by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I go where this novel takes me. And when I started this latest version of this story, or put another way, when I decided to start the story not in late 2019 but in early 1995, I had no idea where things would take me. But, here I am. Staring at my computer screen trying my best to write a scene from my heroine’s POV as she swoons for a dude she ultimately has sex with.
I’m well aware that “woke” people think that by definition, I’m being transgressive by even attempting such a thing. To them a man can never use his imagination to write from a female point of view — no matter what. It’s like some immutable law of nature or something.
Fuck that.
If I’m going to tell the story I want to tell, then not only am I going to use third person intimate to depict a woman going on a date, I’m also going to write from the POV of a nearly 16-year-old boy. That’s just the story I want to tell because I know, in the end, the payoff will be huge in the sense that fans of this project (if they ever exist) will have five more novels (at at least) to look forward to.
I say this even as I am well aware that I have to be very careful how I proceed. I have to be very careful in what I write, very conservative about how I go about things. If I don’t, then I’m going to make a fool out of myself and join a legion of other male writers who write about “girl stuff” and do nothing but embarrass themselves and cause women to giggle.
I guess the point is — don’t assume I can’t pull this kind of stuff off just because of who I am. I do have an imagination, you know. And, for the purposes of art and fiction I’m willing to — very carefully — wade into the problematic and perilous waters of being a middle age CIS white man writing from a woman’s POV in third person intimate.
I totally get why some “woke” people hate on my ilk for doing what I’m attempting to do. I totally validate it. And, yet, those people can suck it if they say I totally prohibited, by definition, from even doing it to begin with. Judge me for what I can do, not for who I am.
