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Douglas Kennedy, author of The Pursuit of Happiness, on writing as a woman:

A few years ago – around the time of the publication of ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ – I found myself being interviewed by a most serious-minded German journalist (mind you, I’ve never met a frivolous German journalist). The gentleman in question had one of those unfortunate ‘Stalag 17’ accents which put me in mind of countless war interrogation scenes in countless B-movies. Anyway, at one point in our conversation, he started asking me about writing ‘The Pursuit…’ in the voices of two women. And he said:

“Herr Kennedy, you seem to known vat vimmin vant”.

After doing my best to curb the urge to laugh, I tried to explain that when writing the book, I was never thinking about vat vimmin vant. On the contrary, I could only think about vat Sara und Kate vanted. In other words, when approaching a scene, I didn’t put my finger to my cheek in an interrogative way and ask myself: “Now how would a woman react in a situation like this?” All I could consider was how my narrators would react to the situations into which I had thrown them. As I tried to explain to the German gentlemen, to write as a woman you don’t follow the sex of your narrator – you follow their voice, their character, and their manifold contradictions.

“But, Herr Kennedy”, the journalist said, “you still must understand the female psyche”.

Once again, all I could say was: “I simply understand the psyche of my characters, that’s all”.

He didn’t buy this – and, I sense, wanted me to reveal the fact that I had been born with a secret supply of estrogren which I now tapped into whenever I wrote as a woman. But, then again, there is a belief that if you write about a specific human condition, you have obviously experienced it yourself. Consider: in every one of my novels, there is a marriage that is coming asunder. Does this mean that I myself have a bad marriage? Not to my knowledge – but I was raised in the middle of a very bad marriage by two parents who seemed to be gunning for the August Strindberg Prize for Domestic Dysfunction… so yes, I do know a thing or two about conjugal unhappiness.

Similarly, in my new novel, ‘A Special Relationship’, the narrator, Sally Goodchild, suffers through an appalling pregnancy, then finds herself plunging into the dark pit of postnatal depression. Now how did I find out about such charming medical conditions as mastistis (in which the milk flow to the breast becomes calcified), or the horrors of postnatal depression? It’s simple, really. I did research. I read a few books. I had a conversation or two with a doctor. I spoke with a remarkable woman who had weathered a major post-partum nightmare. And then I simply applied this new-found knowledge to my narrator’s predicament. Or, to put it another way, I thought about how Sally would handle the agony of being a highly independent, tough-minded woman who suddenly starts spinning out of mental control.

In short, the trick of writing in the first person – whether it be as a man or a woman – is an obvious one: you simply must imagine yourself into your narrator’s head. Of course, you’re always the authorial figure controlling their destiny. But, believe me, once you lose yourself in your character’s voice, they often take control of the action. And as they lead your story down narrative back lanes you never knew existed, you find yourself often wondering: who the hell is in charge here?