A celebrated editor once reprimanded me, "A middle-aged man can't write a scene from the point of view of a ten-year-old Indian girl." Even though he was speaking conventional wisdom (and didn’t know I was below middle age and am of mixed blood), he was dead wrong. This is one convention I defy. Join me.
I write my novels from within the minds of several characters, including the "villain." (Tricky technically, but...) My immediate reason is the truth of the story: Each character is a universe within, each has a distinctive way of seeing the world, which explains why he acts the way he does. Showing a range of points of view conveys the truth of the story. This is what novelists do.
But there's a larger reason for delving into other people's minds, for me a beacon not only of writing but living. Human beings are of infinite variety, and not just the obvious ones. Whether you’re a woman, man, or child, Asian or Anglo, Hispanic or black, you have an amazing landscape behind your eyes. Through fiction, and almost only through fiction, the rest of us can step into such landscapes, look around and be fascinated, and then look out at the world through foreign eyes and be absolutely dazzled. SO THIS IS WHY SHE ACTS THE WAY SHE DOES.
What could be more important? What greater gift could stories give this fractionalized world? An older history prof, speaking of my story about Crazy Horse, paid me a great compliment: “From now on I will never see people of color in the same way.”
The object of writing, as of reading, is to sail into the new. If you're a white guy, make a point of writing from inside women's minds. If you're black, write from inside the head of an Irish back-room politican. If you're a Latina woman, step inside the mind of a Hindu convenience store owner. For here lies discovery. In this land there be wonders. Here opens your own growth, and here is the gift you can offer the world.
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