed author in today’s marketplace. Takeaways include:

• A glossary of important terms and lingo you need to know when your proposal is being submitted to editors

• A timeline that walks you through a typical day in the life of your editor and your manuscript, and what really happens behind closed doors, from editorial meeting to publicity and more

Erin Hosier has been an agent for 10 years at The Gernert Company and Dunow Carlson & Lerner, where she has sold both fiction and a variety of narrative, practical, and illustrated nonfiction to major publishing houses in NYC and around the world. She is especially interested in the following categories: memoir, sociology, biography, art, the performing arts, pop culture, health, science, and humor. Before becoming an agent, Erin grew up in rural Ohio, attended Kent State University while studying Public Health, and completed internships at Planned Parenthood in Cleveland and Ms. magazine in NYC. She currently cohosts the monthly reading series “The Literary Death Match” in NYC at the Bowery Poetry Club.

Amanda Johnson Moon has worked as an editor in the publishing industry for over ten years. She began her career as an intern at Yale University Press and Writers House. She has served as an editor at Palgrave Macmillan and Basic Books. She has worked with authors including Deborah Siegel, Alice Miller, Tony Wagner, Mary Daly, John Merrow, Henry Giroux, Leonard Sax, Malina Saval, Nancy Rappaport, Sue Barry, and Andrea Tone. She has acquired, edited, and managed many award-winning and positively reviewed books for the trade and academic markets in psychology, women’s studies, education, science, memoir, and more.

To register and reserve a spot, click here.

Working too many hours is more common in higher paying jobs than lower paying jobs. Down the pay scale, people are struggling for hours, up the pay scale, not so much. So experience and scholarship has shown us that the pressure to work! work! work! and never leave that Blackberry unattended creates a work/family conflict that can affect women workers more so than men–though it isn’t easy on anyone.

But new research in the April 2010 American Sociological Review examined how “spousal overwork” affects who does what in families. The article, “Reinforcing Separate Spheres: The Effect of Spousal Overwork on Men’s and Women’s Employment in Dual-Earner Households” by Youngjoo Cha asks whether excessive work hours by one partner can influence the decisions another partner makes about work and family life.

Results are clear: when a husband works more than 60 hours per week, a wife was 42 percent more likely to quit her job (compared to those whose husbands work fewer than 50 hours per week). The same was not true for husbands. Among professional workers, the wife’s odds of quitting when her husband worked 60 hours per week was 51 percent (versus 38 percent for non professional workers). Think of it this way: up the social ladder, people are more likely to talk the talk, but less likely to walk the walk when it comes to gender equality.

And what if kids are present? The answer provides no surprises. Professional mothers were 3.2 times more likely to quit when their husbands worked 60 hours per week (compared to non mothers in the same situation). Is this a set up, or what?

Youngjoo Cha argues that overwork reintroduces “separate spheres” – the pattern of assigning domestic work and childcare mainly to women and market work mainly to men – and can even help explain the slowing of progress towards gender equality.

Overwork just seems kinda American. We work hard because we are of the nature to work hard. Well, a policy of inequality since the 1970s may be why we are of the nature to work so hard, so long, and with so little to show for it. One thing we do seem to have to show for it is the persistence and maintenance of gender inequality in families. I suppose that is kinda American too.

-Virginia Rutter

I know I know — memes are so…2008.  But humor me here as I try a little experiment at She Writes. I’d love it if you, GwP readers and bloggers, would help me create a meme (blogger tag, for those not yet in the know). Here’s how it works:

If you have a blog out there in the universe (and if not, you can always use your blog on your She Writes profile page if you’ve joined), post an answer to this question: “Who are the women in your life who exemplify the traits of a modern heroine, and why?”

Then, tag as many other bloggers as you wish to do the same. Please include a link to the She Writes mainpage (www.shewrites.com) somewhere in your post. And it’d be GREAT if you’d post the url to YOUR post in comments over at MY post about it today at She Writes (http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/she-writes-on-fridays-the).  That way, we can all find you.  Does this make sense?!

Ok, here we go.  I’ll start.

1. My friend, Purse Pundit, and She Writes Advisory Board Member Jacki Zehner, because she gives so generously of her time, treasure, and talent to make a difference in this world–and because she is secretly Wonder Woman, for reals
2. My comrade in arms, feministing’s Courtney Martin, because she moves beyond the comfort zone and writes with moxie
3. My sister by proxy Rebecca London, because she models the integration of motherhood and professional identity in a way that’s nothing short of heroic
4. My friend, and fellow Girl w/Penner, Virginia Rutter, because she taught me–and continues to teach me–the psychology of abundance
5. My colleague, and fellow Girl w/Penner, Alison Peipmeier, because she went into and is recovering from brain surgery with so much wit and bravery it knocks my socks off, daily (case in point: see her latest, below)

Your turn. And I’d be so very grateful if you’d pass it on!

Michelle Cove is a filmmaker, journalist, and bestselling author. Her book Seeking Happily Ever After: How to Navigate the Ups and Downs of Being Single without Losing Your Mind will be published by Penguin this October. Her film, Seeking Happily Ever After, debuts this weekend at the California Independent Film Festival. Here’s Michelle! -Deborah

Seeking Happily Ever After (www.seeknghappilyeverafter.com) is a feature-length documentary about why there are more single 30-something women than ever and whether women are redefining “happily ever after.” The idea sprang from a discussion I had three years ago with a friend at a coffeehouse (where all great conversations take place). We were talking about the media’s focus on the rising number of single women, and how wrong they seemed to be getting it in their portrayal of who these women are. In movies and TV, we watched single women in their mid-twenties and older portrayed repeatedly as either totally desperate to marry or so career-driven they couldn’t be bothered to find a man. The single women of reality TV seem to get falling-down drunk like college freshman, hang in hot tubs with men they barely know, and/or sob in the fetal position like toddlers.

So it wasn’t exactly surprising when Live Science reported recently that while there are more single women than ever, the “spinster” stigma is not lifting for women. Um…duh.

Look at the models we see week to week. We’ve got Emma on “Glee,” who pined after Mr. Schuester all of season one like a 5th grade girl; we’ve got Liz Lemon on “30” rock who is so pathetic in the love department that she can’t find anyone to drive her home from the root canal she intentionally scheduled on Valentine’s Day. And let’s not forget our small-screen-turned-big-screen poster child for single women everywhere: Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City. So many of us hoped she would remain the cool, smart single woman who followed her own path. Instead, the writers married her off to Mr. Big—the man who made a hobby of letting her down and breaking her heart, even skipping out on the wedding after agreeing to wed Carrie (Sure they eventually get hitched, but it felt like a big downer to me).

I’m proud of Seeking Happily Ever After, which premieres this month at the California Independent Film Festival. Producer Kerry David and I made it our mission to reveal the various ups and downs of being a single woman today—while giving women an array of real-life inspiring stories told by singles around the U.S. Kerry is single, I’m happily married and we have no agenda to push women into any particular relationship status. We just want women to make their choices about “happily ever after” with intention and clarity. Now we just need some media support to boost single women’s confidence instead of perpetually adding to the spinster stigma.

To watch the trailer and support the doc, visit: http://kck.st/bV022F

I dedicate this month’s column to parents who are in the midst of crises which are well-articulated on the website A Heartbreaking Choice:

Pregnancy does not end happily for everyone. Sadly, some parents receive grim prenatal news that something is seriously or fatally wrong with their loved and wanted unborn baby. They have to make a decision about continuing or ending pregnancy. We realize that all parents make a loving choice, one they feel is better for their baby. Regardless of the fetal anomaly found, the decision to end a pregnancy is always a difficult one.

Although it is estimated that between 80 and 95 percent of parents receiving a severe prenatal diagnosis choose to end the pregnancy, those who face this nightmare often feel alone. There is very little in the way of support programs for them. With this site and the dedication of courageous parents willing to reach out, we hope to create a safe haven of encouragement, validation, hope and healing.

How many of us have thought about all that is involved with therapeutic abortions?  Parents in these situations have to navigate a medical system which is under the influence of a legal system which (in my humble opinion) has succumbed to a failure of the separation between church and state. It saddens and infuriates me that these mothers — especially those in their third trimesters — may be denied access to medical options which could best protect their physical and mental health. In this day and age of U.S. abortion policies, should we be grateful that any states allow any options at all?  Gratefulness is hard to come by in the face of so much suffering.  My prayers and love go out to all parents who face these heartbreaking choices.

At the end of December I learned I had a brain tumor. In February I had surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible. In the time between those two events, and since, I’ve had an intellectual and emotional path to travel.

As I wrote about on Girl With Pen, one of the initial traumas of learning about the tumor was learning that it was located in the language center of my brain. The neurosurgeon was fairly certain that removing part of the tumor would affect my language skills. Numbers were tossed around: I could lose 10% of my language functions, or 20. I found myself agonizing over what those numbers meant, trying to connect them in some meaningful, concrete way to my own life. Could I write an academic article with 10% less language ability? Could I read the research written by my friends if I were 20% deficient? Would I be able to respond effectively to my students’ questions and comments in the classroom? One subtle undercurrent to this questioning was, Is it the right thing to do to have this surgery?

And then at some point in January, a plank I’d been standing on–let’s call it denial–dissolved beneath me, and I realized that the questions I’d been asking were important, but they were distracting me from the most important implication of this brain tumor: it’s fatal. If I didn’t have the surgery, I would die, and my daughter wouldn’t have a mother.

This realization quickly became all-encompassing. Maybelle is twenty months old–a baby, someone who still needs active parenting all day, every day. I started thinking ahead to other parts of her life: her first sentences, her discovery of what activities she loves, her best friends, her dating life. I want to be there. I can’t imagine not being there. But more importantly, she needs me there. The ambiguity disappeared. It became very clear to me that having the surgery was the right thing to do.

As I moved forward through this whole process, the intimate exposure to my own mortality made a number of things about parenthood clear to me. Before the diagnosis I might not have known this about myself, but I can’t tell you how grateful–powerfully, viscerally grateful–I was and am that I have the tumor and Maybelle doesn’t. Even pre-surgery, when all the fear was hanging over me, this realization was enough to add some buoyancy to my day.

I also discovered that I identify parenthood as a role–a commitment, a passion, a series of actions–and not as a biological category. It doesn’t matter that Maybelle is genetically related to Biffle and me; she’s our daughter because every day we are her parents. This was comforting, because I know that she is loved by many, many people, some of whom love her enough that they would step in to become her parents if she needed them to. It was a realization that also helped me to dedicate myself even more fully to my choice to be her parent. In the early post-surgery days, I could often only stay awake for a few hours, but I wanted those hours to be spent on the floor with Maybelle.

And yet recognizing my own mortality didn’t make my love for language disappear. In those early post-surgery days, if I had any awake time after Maybelle was asleep, I wanted to read and write, and I did: two days after the surgery I read my own blog, and two days after that I wrote a post. As it turns out, my language skills have emerged from the surgery almost just like they were before, and this is a great surprise and an unending source of joy for me.

So I’m not arguing that parenthood is the only thing that matters in my life. As I’ve told Maybelle many times before, and as I even told my neurosurgeon, I’m a much better mother when I’m working. I’m a better mother when I get to delve deeply into other life commitments and choices in addition to parenthood, and for me these are intimately connected to language. (The neurosurgeon responded, “My wife says the same thing.”)

I don’t have a neat summation here, an explanation of what I’ve learned and what this all means. My life has many points of connection to the planet, but whether I knew it or not, a few of them are more important than the rest.

I promise I won’t hawk wares when not appropriate here, but I thought GwPenners might be interested in this innovative online get-the-juices-flowing writing course that’s open 24/7 for a month once its starts and you do it at your own pace, more or less — it’s worth $99 and we’re givin it away for free:

Let Your Mind Stretch and Bend

Contrary to what Tina Fey said in “Women News” about no one caring, I care that there are four women in space. But I get what she means. While this accomplishment did make some headlines, it wasn’t given the coverage that a certain golf tournament was given. And that’s really sad.

One of the women orbiting our world is Stephanie Wilson and she took the opportunity to encourage women and women of color to apply to the astronaut program. But before we can get more women to apply to be astronauts we need to get more women and girls to believe that they can do it. Not just outer space, but math, science and engineering.

Last month AAUW released a new report called “Why So Few?” AND they attempted a live webcast of the report release and expert panel. I say attempted as there were some technology issues, but I give them a lot of credit for even attempting a webcast of a live event. We need more webcasts like this. As I was on trying to listen to the presentation, a good number of my colleagues from around the country were on the webcast watching and chatting. We exchanged ideas and resources. How else would we get together like this? So big thumbs up! You can watch the day’s events on the archived video too.

You should also read the report too. It’s a good read for the general public. In other words, you don’t need a Ph.D. to get it. It goes into a lot of basic things, but the one theory I want to leave you with is this: We don’t teach our kids the beauty of struggle.

We far too easily praise our kids when they do something easily. I’m guilty of this with my daughter.

But when was the last time we praised our kids when they struggled? When they took a few attempts to get a math problem correct? To sound out a word and attempt to look it up?

Science is about the struggle to find an answer. When we don’t teach that, we set our kids up to fail when they stumble. Especially our girls, who too often strive for perfection.

Since this report, I’m trying even harder than before, to show my daughter that I am flawed, that I make mistakes and that I struggle to get to an answer. Whether this will get her to be launched into space in 30 years…Who knows? By then, I hope to be vacationing up there.

***

Last month I held a giveaway and Kim won! In an effort for people to not think I rigged it for one of my good bloggy friends, I asked Twitter to pick a number 1-3 and ratsamy said ‘2.’ Congrats to Kim!

Taking a break from somber topics of health and medicine, I wanted to share a fun experience — I participated in my first “Clothing Exchange” party last month, hosted by the fabulous women of Exurb Magazine.

It was a chance to make new friends, catch up with old ones, clean out my closet, update my wardrobe, and help less fortunate women. The hosts provided drinks and appetizers, all of us brought clean, ‘gently-used’ clothing, and we got to know each other while we picked through the offerings. At the end, our hosts took all that was left over (and there was a lot!) to a local women’s shelter.

It’s always fashionable to reduce, reuse, recycle…and reinforce other women’s acts of courage!

[Those interested in hosting may want to check out these guidelines for a children’s clothing exchange and modify as you wish.]

Today I wrote my She Writes on Fridays post on why I decided to NOT write my next book, and lessons I learned along the way.  Marco, who was integral to the project, made the image for the post, which I’m re-posting here.  Sadder but wiser, I wanted to share the news with the GwP community.  I’d welcome your comments over there–eager to hear if others have been in this boat.

Here tis: 6 Things I Learned from NOT Writing My Next Book.