Writing the Other

And Making Changes

I am shifting gears. I am pulling back from publicly posting my memoir going forward because it now seems to me to be a bit self-absorbed, like narcissistic navel gazing. It doesn’t suit. This is ironic, given the crazy things I have already shared. But to go further is not healthy for me now. I want to be writing about things that matter rather than rehashing my past. I want to turn outward rather than inward. I want to contribute to life now.

So, more stories and poems, I hope. More essays. More commentary about what it means to be human. There is richness and texture to life, a mingling of bitter and sweet. If writers are meant to do anything, it is to capture some of that richness, that bitterness on paper. Or pixels.

In one sense, I think the memoir was an escape for me. I know my own story. It is full of a ready supply of comedy and tragedy. I know how it all turned out and what the major plot points are. I am in charge of characterization. I don’t need to imagine how things happened because I was there.

Some of you know I started a serial fantasy story that had an interesting arc, and I had some idea of what the characters would have to face. Then I ran flat into something I couldn’t write about from firsthand experience. Almost all my characters were male! Worse yet, they were going to engage in battle! I know next to nothing about swordplay or what men talk about around the campfire when no women are there.

What I have to say now focuses on science fiction and fantasy. I have chosen three fantasy series, all by men. Tolkien gives short shrift to women. Eowyn has a desire for deeds of valor and rides with the men, in disguise. She does not want to be left tending the hearth. (What’s so bad about that, Tolkien?) Galadriel is a wise and beautiful force of nature, but we see her as an idealized queen, a prophet, and a gift-giver, but not a woman that women might see as a role model.(No joke!) Other characters like Arwen or Rosie are half-drawn as foils for the heros. Granted, this was written in the 1940s to 1950s, prior to a shift in cultural awareness about women.

Consider a more recent series, The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. The Aes Sedai use their power with a singular devotion in defense of the world. They are more powerful than men because they can wield the One Power, but it has made them fierce, with an urge to dominate or protect rather than to nurture. I suspect it was not that way in the beginning. This fierceness is taken to its fullest with the Aiel maidens of the spear, and the character of Avienda. I like her. However, Nynaeve is a true caregiver, and together with Egwene and Elayne, she forms a strong sisterhood. They prioritize their relationships with each other over any position among the Aes Sedai. My one complaint would that three strong women all fall for the same man. That’s not a woman’s fantasy.

There are strong women in Brendon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive, certainly, and he gives ample space for their character development. They are complex, with depth to their back story. Some of them are portrayed before they knew their power. These women show complexity and both dark and nurturing traits. He does a good job. I think I might be able to tell a female from a male character if I read the story with gender clues removed.

I don’t blame men. It is legitimately difficult to see inside the head of a person of the opposite sex and then portray him/her/other. I certainly know that all we have is our imagination, careful observation, and research. Men don’t need to do that kind of thing most of the time, though that may be changing. We writers are now having to represent well the many ways of being human.

POV stories are flourishing, perhaps because of this need to understand the other. So the question is, am I going to do the hard work of learning how men/others think? I have to do this, unless I want to write only female characters. But that might take away the spark.