"Bitches ain't shit but holes and tricks" -- E.M Forster, 1924

[spyderfyngers]

You have writers, and then you have women writers.

Comments

[cedarheart]

Write what you feel you need to write. People will always put labels on you, and there's nothing you can do about that. To even worry about such abstract things can only put you in a hole mentally and stifle you. I know that you want to go into the literary world, which does mean you're more saddled with this kind of garbage than I will ever be with my genre kid book (oh, the horror! I'm writing fairy-tale fluff! I am a disgrace to womankind!) but try not to let it keep you from doing what you want to do. I saw a lot of this crap when I was in university. As a female, I was expected to write plays about vaginas and lesbians and everything I wrote was picked apart and psychoanalyzed and frankly, it ruined my passion. I hope that doesn't happen to you.

Oh, and I had a couple of pigs like that for professors, too. One of them would approach the prettier female students with a "I have a hot tub at home, are you feeling tense?" and then offer a back rub. Ew.

[spyderfyngers]

Also, as a female, you have to love Jane Austen. It's the law. That one used to just kill me, because nothing on this earth will make me give two hoots about Mister Darcy and his soggy shirt.

Genre fiction is a funny one. My book is what I'd call fantasy, but not approaching High Fantasy at all. I've been told by my RFL tutor to call it magic realism to cover my arse, or else no one will ever take me seriously. There's a lot of snobbery.

[hellbound_heart]

This was an interesting read, Verity - and I agree with you - it never ceases to amaze me just how great the divide in expectations is between male and female authorship (where if you submit to gender expectations you're beneath notice and if you rally against them, ugh, how reactionary.) I can completely understand why female writers past and present veil themselves behind male or gender-neutral names, and then of course part of me revolts against that too

[spyderfyngers]

IQ tests! There's another topic of rage. ;-)

I'm adamant that I won't take a male pseudonym - that would be perpetuating the problem. But I'm dreading the little digs that will no doubt be sent my way.

My brother-in-law saw my website before Christmas, turned to me and said "so this is a hobby, right?" Arg.

[redshira]

Can I link this over on Shakesville? Many, many people should see it.

[spyderfyngers]

If you like, although eek, Shakesville has The Big Guns. Shall I put this on public or will you copy text?

[redshira]

Best if you put it public, and you know, Shakesville's Big Guns are only to be feared by fucknecks. You are One Of Us and thus not a fuckneck.

Also, thank you for the permission.

[froggyh]

Verity, I love you. I agree with everything you've said here, as someone else who writes but most emphatically does not want to be a woman writer. But there will be some romance in at least one of my books, because it's about teenagers and growing up and romance is often a part of that. Also because I've had those characters in my head for far too long and think they just make a perfect couple XP However, I'm not writing romance for the sake of romance, and I'm certainly not writing it because I'm a woman and it's what women write

[pettythief]

People love to pigeon-hole. You have a similar thing with authors who have multicultural backgrounds who must get really peed off when they try to move away from White Teeth and have people still try to analyse everything they do from the perspective of them being "the voice of the non-white".

Or Sylvia Plath - can't get away from being "the one who gassed herself in the oven because her husband was a git" so everything she wrote is read entirely from that angle.

There was an interview I read with an author once where she was protesting that people think she's chicklit because of the way she's marketed. She's subjected to lurid cover art with a shoe or a shopping bag on it. And she says she's not chicklit at all. I can't actually remember what her name was...

[pettythief]

Regarding Chekhov - if a woman had written about the swans flying to Moscow, would it be seen as a work of genius?

And I can't think of many modern writers I like, apart from say Joel Lane and Gwendoline Riley. One male, one female. But I don't think anyone will think them "great". Then again, I wonder what the criteria is for "being great" - and I think often it's thought up by people who don't know what they're on about.

I've tried Hemingway - For Whom The Bell Tolls. And I couldn't get into it. I've read other novels about the Spanish Civil War, like Orwell's, and that was fine (ok, it wasn't exactly a novel seeing as it was autobiography, but still). Not Hemingway. And yet people go on about how wonderful he is.

See also Dostoeyevsky. Pasternak? I love Dr Zhivago. But not Dostoeyvesky. Can't even spell his name, apparently

[froggyh]

I've seen Jane Austen issued with bubblegum pink covers and nearly vomited, because although the main plot of her books is romance, there's so much more than that. Take Pride and Prejudice, it's about exactly what the title says - how people have a tendency to be proud, which leads them to be unfairly prejudiced against others. You don't get that sort of thing in chick lit.

[pettythief]

It's like them re-issuing Wuthering Heights with Twilight-style covers. *gag*

But if they can market something as chicklit, they will. It's so inane. :(