Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 40

Friday Feminism: Writing Male and Writing Female

I have had a number of people tell me that I write “better” novels from the point of view of male protagonists. I am trying to figure out what this means. Does it mean that I write in a more male way than many other female authors? Does it mean that I don't experience being female in the way that most of my readers find normal? Or does it mean that I write from a male point of view good enough to “pass,” and that I open myself to a wider audience if I do so, because, as we all know, girls will read about girls but boys won't read about boys?

If it is true that I write in some way that is more masculine than feminine, then what does this mean? Does it mean that I identify myself in some way as less than a woman? Does it mean that I have rejected femininity and adopted masculinity as a way to power? Does it mean I was born this way and have to simply accept it? Is it because I grew up with six brothers who bullied and humiliated me until I learned to act like a “man” and show no emotion?

Other questions follow, one after another? Is there such a thing as masculine writing and feminine writing? Do some people consider it a compliment to say I write like a guy? Does that really mean that I write about topics that are non-trivial, things that women wouldn't ordinarily write about? Does it mean that my romantic story lines are well enough hidden that they don't evoke the “ew!” reaction that romance often does for men? Does it mean that I write grammatically strongly, that there is some sentence structure that is more complex and therefore more male? Does it mean that my expensive former boys' school education at Princeton has left marks on my vocabulary and cadence that the old boys' network notices?

I am physically female, but there are some ways in which I think of myself as on the spectrum that we call “male” and some ways on the “female” end. I don't much believe that these things are attached to what we call male and female bodies. There is no reason to believe that sexuality, aggression, and interest in science should be coded as attached to one sex or the other. Or that fashion, dancing, and vanity are coded female or “gay.”

Yet I accept that living in the real world means that I must talk with other women in one way and with men in a different way. Are either of these ways more or less authentic to who I am? Maybe the reality is that I am more chameleon or actor than anything else. As I said above, perhaps all I do is “pass” better. So why not “pass” as male, since that is the dominant power form?

I suspect that my male characters are at least as unusual in their maleness as my female character are in their femaleness. And the reality is that male characters are allowed more leeway. But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop writing characters who inhabit the world in the way I inhabit it, sometimes on their own terms, with suspicion and a certain amount of distance. Characters who love on their own terms, and who will never, ever, accept that how the world is is the way that it must be.

Imposter Syndrome

How to know if you have this:

1. You think that everyone around you is qualified and that you aren’t.

2. You are secretly terrified about when everyone around you will realize that you aren’t qualified.

3. You have no idea how you will ever become qualified.

4. The people you think are qualified are so far above you and you cannot imagine the path that brought them to this height.

5. You fantasize about giving up to relieve your stress, but that would also reveal the truth.

6. You work insane hours because you are trying to “catch up.”

7. You tend to avoid relationships with everyone around you for fear of letting the truth come out.

8. Anytime anyone else mentions something that you haven’t heard of that you think you should have, you freeze and go very quiet and still, worried that someone will ask you directly to talk about it and you will have to admit the truth.

I had imposter syndrome badly in graduate school at Princeton. Eventually, I got over it, not because I realized I was as smart as everyone else, but because it just took up too much energy and I had to accept that what I could do in a reasonable time frame was going to have to be good enough.

It was only later, after I left academia, that I began to see clearly how ridiculous it was. Because I felt it for a while as a writer, too. And then when I stopped feeling it, I noticed the people around me who still felt it. And there was no difference between us. Seriously, none. I didn’t have more sales. I didn’t have more knowledge.

If you imagine that you aren’t a “real writer,” or that other people know so much more than you do, it isn’t true. We’re all just figuring out how to make this book work, the one that we’re doing now. Sure, we may have learned things. Or we might not have. Honestly, I see new writers out there and sometimes when they refuse to follow the rules, they get some interesting results (not a lot of the time, but if they didn’t try, the rules would swallow us all!).

You write what you have to write. It may connect with some people. It may not. You may learn from people who know more than you do. And you may actually teach them something. If there is one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that you should give everyone a chance to be heard. Sometimes it’s the person you think is a nobody who knows just what you need to hear. And sometimes the people you idolize turn out to be hollow shells.

You’re not an imposter. You are yourself.

You are two people who can never meet

I was talking to a writer friend of mine (not of fiction, incidentally) and she said she is always telling students that they have to remember that they are two people. One is an editor who is analytical and dispassionate about the work. The editor cuts and slashes and criticizes. The editor demands better work. The editor says that this is not good enough.

But the editor can never produce anything on his/her own.

The second person is the creator. The creator is the one who invents new things. The creator is daring and tries something new. The creator refuses to listen to rules. The creator dances and sticks her tongue out and listens to music and makes no sense at all. The creator has fun.

And here’s the important thing about these two people. They must never meet. The editor can never come out while the creator is at play, lest the creator be crushed. You must keep these two people in entirely different boxes.

It is my opinion that the extent to which you are successful at this project is directly proportional to the number of words which you are able to produce in a day. Maybe you don’t want to produce a lot of words. Maybe you are happy with the number you already produce. Maybe you liked giving your editor more control than your creator. That is fine.

But if you want to produce more, I think the only way to do it is to put your editor away. Practice it religiously. It is a mental work that no one can do for you. And don’t excuse yourself by saying, well, the editor is right. This is bad. I should throw it away.

Yes, the editor is right. The editor is always right. But that still doesn’t mean he’s allowed out right now, when the sun is shining, and it’s time for mischief. There are some things that it’s just better that Dad and Mom never know.

When "No" doesn't mean "No"

Do you ever look back on your life and realize that if you had gotten the things that you wanted at the time that you wanted them, you would have missed some of the opportunities that came to you as a result of being told NO?

For me this has happened on several occasions.

1. When I didn’t get pregnant for a full year after I started trying.

In that year I wrote my first (very bad) novel. And realized that the writing dream I’d put off for so long was ready for me to go back to.

2. When I was told NO to getting a full-time job as a professor.

I was told that if I wanted the job, I would need to show that I wasn’t going to be wasting my time writing fiction. And realized that writing fiction was the thing I cared about most in the world in terms of career.

3. When I spent six years writing 20 novels that were all rejected.

I figured out what I really wanted to write and found the right agent for me. I didn’t get distracted by offers from small presses, and I think that was the right choice at the time for me.

4. When I lost a big deal after multiple rewrites.

Because I was with the wrong editor. I found the right editor again and The Rose Throne was finally published in the form it needed to be.

5. When I was so tired of trying to write a book that would sell and decided to write just for me.

I produced Ironmom. And The Bishop’s Wife (which I will talk about more later). Small successes, but they gave me enormous emotional satisfaction.

And it isn’t just in my life.

My daughter who is headed off to Berklee School of Music was told no so many times by high school music and drama teachers that she fled high school after only two years. She applied to her dream school and was accepted, but ended up unable to attend because of monetary reasons. She spent a year working minimum wage jobs and then reapplied to more colleges and got a much better situation.

My daughter who ended up at MIT was told by her parents that it was too expensive and to go to a cheaper school. But she figured out a way to get her own financing and went anyway. And was deliriously happy there.

Sometimes “no" is really the universe telling you you’re not thinking high enough yet.

Podcast interview about Ironmom

is live here:

http://www.theculturalhallpodcast.com/2013/07/ironmom-mette-harrison-ep-91-the-cultural-hall/

Making Relationships Feel Real

I’ve been musing on this topic for a while, and I think one of the keys is to have conflict between characters in a relationship. Because let’s face it, the time when you have no conflict with someone, what you might think of as “Honeymoon Days," those are really early in your relationship. And I don’t really think of them as something that you want to go back to, because they exist before you know each other well. The more you know another real person, the more conflict you have with that person. Because that’s the way it is. No two people are going to have a relationship without conflict, big and small.

If you have to friends, they are going to have a history of fights and they will both know where their respective sticky issues are. One of them will just have this thing about being a vegan and will go on and on about it and the other one will roll her eyes and just put up with it, even if she disagrees. Or one guy will love a particular TV show or sport that the other guy could care less about, and sometimes they argue about it and sometimes they just put up with it for each other, for the sake of the friendship. This is the texture of real relationships. They aren’t perfect. They’re messy.

And romantic relationships are even trickier. I find that I love romances where it’s a found-again story precisely because there is more history there, more pain, more conflicts that have to be worked around. And the two people involved know that the conflicts are there. So when they go into it, they have to have the strength necessary to deal with stuff they have always resisted dealing with before. Any romantic relationship has areas that people just don’t talk about because there’s no point in talking about it anymore. They just don’t connect there. And that’s OK. They need to be OK with that. They also should laugh about each other a bit. They shouldn’t have this need to see the other person as perfect, and I think laughter is a great way to show that the weaknesses are accepted as small and liveable, not so big that you have to fight over them every time.

Family relationships are even more complicated than romantic ones, in my opinion, because you choose your romantic partners (thank goodness!). You don’t choose your family. There are things about my family that I love, that I return to because no one else understands me the way my family does. We have history together. We share genes. We just are like each other in ways that are spooky to people outside of us. And yet, family is also the place where you are not allowed to change. Everyone sees you as you used to be, no matter how growed up you’ve become. You know? You love your family and you hate them, and if you’re writing about a family, you can’t forget that.

Pet Peeve: Villain's pov

I have read several books now by authors I normally love and have felt the experience ruined by a continual return to a villain's pov. This works for me only if the villain is actually an interesting person whose point of view doesn't disgust me. I generally prefer villains who think they are heroes, and the more they make me doubt the hero, the more interesting I find the story. But many stories don't have this kind of villain. They have a licorice-flavored villain (not vanilla, eh?), who is selfish and despicable. Not surprisingly, I don't want to stay in this person's pov.

Why do authors do this?

1. They think it's cool. They are wrong. I don't want to see what the villain is doing behind the scenes. I really don't. I don't want to see it until the main character faces it. I want to be surprised just like the main character is. I swear. I do!

2. Laziness. Authors think it's easier to show the villain doing bad stuff directly than showing the main character figuring out what the villain is doing in some other way.

3. Long-writing-itis. Authors sometimes feel like the villain is part of the story and they want to tell all the parts of the story. But a good editor should know better and a good author should listen to an editor who says to cut a villain's pov.

4. Pacing issues. They want to increase tension and this is the only way they can figure out how to do it. If the villain is there, building a war machine, then we all know that the main character is in a lot more trouble than s/he realizes at the moment.

Please, writers, don't do this. Keep your story tight and unless you have a particularly compelling villain, let the antagonist appear when the protagonist is protagging only!

The voices in my head say:

"This manuscript sucks."

"Why can’t you write a book like xxx that really sells?"

"No one is going to like this character."

"This genre is so overdone. Why am I bothering?"

"No one has ever published something like this. It will never sell."

"Why will I really make it?"

"No one knows who I am. I am completely invisible in the publishing world."

"People don’t want to read hard books. They don’t want to know the truth."

"What’s the point of trying? It’s all based on luck."

"I’m tired of banging my head against the wall."

"I’ve revised this book a hundred times and it’s still not any closer to being good."

"I should get a real job."

What I say back to them:

"This is what I do. This is who I am. I am a writer. I write."

Top five regrets of the dying

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Reblogging this today from:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying

Five kinds of Post-traumatic Growth

1. My priorities have changed. I’m not afraid to do what makes me happy.

2. I feel closer to my friends and family.

3. I understand myself better. I know who I really am now.

4. I have a new sense of meaning and purpose.

5. I am better able to focus on my goals and dreams.

From the Ted talk by Jane McGonigal:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_the_game_that_can_give_you_10_extra_years_of_life.html

A Psychology Today essay that echoed the same message:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-doesnt-kill-us/201301/have-you-experienced-posttraumatic-growth

I don’t mean to imply here that if you haven’t experienced all of these parts of growth that you’ve done something wrong. Or that you always feel happy about this growth. Sometimes I am angry about the growth I’ve had to go through after my own trauma. And I don’t think that going through the trauma was worth the growth. I don’t know if you can measure and weigh things that way.

Nonetheless, I feel like people sometimes misunderstand what post-traumatic growth looks like. It can seem selfish that after trauma, you turn inward and when you turn outward again, you are different. You suddenly realize that you have to give yourself some priority, and a brush with death can force you to focus on daily pleasures, in part because you need to have some reason to keep living.