A woman writing as a man

I want to write stories about women.  I told myself my novel would be about a specific woman and I fell in love with her.  Then disaster.  Her son grew in stature, his character and predicament became captivating.

I will return to her one day, because her story needs to be told.  But I am not ready to tell that story yet.  Her son is in pain and needs to let it out into the world.

I felt disappointed for a month or two and even now I have twinges of regret.  My heart was set on it.  Now, I’ve settled my mind into writing him and he seems real to me, but I am haunted by the bad writing found under #DescribeYourselfLikeaMaleAuthorWould.  Would I be as bad at writing a man?

We had a chat about this in the June Write Here meet up.  In the end, it was decided that I was writing a human.  I was writing a very human reaction to an extraordinary experience.

Photo by Jiang on Unsplash

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