(8 of 10)
A second defeat seems not to trouble her. In 1980 she sold a television series called Maggie, based on one of Bombeck's typical housewives, to ABC. Living in a Los Angeles apartment during the week, Bombeck got up at 5 each morning to write her column and by 9 was at a desk at Universal City Studios writing TV scripts. Bombeck never quite learned to love speaking show biz—"That line doesn't work for me, sweetie" and "Trust me"—and Maggie sank without a trace after eight episodes. The lines were funny but somehow the show wasn't. One critic suggested that what was needed was Bombeck herself in front of the camera.
Humorists do not cry, much, and Bombeck returned to life in Arizona without a backward look. Her children are on their own now (Bombeck gives a heartfelt "whew!" and wipes her hand across her forehead). Betsy is a computer retailer in Los Angeles; Andrew, who served in the Peace Corps in Liberia, teaches gifted students in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Matthew works at an advertising agency in Los Angeles while he writes television scripts. They all agree that family life was warm and normal, not the succession of disasters that Bombeck still thinks she brought on their heads. "It was a real close family," says Andrew, "kind of square, with a real good atmosphere. I just assumed all families were like that." Matthew adds that as a kid, "you're pretty selfabsorbed. You never look at your parents and think they're a little overworked. If anything, you think the opposite. The underlying thing is that she has pretty much been our mother. You think of her as Mother, not Erma Bombeck."
The handsome new house in Paradise Valley, overlooking Phoenix, is calm now when calm is needed. There is a secretary to intercept phone calls and a maid to chase dust balls. Bombeck does not even know if there is a septic tank. Bill and Erma have separate offices, and she is in hers by 8 each morning, after walking a "killer mile" or puffing along with a videotaped exercise routine. At her desk she is all business. When she has time, she weaves twigs and bits of string into a play and says that the first act is in workable order. But the three columns and two TV slots a week come first. Writer's block? No such luxury is permitted. If there is an idea whirling around in her head, it's a great day. If not, she checks notes she has written to herself "on breath-mint wrappers, blank checks and hotel stationery." She relies now more on narrative than on the famous one-liners she fired off as a beginning columnist "because I was afraid people wouldn't wait for the story."
A column is only about 450 words, and the problem is simply to find the right ones. This takes three or four drafts usually, the first stiff and awkward, "like some English-class essay," and the last chatty and, in a carefully chiseled way, spontaneous. Advice to imitators: to avoid marooning yourself without provisions in a trackless last paragraph, think ahead of time of your cheery ending, the gag that leaves the reader newly hopeful that joining the French Foreign Legion may not be the only answer. Bombeck is proud of never missing a deadline, and she makes a point of quoting the praise of an elderly Detroit Free