How can guys write about women?

When I started writing my novel, I was intimidated by the fact that the main character I had chosen (or who chose me) was a woman. What do I know about women beyond what most guys know? I plunged ahead, and over the many years that I worked on A FALSE DAWN, I began to realize how much Louise and I had in common. Basically, she felt taken for granted by others in her family, all of them men. They tolerated her. When important decisions had to be made, none of the men – her father, her brothers or her husband – bothered to listen to her. They pushed her to the margins of her family. My novel was set in the 1740s, but I could safely say Louise had been “marginalized,” as we use the word today.

These are emotions ANYONE can feel. I’m sure that women have a deep and painful experience with being marginalized that my experiences could not equal. But as I wrote, I realized that I identified with the feeling of being invisible to everyone around me, even family members who loved me. I knew how that felt. And if I knew that much, I could write about Louise. I realized that as a guy, I may not be the world’s expert on “women.” But I knew this one woman, this woman I had chosen to write about. And that was enough.