On International Women’s Day 2017, I’m reflecting on a transformation in my writing: in my last two published novels, as well as my current work-in-progress (a thriller this time), the protagonists are all women. Nothing groundbreaking there–male authors have been writing from the female hero’s point of view for ages, and vice versa. However, I see a personal evolution in my decisions about the person at the center of my stories. This made me reflect on why such a change has taken place within me. Perhaps my conclusions might align with changes readers have seen in their book selections and, for my writer friends, the development of choices they’re making about who will be the protagonist of their next novel.
Stepping into the skin of a character totally unlike myself is one of the things I love best about writing. Through my early novels, I’ve embodied a directionless boy who becomes enthralled with airplanes and decides he wants to become a pilot in Jake and the Tiger Flight, written for the Tiger Flight Foundation, a South Georgia boy trying to survive grinding poverty and hellacious parents during the Great Depression (Hardscrabble Road), and a 20-something Latino evading an illegal government dragnet in the 1920s and 1930s in The Five Destinies of Carlos Moreno. Boys and a man–I’ve been both, no big deal, but the fun came when I added the additional elements of places and time periods outside my experience and, in Carlos’ case, a race and culture other than my own. I had to research and talk to those who knew and understood. After a time, I could step into those different skins and absorb the world through their senses and thoughts. And isn’t that what we’re hoping for when we read, to become someone else, to combine our imagination with the writer’s word pictures and leave ourselves and our lives behind for a time?
Just as that reading experience becomes addictive, I found writing from those different perspectives compelled me to continue to stretch myself in new directions. What more elemental difference is there than the opposite sex? Fortunately, I was somewhat prepared for the venture into that frontier. A confession, with apologies to my male friends: I’ve always preferred the company of women (and it won’t come as a shock that I’ve been married more than half my life). Since I was a kid, I had more female friends than male ones. I grew up with a brother and a sister, as well as a father and a mother, so there wasn’t a gender imbalance that explains my preference. I think I’ve gravitated toward girls and then women because I find their thoughts and feelings to be more complex, more intricate. Not puzzles to unravel–which is how many men view that complexity–but layers to understand and appreciate separately and in aggregate. Women tend to be more subtle and nuanced; what you see is never all that you get. These elements also happen to be vital for creating memorable characters.
Thus, in my later works, I didn’t hesitate to adopt the persona of a late-20s ballerina who suddenly becomes a paraplegic and must reinvent herself (The Caretaker) and a 40-year-old woman who becomes obsessed with the secrets, lies, and scandals surrounding her estranged father’s murder in Aftermath. In my work-in-progress, a top-flight web radio interviewer must save her kidnapped husband (sorry, Liam Neeson, the wife is the star of this thriller). Many readers have told me they love Janet Wright of Aftermath more than any of my previous protags, which motivates me to keep going in this direction, including, perhaps, a sequel or two for Ms. Wright.
As we celebrate women, not just today but every day, let’s also rejoice in the females of fiction who have taken us on so many grand adventures, overcome every conceivable obstacle, and shown us the power and promise of humanity!