Writing Across Gender

In his essay entitled, "First Person Female," author Jim Harrison discusses how he was able to successfully write in the voice of a woman. Along the way, he seems to suggest that male, heterosexual writers, in order to be able to write across gender, need to allow themselves the same emotional latitude that society affords women and gay men. I guess what he is saying is that men need to allow themselves to have feelings and emotions that perhaps culture has historically deemed as being feminine.

I can agree with that to a certain extent, but I think really, it just boils down to a writer being able to see things, or imagine things from another perspective other than their own. This goes for female writers writing from a man's POV, and male writers portraying women characters in their work.

I do think, too, that a writer needs to be observant of the world around him or her. In Harrison's case, he pointed to the women that he grew up with as being sources for his female characters. For fleshing out his female characters, he simply drew from his experiences with his mother, his aunts, and his dead sister. I know when I have written fiction, I have simply thought about people that I know, or have known, when developing characters. Admittedly, though, I don't think that I have yet successfully written anything from a woman's POV. I think mostly this is just because I am a noob writer and it's easiest to stick to what you know, which, in my case, is the male perspective.