My wife Jennifer Pirecki is a fine author herself; she’s also a psychotherapist by vocation and loves to mine my books for themes. When she began talking about the many strong females in my first novel, Town Lawe, it caught me off-guard. As mentioned here in the Negotiating with Characters musing, I wrote whomever showed up for those sessions and yelled the loudest. It wasn’t at all pre-fabricated; those characters shared their stories with me, and did so from a position of strength. As she cited example after example over croissants and coffee at a local bakery, I just smiled and shrugged. I had no idea until that moment.
I’ve been fortunate to witness strong women throughout my life. I was raised by one, worked with plenty, and have been married to another for over 30 years. To clarify strength; I’m not referring to the domineering Norman Bates’ mother archetype. Instead, women of great internal fortitude, integrity, and resolve; both in personal spaces and their professional capacities. It’s a grit and determination that I both admire, and respect. So when an accomplished female character introduces herself the way that Meredith Hawthorne did for The House of Long Shadows, I jumped at the opportunity to serve as the interpreter for her story, and any risk associated with ‘some guy named Bruno’ writing a female lead never crossed my mind. However in retrospect, if it went sideways I might never hear the end of it, and the title of this musing could easily be punctuated: Writing Women. Well . . .
What risk ?
Internal – Can I as a male, capture Meredith’s nuanced essence and articulate it effectively as a lead.
As discussed in earlier musings, it’s important for authors to learn to trust their characters, and in the case of Meredith Hawthorne, it was critical to balance her transparent vulnerabilities with the resilience and respect that she’s earned in life. If, for example, those attributes were presented in contrast to each other, she may have come across as fragmented rather than intact, and the weight of her story requires a whole person to navigate the complex terrain. Meredith had indeed earned her place at the fire, but the price was her innocence; a product that she’s determined to preserve in Edward. That necessitated a delicate weave in order to run concurrently with her own revelations and resolutions unfolding.
External – Offense.
We live in a climate where offense-taking has somehow become a personal ethos. There are those who bristle over the thought of a male writing a female lead, it’s just the times in which we live. I’ve walked that virtue gauntlet before while shopping copyeditors for Town Lawe. A few declined because they weren’t comfortable editing a story featuring Native American characters and history written by someone not of tribal descent. Thankfully, a seasoned editor named Elissa Rabellino loved the story for what it was, and ran with it. The fruit of our work together yielded a few awards, but it’s the comment from a reader at a California book club appearance that will stand forever. In short, she approached me afterwards and said: “I’m 80 years old, and before reading Town Lawe I had an unflattering view of Native American culture, that’s now changed.” This is why we must write what we’re given.
There’s a real concern of wonderful stories never being told because an author fears the subjective hurdle of offense. If we’re deterred from telling a story that chose us because of this, then we’ve lost the bigger plot. It’s especially important for young impressionable writers to understand that there are stories waiting to be told by them, characters that hover on the fringes of sight, beckoning to borrow their fingers for a time. It’s an incredible honor to have those experiences as a human, and worthy of unassailed preservation.
The dance of Meredith’s struggles and victories aren’t exclusive to females. We all have them, and it’s our approach to resolution that may differ. Anyone who writes the opposite sex in lead or supporting roles effectively, has learned to listen for this subtlety in their characters. Acting as Meredith’s interpreter helped me to contextualize my own experiences as an author, and challenged me to find a complimentary color of thread to deliver her story to the page.
We grow with our characters, and they with us. By allowing their voices to come forward without constraint we build the bond and trust necessary between collaborators. It’s a practice that borders on the sacred, and welcomes whomever shows up for that initial author-meets-character interview. Meredith Hawthorne taught me that.
Thanks again for stopping by, I hope something here resonates with you.
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Up next for February – To Sex Or Not To Sex.
Until then—
Happy words,
-Bruno