Writing the Other

Last weekend I was on a panel at an afternoon of all things mystery at Kepler’s Bookstore in Palo Alto. My panel was entitled “It Ain’t Me Babe,” about writing a character who is not you. I write a series about a 60-something man in a small Texas town, an ex-chief of police who takes up the job again. He married a wealthy woman who collected art and grew to love modern art. Under the influence of his next-door neighbor he comes to enjoy a good glass of red wine. He also raises cattle.
It ain’t me, babe! I do like modern art and red wine and I spent wonderful hours in a small town in Texas where my grandparents lived when I was young—but that’s it. I’m noticeably not a man, not a cattle rancher and certainly not a chief of police, ex or otherwise. Sot the panel was just right for me.
But the first question threw me. The moderator talked about a woman who became head of the NAACP for a number of years, pretending to be an African American and asked if we writers were in the position of pretending as this woman was. I’ve been thinking about the question since then. At the heart of the question is the assumption that in order to write someone who is not like you, as a writer you have to pretend to be that person.
I don’t think that’s the case. You don’t “pretend” to become that person. In some ways, mentally, you actually become that person. When I am writing about Samuel, I feel as if I’m a camera, walking through his life, seeing through his eyes, recording events, reacting to them, having opinions about them. In some ways I think that’s what drives us to be writers, the fact that we have other voices in our heads that we channel. Not to be all woo-woo about it, it’s a bit of magic.
Is this what we mean when we talk about being “authentic” as a writer? Sometimes I have trouble getting into a character’s head and the character falls flat. It feels like an inauthentic rendering of his or her part in the novel. In order to come closer to the truth, I find that I have to slip into the skin of the character and mentally move through that world. I don’t know if that’s what other writers do. It’s something I’ve never heard anyone talk about. I’ve heard of writers producing biographies of their characters, but not mentally becoming the character.
I was recently asked if I thought I could write from the viewpoint of a 25-year-old man. Who knows? It feels like more of a stretch than writing an older man and I don't know if I have enough ability to "become" someone so young and with a different world and personal view. I'd like to find out
So I come back to the question. Is it “pretending” or “becoming” someone else? I’m curious to know what others think, and how other writers come to an understanding of the characters they are writing about.