Much Thanks to The_Eternal_Void for the Prompt

[The following was inspired by a post on the Writing Prompts subreddit.]

I understood Celeste's reservations regarding Vance's membership to the party. Her paladin training told her to be wary of those who wield godlike powers, and while I'd seen my share of horrific images in the camps, I hadn't seen anything quite like this. None of us were equipped nor trained to deal with matters of the arcane, especially those that fall under the purview of all things eldritch.

My eyes followed where she pointed: the greasy wizard whose robe conveniently disappeared--again--while green glowing ichor poured forth from his lips into a skull-goblet with ruby eyes. He sat atop a dead spider, leaning forward only slightly as if just catching his breath.

"Oh not again," he said between heaves. He wore a pained expression that seemed like he wanted us to believe he was in pain. But I could tell he wasn't. Though he squinted and gritted his teeth, all of the other muscles in his face were relaxed, at least as relaxed as they could be for a man vomiting otherworldly slop.

We picked him up in Hyde's Hollow in a tavern. It was rare to find a scholar outside of a library or university, so Celeste considered it a boon from her god that we found a man capable of reading ancient script in the very place that we sought shelter only days before we planned to arrive at Nettle's Tomb. In truth, he seemed normal enough. But then we left town. She's been cursing him for the last few hours.

The fact that he insisted on riding the spider instead of one of our hired horses should have been a sign.

A Case for Arrogance

Last month marked the the fifth anniversary of me knowing about National Novel Writing Month, or “NaNoWriMo” as the cool kids call it, and my second failed attempt at it. Every few days I received updates from the official NaNoWriMo website, subject line reading “Your NaNo Updates.” The truth of the matter was they weren't my updates. They weren’t about anything I was writing or anything my two NaNoWriMo buddies were working on. Most of it was “Pep Talk” from famous writers that, while probably helpful, never got my attention.

I don’t mean to say that I’m above it. While half of my brain harbors that arrogance that all writers have--otherwise they wouldn’t be writing--the other half asks myself what the hell I think I’m doing. Unfortunately, for the last few years now, that second voice has been most vocal.

There was a dry spell of writing for me after the end of my last semester of undergrad. I had the upper-level fiction class left to take and I was forced to take it with a professor who was notorious for harsh criticism in both literature and writing classes. I was never clear on his credentials for teaching a creative writing class. All I could read on him was his anti-genre elitism and vaguely sexist attitude. That class ended with me getting a B--my only B of all of my creative writing courses--and losing confidence in my writing. Maybe he was right: maybe I was a hack (my words, not his). I’ll never know why I got a B in the class and why some others got As, but I’m not about to ask him. At least some of my arrogance still sits in me.

It took a class in grad school taught by (Warning: NAME DROP) Roxane Gay to rekindle that spirit in me. Her criticism was blunt but not hurtful. For a time, I felt like I could ride that bicycle of writing all over again. I did for that semester and it felt good. But then the rest of grad school happened and ate up what time I could spend to think about writing. and then finally the thesis came which became composition priority Number One.

So here I am now, long after the hustle and bustle of graduate school, master’s degree in hand and I find I’m not writing anything except this blog. NaNoWriMo looked as good an opportunity as any to get back to it. I had all sorts of fiction ideas swimming through my head. A few days before NaNoWriMo started I even got to work on one of them. Did I fire off too soon?

As November progressed, I saw updates from old classmates on Facebook updating us with their progress in NaNoWriMo. They put up a better fight than I ever did. One had been sick and took a break from it. I wish I had that excuse.

NaNoWriMo is a lovely idea, truly. It gets those who aren’t writing otherwise to start thinking about it and doing it. If it gets people just thinking about it that aren’t otherwise, I’d say NaNoWriMo fulfilled some portion of its purpose. But then I think of the temporal boundaries of the month. Never have they claimed that they only want folks writing in the month of November. But there is a finality about November 30. Did you get those 50,000 words written? No? Well, you tried. Halfway through the month I realized I hadn’t written a single word for it yet and decided, “Screw it,” because what’s the point of trying to reach 50,000 words when I didn’t have 25,000 halfway through.

It’s a terrible attitude. Truly god awful. It’s especially ridiculous to pin it on an organization which has no goal other than getting folks to write. But this is the attitude you get when you need an audience, when you go from thinking you’re hot shit to knowing you’re just shit. I feel like Samson with a crewcut.

Without some sort of support network, I’ve found that writing, both during and outside of NaNoWriMo, is difficult. There are those who write for themselves, but I’m not one of them. I’ve always thrived in the workshop setting. Being an interstate immigrant to Arkansas, I’ve lost that ability to physically gather folks to a writing workshop. There is the prospect of a virtual one via Facebook with some grad schoolmates. Maybe they can stoke the fire of my arrogance.

Demystifying the Realistic Female Character

As a writer, I struggle with writing realistic female characters. I've never received explicit criticism for writing an unrealistic female character, but as soon as I write a character with ladyparts, I am immediately self-conscious. Is she promoting a stereotype I failed to recognize or didn't even know about? One of the oldest rules in writing is "Write what you know," and I don't know the female experience.

But I also I don' t know what that authentic female experience is supposed to be. It's comforting to know that many of the big writers don't, either. Steven Moffat, the current showrunner for Doctor Who and creator of the new Sherlock, has been largely criticized for his female characters. The popular episode "Blink" in which countless viewers can never look at weeping angel statues the same way again (or look away for that matter) is frequently lauded for its low-budget (even by Doctor Who standards) attempt at horror through simplicity and tricky editing. But the main character--not the Doctor or his companion--catches flak for zero development. Nivair H. Gabriel describes the character as "Moffat's embarrassingly flat narrator . . . whose lack of complexity has earned her a place of honor in the annals of Mary Sue." The author then points out another symptom of Moffat's writing broadly across other Who episodes, "It's the way women are written as if they have absolutely no control over what happens in their life at all--and they're fine with that." I don't mean to place Doctor Who on a pedestal of high quality writing, though there are some strong episodes for sure, and there's plenty of evidence to suggest that Moffat is a consummate misogynist. He remains a successful and popular writer, regardless. But the shortcomings of male authors don't stop there.

A fantasy novel I just began called Gardens of the Moon, part of the Malazan Book of the Fallen Series by Steven Erikson, has its share of criticism for female believability. In a review for Fantasy & Science Fiction, Charles de Lint gives credit where credit is due: "Mind you, there are a lot of characters, each with a fascinating history and story, and it takes some time getting to know them all and keeping them straight." The series is no Martin-esque feat of character birthing, but approaches the sheer volume of speaking bodies without sacrificing characterization. But then de Lint calls Erikson out on "the lack of any believable female characters." Indeed, the book is rife with female "stoic warriors, assassins, and mages . . . , courtesans, or in one case, a young girl possessed by gods and turned into a killing machine." While I've only made it about 150 pages in, I've encountered only a handful of female characters, including the one female character de Lint does praise: "Except for one strong female lead, the mage Tattersail, there's no distinct female perspective to set the female characters apart from their male counterparts." And I agree, Tattersail does outshine the other female characters. But I find it difficult to describe her perspective as distinctly female. She is female and her perspective is distinct, but I wonder if that's all the author meant or if he desired a perspective unique to the female experience.

George R. R. Martin, the man behind HBO's Game of Thrones and the books that inspired them, has been complimented from several sources for his ability to write realistic female characters. In an interview with The Telegraph, Jessica Salter argues that "the secret to his appeal" is that the book series A Song of Ice and Fire--on which Game of Thrones is based-- "has an army of female fans clamouring for his next installment." Salter writes, "Martin's women are more three dimensional," and offers up five distinct female characters who are strongly characterized in the books. He admits that he's "never been an eight year old girl," but nor has he "been an exiled princess, or a dwarf or bastard." Tapping into his own humanity is what makes his characters believable: "I just write human characters."

But is that sound enough advice? I want to believe it, but I'm still leery about my ability to write a female character. Truthfully, I've only written two as protagonists. The first was in a short story that could use plenty of TLC, but the latter was in a screenplay I penned as part of an independent study. Originally, the protagonist had started out as a male character, "Murphy." But at one point, I asked myself, "Why is Murphy male?" I then proceeded to change the character to female because I had no compelling argument to support Murphy's maleness. I had about 30 pages of a post-apocalyptic road movie written up and then went in to perform a sex change on Murphy. I changed pronouns. I described her as having long hair. Her named remained Murphy. I even toyed with her first name being "Charlotte" but that she was called "Charlie" by those who knew her, but then I remembered Eddie Murphy's brother's name is Charlie. I think I did okay. She was a hard-ass and I did nothing to sexualize her. My instructor for the independent study course made no critique of Murphy being unrealistic, but I still worried that Murphy was little more than a man in women's clothing. I worried that Murphy was not distinctly female. I still worry.

But then, should that be my goal? Should I go for the distinct female? Or should I go for the distinctly female? Or should I divorce myself from gender at the basic level and go for the human? Writers, what are your experiences? My fellow male writers, do you struggle? Or do you think you have it?