… or “Whose book is it anyway?” Part Two.

I was inspired to compose this post by a friend of mine, MM Bennetts, who feels not at all confident about writing female characters and was therefore somewhat stunned to find one had leapt, fully formed, like Athene from the brow of Zeus, onto the pages of her latest book.

This got me thinking.  I’ve never actually considered that I had any difficulty writing female characters.  I mean, I’m a girl.  It should be easy, n’est-ce pas?  I’ve got the inside track on how a woman thinks and feels, her motivations, her desires.  Surely it should be the Sons of Adam, rather than the Daughters of Eve, that I struggle with?

Apparently not.

Someone commented that “Songs” was lacking in strong female characters.  I did point out to the (female) reviewer that she’d only read the opening chapters which are set in a monastic military order, wherein women are, ipso facto, somewhat thin on the ground, but I did another read-through of the script and noted that the dramatis personae had a definite XY bias.

Hmm.

Now I’m not going to start stuffing strong, empowered women into the narrative left, right and centre to satisfy some artificial notion of gender equality.  If the story doesn’t call for these characters, I’m not going to write them.   It depends on the book.  “Trinity Moon” is chock-full of strong women, for instance, whereas in “Songs” they’re few but memorable.  But it did make me wonder whether I subconsciously find it easer to write about blokes.

I certainly couldn’t write chick-lit, not if my life depended on it.  I don’t understand the heroines, and can’t relate to them, their lives or problems.  I have zero interest in shoes except as devices to keep my feet warm and dry.  Handbags are what I use to carry my purse, a biro and some lip balm around in–I’d be just as happy with a carrier bag.  Boyfriends?  I’ve been with the hero of my own particular romance for almost 13 years; I’m happy with the one I’ve got.  Freya, Lisa, you can relax.  I have no intention of poaching on your turf.

But I couldn’t write bloke-lit either.  Will Self, Nick Hornby and their ilk have the field to themselves; I don’t have the mental toolkit.  I don’t have (to borrow from Terry Pratchett’s “Monstrous Regiment”) the socks.

The truth is, I don’t actually think about whether a character is male or female.  They’re just people.  Whether they pee standing up or sitting down is irrelevant to me, to the reader (except those with a feminist agenda–why can’t they just enjoy the story for the story’s sake, without looking for politically-correct points to check off?), even irrelevant to the story, unless a particular plot-point hinges on what Character A keeps in his trousers, or the contents of Character B’s shirt.  Or the desires of A to get into said B’s shirt.

It just so happens that when the characters start speaking to me, they tend to be at the bass end of the vocal register.  I don’t know why this is.  Could some of them be rewritten as women?  Sure.  They’d still be just as brave, resourceful, stubborn or foolish, but you can’t just swap gender roles like that for the sake of “equality”.

Take a bunch of male characters and introduce a couple of women into the mix.  Now, if you’ve written them even half-way credibly, they’ll behave just like real blokes would in that situation, and there’ll be awkward attempts at gallantry, stolen kisses or a sexual harassment lawsuit by the end of the week.  I haven’t got room in the narrative for all that.  It gets in the way of the story–at least, my story, which is epic fantasy; if you’re writing contemporary women’s fiction it could very well *be* the story, in which case you’re on the wrong shelf and want the next aisle over.

So *am* I secretly a bloke?  I was once asked that question, by a man, because he was surprised at how well I got into Gair’s head.  I will freely admit that I am not the girliest of girls.  I don’t wear makeup or nail polish.  I like motorbikes and rugby and tequila.  But I can assure you, having just checked down the front of my t-shirt, I am not a bloke.

Or if I am, I need to complain to the manufacturer because there seem to be some bits missing.  Specifically, the socks.

Quite a lot, actually.  A lot of to-ing and fro-ing, trying to find one that looks right, sounds right, balances well on a book cover and isn’t too hard to pronounce (so you don’t end up with lots of confused readers in the bookstore who want to buy your book but don’t know how to say your name and are too embarrassed to go and talk to the girl on the Customer Service counter in case they get it wrong and look like a plonker).

In the opinion of my agent, it is not dissimilar to the naming of cats.  I’ve always maintained that cats should be named something you wouldn’t be embarrassed to yell down the street at midnight to get the wretched thing to come home, and my subconscious immediately presented me with an image of a group of agents wandering around Bloomsbury trying to round up their authors after one of Gollancz’s legendary parties.

I’d originally picked Elizabeth Cooper as my pen-name, because I felt my real one didn’t exactly trip off the tongue.  It doesn’t seem to have hurt Conn Iggulden much, but there you go.  Anyway, my publisher was keen to go for something that balanced better on a cover, and we batted round some ideas.  We even tried playing the gender-ambiguity card for all it was worth, since research suggests that boys tend not to buy books written by girls.  Strange but true.

In the end, we decided that the rule book had been comprehensively trashed by the likes of Stephenie Meyer and Charlaine Harris, and that for fantasy authors female is the new black and Elspeth Cooper it would be.  Plus the foreign publishers loved it.  The name with which I have existed in a state of armed truce for some forty years, which I am reduced to spelling out over the telephone as echo-lima-sierra-papa-echo-tango-hotel only to have the person at the other end go “Um…”

But really, I don’t care, because in 2011 the name in gold-embossed lettering on that gorgeous cover over the thick hardback book will be *mine*.