Authors are Separate from their Characters
We exist on different planes. Really. There may be bits of us venn-diagramming... but not always!
I was half-expecting the comment, to be honest, for we live in a sensitive climate and I probably wouldn’t have touched a trans character had ‘Astrid’ not been a recurring character who has been so very well received by readers ‘Thank you for writing a character we can laugh with but never at’, oh … I’ll take that all day long. And when I first wrote her many years ago, she was only ever meant to be a person who was in one story … but, as so often happens, some flower and grow and decide that they are going to stick around for another book. Or more, as in Astrid’s case. There was no political agenda. Yes I know women are feeling ever more subjugated, their spaces eroded (I am one, I KNOW) but this really doesn’t run that deep. Astrid arrived fully formed in my head as this Amazonian German with a heart as soft as a tub of Lurpak on a radiator and so I am determined not to fall out of love with one of my own beloved creations who is a great favourite among readers. Astrid is not a political statement. If anyone sees her as something else, it’s coloured by their own agendas, not mine.
I’m sure the majority of readers realise that novelists have very vivid imaginations (no sh*t Sherlock) and we can write about things our characters do that we, as the humans behind them, wouldn’t necessarily agree with. Take for instance my latest book Same Time Next Week. I saw a comment on a readers group (yes, I am a reader too… so I have a perfect right to join as a reader) where someone said I ‘obviously had an agenda to push HRT and so I was preaching about it’ and I’m afraid I happened to reply that I absolutely didn’t – and wasn’t. I’m quite capable of writing a character whose life is transformed by some drug or a running club or a one-night stand without having any detailed personal experiences to call on. I’m quite capable of having a woman stay in a relationship that I would run from with my arse on fire. I’m quite capable of writing about a woman falling in love with another woman when I’m straight, or wanting to travel the world with a backpack when that would be my worst nightmare or loving caravans (or even marzipan - bleurgh to both). I’m quite capable of writing a sex scene about a couple who smear marmite all over each other (no I haven’t, in case you’re wondering. It was beef paste. That was a joke). Maybe it’s flattering that my writing is so convincing that one might imagine it ALWAYS comes from a place of lived experience, but the tone of the criticism is telling me that it’s anything but. If I’d wanted to preach, I’d have done religion at uni and not drama. Yes, I can tell a ‘preach’ when I hear one and I despise them. I’ve gone off one of my favourite ever authors because their books now seem to be injected with a lot of their own politics and I just want to enjoy a good story, not to be spouted at.
In the reviews of The Magnificent Mrs Mayhew, is one from someone who ripped me to SHREDS because I’d chosen to write about a posh Tory family and therefore I made things very obvious which political party I didn’t support. I was dying to write and tell her that I was a floating voter because they’re all a bunch of ****ers and I end up using my votes on who is presently the least shit. But you do have to sit on your hands and swallow. But it's annoying when someone 'knows' something that is, in fact, total bollocks.
I was also jumped on once by a militant bunch of vegans who objected to one of my characters not wanting to share a house with someone who didn’t eat meat for fear of being judged. The rather forthright character felt like that, not me … but some people just cannot separate the two and that was frightening with probably the scariest bullying I’ve ever encountered online. At quite a few points I was waiting for a mob to arrive at my door waving pitchforks and I knew then how Dr Frankenstein felt. I’m joking of course, but I was very troubled by the vitriol … so I called it out for the bullying it was (helped by some very nice vegans who didn't jump on the bandwagon and were as gobsmacked as I was by the overreaction!). But then, I have seen it often that some of the ‘be kind’ brigade can be particularly rigid and cruel and they don’t see the irony in their own actions. (Debate and differences of opinion need to come back quickly before we all crash and burn!) Then, blow me, fast forward a few books, when I wrote a vegetarian character who had a vegetarian and vegan business (Plant Boy in case you were wondering) I was ‘pushing that agenda’ and set on by another bunch. It is possible to write about someone pushing an agenda without actually pushing that agenda yourself. Didn’t expect all that tripe when I started that humble storyline about a bloke who decides there’s a market in having burgers made out of broccoli.
Whatever size - width or length - a character is, whatever hair colour, however many eyes they’ve got … someone will have a pop and accuse you of singling out a group. ‘You have a thing about people in HR/accounts, why is that?’ ‘Why does your villain have a big bum?’ ‘Why does your villain have a small bum?’ ‘Why does your villain have a medium-sized bum?’ We can’t win. And I actually want to describe my characters who are all different shapes and sizes so my readers can visualise them. So I will be carrying on doing that. Niceness and nastiness, neither fit into a natural shape. There are beautiful vile people and yet some of the sweetest people in life would never get near the front cover of Vogue. And there are rotters who look like gargoyles … and, at the other end of that scale, there is Dolly Parton.
As for Astrid, my dear lovely Astrid, who joins a friendship group NOT a menopause group in Same Time Next Week as I was accused of (but never let a fact stand in the way of a good blasting). I took great pains to make it clear in the story that Astrid cannot go through that physical stage, but she is at an age where she is feeling that changes need to be made in her life. The book is primarily about change, not just menopausal changes. And as for the woman she chases out of the group … hello!??! Women can be monsters, as 'Janine' is and once she is gone, the energy of the group flows. One person does not a political agenda make. I stay out of all those big issues because I don’t need to lay on my readers what my beliefs are, political or otherwise, so don’t think I’m surreptitiously doing it to influence you all. I’m quite blatant about recommending things when I need to – ie Honeylove bras, P & O Cruises, M & S baby sprouts. Deeper issues of contention? You can keep those. I'll stay out of the debates that others, who don’t stutter as much, are better arguing.
I get letters that I should put more people of colour/less able-bodied/etc people in my books. No I shouldn’t, at least not for the sake of it. Besides, when I did have a woman in a wheelchair someone wrote that they’d read the book to see if she was ‘the token crip’ (her words not mine). I don’t do cheap tokens. All my characters appear in my imagination as the ‘right people for the job’: Mr Singh, Charlie and Robin, Erin … they’re in my books because they turned up in my head and said ‘hello, I think we can work together and make some beautiful music.’ They are the perfect diamonds for the available settings, no cubic zirconia here, love. No, I’m not getting into virtue signalling and being ‘right on’ just to tick boxes and make myself look saintly, because that’s what it’ll come across as and give you all the ick. Besides, I’m already doing my bit for the under-represented with the working class, something no one can accuse me of not knowing about first-hand. It’s my comfort zone, my world. Go - northern working-class women with our short vowels (pumps fist).
So do give us a break. But if you are that sensitive that you need to write to an author to tell them that you are furious and will never read another of their books again because a fictitious character in one of their works of fictionally fiction has done something you don’t agree with and therefore the author must be the devil incarnate … maybe you shouldn’t read any mmmm/f erotica, Lolita or Chris Carter books. I’m sure Chris doesn’t go around murdering and torturing people. I’ve met him, we have the same publisher. He’s a pussycat. At least I think he is. Maybe he isn’t and that’s how he gets away with it.
I digress.
Bringing it full circle back to the main point: AUTHORS ARE NOT THEIR CHARACTERS *drops mike, walks off to the put the kettle on*.