I think of this often when I write from a male perspective. I have always enjoyed writing this way, and did so more often as a teenager when I was trying to figure out what it was all about. Until an exercise in class last week, I hadn’t written from a first person male perspective in ages (although I did play around with some male third person limited over the summer). As I have come through a sort of renaissance in my writing in the past year, I am more committed to really inhabiting my characters as I write them, and as I inhabit them, I love them. (Yoga helps with this immensely.) I now have this little character sketch that I started in that exercise, and I want to work it into a story because I really feel for this guy. Maybe it is age, or perspective, or yoga, but I am inclined to be much more gentle with my male characters now. The mere fact that through my characters I get to inhabit masculinity is an honor, a sacred trust I have with these fictional people, with the universe, with anyone who reads my writing.

Anyway, sixteen years later, I finally have an answer to the question of why I write from a male perspective sometimes: because that is what fiction writers DO. We slough off the facts in order to find the best way to tell the truth. Sometimes we need to understand some truth that writing as a man can tell us, sometimes that we need to understand that truth as a woman, sometimes neither. Sometimes the reason is deep and complex, and other times it is as simple as “these are man jokes.” And sometimes, I do it just because it is fun, it makes a decent story, and there is no need to take everything so damn seriously, which as I learned sixteen years ago, can be a challenging thing to explain to an MFA candidate.