I had a conversation with my daughter yesterday about writing. Poppy wanted me to read a short story she had written in her Language Arts class, and she was upset with the editing a male classmate had done on her draft. I completely got that! I’m working through edits on my own manuscript right now, so I could easily feel her pain. For the record, I agreed with nearly everything the boy had corrected on her draft aside from a few commas.
After I got done reading and had give her my feedback, Poppy said, “I like writing stories from inside a boy’s head rather than inside a girl’s head because girls think like this. ‘Oh, I sure hope Jacob likes me. I should go fix my hair and put more makeup on.'”
Obviously, not all female characters are bubble headed twits like my Poppy portrayed with such comedic delivery, but sadly, there are a lot that are.
I barely kept in my laughter because of her delivery, but then I told her, “I prefer writing male characters too, so that’s why I write what I write.”
Poppy has known that I write about men falling in love with men for at least a year. It would be hard not to know that when walking into my writing studio, because my two main character’s faces are right there on a bulletin board staring at me.
We talked a bit about our characters and why we liked writing from a boy’s point of view. We had very similar reasons. Yet I love writing about female secondary characters. These women often end up being my favorite people, and I’ve had feedback from readers and editors who practically cheer when I bring Summer (for example) back into the story.
And yet, I’m still asked by people unfamiliar with the M/M genre why I enjoy writing from a man’s perspective. Of course, that’s after they ask me why I write M/M in the first place and how I find out about M/M sex. My mother-in-law asked about all of this last weekend. I answered too.
What do you enjoy about reading or writing a male POV? I’m curious to see if they are the same reasons Poppy and I had.
