In case you didn’t know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo); it’s an international movement in which people strive to write a novel in 30 days — 50,000 words is the goal, which is more of a novella. That might sound like a lot to people who don’t write, but my average blog size is around 400-600 words, and the requirement for NaNoWriMo is 1667 words daily to meet the goal. Not all that much, really.
That said, although I’ve participated for many years and usually get a big jump early on, I’m way behind at the moment. I’ve written probably 8-10 books, and the one I’m working on right now is part of a series. While I would eventually love to sell a book, I’ve been writing for me. It’s a fun exercise to unleash my brain and let it run.
It occurred to me in the wee hours of the morning, this morning, that I’ve only had one character with a weight issue, and she successfully managed to lose the weight and keep it off. Not only that, but she had to deal with the mental aspects of what she knew about her existence and what others might think if they knew; she feared judgment. Mind you, I wrote that particular character before I decided to make this current push toward health, and in a lot of ways, I’ve become that character. I’ve lived her life, except that as I progress with my efforts, I no longer fear judgment for what I am and once was.
That means, of course, that I wrote the rest of my female characters as women who did not have weight issues that were obvious. Sure, they eat in my books. I don’t starve my characters (unless I lock them in a storm shelter and then leave them there for nearly a year — which I did with the character I’m working on. Not a real year in HER time; just mine!), but it’s rare that they really even address food, although I’ve started thinking about it.
While they say to write what you know, I’ve been writing a lot of what I don’t know. Until recently, my biggest adult experience has been as a morbidly obese woman — a perspective I haven’t chosen to write about, in part, because I think that not only has it been an uncomfortable subject for me in the past, but I also wonder how many people would really be interested in such a character. We don’t seem to mind the occasional male character who isn’t physically perfect, but we do seem to want our female characters to be more like we wish we were, ourselves.
It occurs to me, though, that as I continue to learn how to live life as a woman without the burdens of morbid obesity (because there are surely many, friends!), that I’ve had to change my mind about some things. I used to think my situation was a bit abnormal, but honestly, dealing with weight and health issues seems more the norm than I thought. So many of us struggle, even if it’s just a few pounds, or because our labs came back with high cholesterol, or we need to control blood pressure or try to avoid diabetes.
No, it’s the perfectly thin, perfectly healthy women who don’t experience these issues as they age, that don’t struggle with maintaining weight or health status, that are the unicorns among us; the minority, really. While I want to be someone like that, it’s not realistic at all — and if you’re here reading with any regularity, my bet is that it isn’t you, either.
Maybe — just maybe — I should explore that side of a character. What do you think? And by the way, my total for this blog is 638 words. 😉