Writing Like A Lady

A month ago I asked a lady romance writer (you know her) who often reviews genre fare if she would have a go at my new novel, The Freight Train of Love.  It is more a classic war romance novel than genre romance, but I liked her writing so I figured Nothing ventured nothing gained…She asked to see a few pages, but then, a few days later, declined to do the review.  I wasn’t surprised at her decision, but disappointed with her reasoning.  She said she found the person of my heroine Clair to be "crude and unladylike".

 I respect her decision, and in a way I was glad I’d contacted her, because her reasoning started me thinking about how important it is, the way we position ourselves as authors.  Hemingway.  Isabella Lady Bird.   Robert B. Parker, Louis L’Amour, Dick Francis.  Danielle Steele, Marsha Muller, Nora Roberts.

 Beyond this, I was moved to a somewhat controversial judgment.  It has been my experience that some of the women romance writers I have met love gutsy women when they are written about by other women.  But when a man writes about them, the same girls feel a bit undressed.  When a man is writing, they want to see the male idealistic image of a woman, rather than a real person. They are, I believe, vastly uneasy with the idea of a man knowing a woman's character well enough to write in the heroine POV. 

 This started me thinking, not so much about the inner feelings of a man writing the part of a woman character, but of the problems both men and women have faced since novel writing began. Early woman novelists had to use names like George and Tom. Today both men and women use pen names or first name initials to hide their true identies, and they do it, I think, for just these sorts of reasons. While I don't think it should matter one bit to a writer whether writing in the personna of a man or a women (any more than it shouldn't matter if a writer puts himself in the shoes of a demented mass murderer to tell a story) I think it does matter to many readers, and, as we see, even to professionals in the literature biz.  So if you’re going to write thrillers, maybe better you should be Wild Bill or Gutsy George.  And maybe my next heroine driven novel will be penned by Tinkera La Bella.