Red Room Where the Writers Are

I needed another character.

Worse than Diana Troy? Could be.

The narrator and the protagonist were getting boring, like two guys locked in a space ship for days on end might tend to do. I was considering a female or a robot. Or maybe a female robot. The theory being that I needed something other than just another guy. The narrator was good enough to fill that generic male role.

A writer friend told me "Write a novel without a romantic component at your own risk." I began to think about it, there was a world of opporunity, now that I'd accepted that I needed another character to act as a catalyst. But I was worried about writing a female character. I'm a novice writer, a programmer, for pasta's sake! Someone mentioned that I'd be fine, I'm married, afterall! That surely gave me all the insight one needed to effectively portray a woman.

I have my doubts. I'm basically worried that biases that are hovering just below the surface will come out, and I'll write one of the two following, horrible things:

1. A stereotype-laden bimbo.
2. A male character with boobs.

But then, I guess the point of NaNoWriMo is to dive in, and just write. Hopefully neither of the above rear their ugly heads, but I've never done this before, so I guess we'll see if I'm any good at it. At least professionals run into this same problem. Look at Star Trek. Diana Troy is an avatar of ditzy over-emotionalism. Painful.

But in advance, apologies to anyone who reads it and finds my heroine psychologically flat or uninteresting, as I suspect I might lean toward the second case, out of fear of the first.

Wish me luck.