Writing in the margins
Recently, I've brought back my idea of writing a long, long story about a female "heroine". So I set out to learn as much about women as possible; I think I know enough types of women to make some sort of generalization; I have also been taking women's studies, a slightly more cerebral approach to understanding. (Here I should add that my friends are not lab rats in my eyes, at least not entirely. At the very least, I mean no insult.) I was feeling cautiously upbeat, because I was getting an idea of the pressures young women are exposed to, something I never even considered (to be fair, I managed to escape most of the typically "male" pressures as well).
And then the whole structure collapsed, for I realized that in many respects, and definitely in the ones that really matter, there is little difference between the genders. The whole gender system may be bunk, at least our happy binary notion. I will not get into specifics, because that would be too time-consuming. This has put me in a difficult position, because now I'm not sure that there is anything essentially female to pack into my heroine. So, am I in the end left writing myself as a "female"? That is, as me, just socialized from birth to be different. I would certainly hope not, at the very least because that would end up being a pretty lousy read, and an even more boring write. That's just like me: torpedoing every incipient project as it slides off the dry-dock. I wish it were possible to write a decent story that goes beyond in a crazy multiplicity of ways: beyond time-place, beyond gender, beyond plot, beyond motivation, beyond economics, beyond realism, beyond love and revenge and redemption and reunions, beyond tears and alcohol and irony. But that would be too "pretentious" and nobody would read it. So it goes; I will continue to struggle to get noticed. There is romance in being unknown and frustrated. Now if I can only get beyond the romance.
Consider: "if you had the option of kidnapping one person, slicing their skin off and wearing it, compatiblizing your voice box to sound like them, and somehow downloading from their brain-in-a-jar the relevant memories and personality characteristics to mingle with your own; in effect entering that human, who would it be?"
And then the whole structure collapsed, for I realized that in many respects, and definitely in the ones that really matter, there is little difference between the genders. The whole gender system may be bunk, at least our happy binary notion. I will not get into specifics, because that would be too time-consuming. This has put me in a difficult position, because now I'm not sure that there is anything essentially female to pack into my heroine. So, am I in the end left writing myself as a "female"? That is, as me, just socialized from birth to be different. I would certainly hope not, at the very least because that would end up being a pretty lousy read, and an even more boring write. That's just like me: torpedoing every incipient project as it slides off the dry-dock. I wish it were possible to write a decent story that goes beyond in a crazy multiplicity of ways: beyond time-place, beyond gender, beyond plot, beyond motivation, beyond economics, beyond realism, beyond love and revenge and redemption and reunions, beyond tears and alcohol and irony. But that would be too "pretentious" and nobody would read it. So it goes; I will continue to struggle to get noticed. There is romance in being unknown and frustrated. Now if I can only get beyond the romance.
Consider: "if you had the option of kidnapping one person, slicing their skin off and wearing it, compatiblizing your voice box to sound like them, and somehow downloading from their brain-in-a-jar the relevant memories and personality characteristics to mingle with your own; in effect entering that human, who would it be?"
posted by A. D. at 12:34 AM
1 Comments:
good call
you know, even though i'm technically "more qualified" than you to write a story from the female perspective, i still don't think i'd do a very good job... i have a feeling that somehow i fit in somewhere on the "not extremely female" side of the femininity spectrum. i was thinking a while ago that i would find it almost impossible to write in the first person perspective of a woman, say, with bigger breasts than me. to me this would be like trying to assume the identity of an entirely different species. so i guess you probably have as good a chance as someone like me.
i remember this one time my dad was cynically, contemptuously dissing Carol Shields for even attempting to act like she was qualified to write Larry's Party from a male perspective. sometimes my dad is full of shit, obviously because he forgot to mention the thousands of male authors whose take on female characters have been generally accepted by society.
so good luck with the story, i'd like to read it sometime.
swig
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