Writing as a (wo)man for wo(men)?
All the other "Serious Writer" stories in my collection are told from a male perspective. Only "The Serious Writer And Her Bush" (below, a kind of counter-piece to "The Serious Writer And His Penis") assumes that The Serious Writer is a woman.
I've often been drawn to picking female protagonists only to find out later that it's too hard for a man to write a woman convincingly. At least I cannot do it & I think it may be a widespread problem among male writers. Take Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" — for me, the title figure never really comes to life in the same way as Lewin, the male protagonist, does. He seems to carry the burden of the story while she carries the heavier fate.
Perhaps someone should offer a tutorial for Serious Writing (Wo)Men, "Writing as a (wo)man for wo(men)."
Here's the story — The Serious Writer And Her Bush:
«The serious writer looks back on a long and distinguished career as an herbologist. Her favourite bush grows in Central Park and is called Noah's Ark by the residents because of the myriad of animals that it shelters. The serious writer has given a name to every leaf and branch of the Ark, and when autumn comes, her heart slowly withers, pondering decay as the shrub sheds its summer splendour and returns to the raw.»
—From: The Serious Writer And Her Bush, in "Thank You For Your Sperm", published by MadHat Press. This story was first published under my nom de plume Flawnt in elimae. — Photo: Central Park Bridges (Wikimedia).
