Writing About Women

Since my novels all center around lead characters who are women, I often get asked, “How does a guy write about women? And why?” One irate woman asked me once, “What makes you an expert on women?”

All perfectly good questions. My first answer is simply that women characters come to me, entering my head and talking to other characters, at least as often as men do. That’s only the start of the process of discovery.

The other reason, perhaps more important, is that I was raised by a woman, as many of us were. But raised, I think, in the wrong way, as too many men and women are. So if the characters that I discover and nurture are feeling certain ways or want certain things, I feel like I understand them. Or that I very much want to.

How was I raised? To be taken for granted. To be the perfect child who never causes anyone any trouble. To always look out for the welfare of others and never, ever, for my own welfare. To feel like I have to be three times as good at things as anybody else, in order to even justify my existence on the planet.

Does any of this sound familiar? It’s the way a lot of people are raised, men certainly but probably more often, women. So I feel like I know something about certain kinds of characters, and if they’re women…well then, I write about them.