Every time I sit down to work on my adult book, I wrestle with an instinct that tells me I should do it differently

There should be fewer POVs. It should be shorter and faster-paced. It would be easier to sell if I aged the characters down and didn't write about motherhood.

The Good and Marketable Lady Fantasist writes shorter books, or writes for teens

She NEVER takes years to deliver on a project

She ensures her work is definitely accessible to male genre readers

She is plot-forward, concise, lives in crossover territory, and is ALWAYS high concept

I *know* this is a foolish and limiting set of expectations, and that there are incredible women writers proving them wrong every day

But I am a people pleaser, and like to do what I'm Supposed To

So every time I sit down to work on my adult book, I grapple with that for a minute, and then I tell myself I have permission to write this story the way I want to...

I can have more than two points of view and a sprawling cast of secondary characters and dense, slow-moving political intrigue and women struggling with the complicated intimacy of raising babies while trying to get *anything* else done

I can write this story the way I want to write it, and the way it should be told

It doesn't have to be straightforward and easy to deal with because Lady Fantasists are meant to be straightforward and easy to deal with

It can be messy and unsightly and complicated and hard to get a handle on--packed full of characters who don't have a CLUE what they're doing and perpetually operate in crisis mode and make morally objectionable choices because of that

That's the world I live in as a woman. That's who I *am* as a woman

And even if no one ends up wanting to read about it, I give myself permission to write about it

(Before you give me book recommendations or tell me I should be *making* book recommendations via this thread, know that it is not about the state of fantasy in general or the work of other women writers, it is about me and the expectations *I* have internalized)

All of this is tough and makes the writing process that much harder, because I don't know when and where to trust my instincts

I don't know which twinges are my sense of story and structure and pacing, and which are self-doubt born of a set of unreasonable, gendered expectations

The whole process has given me even greater respect for any author who has to unpack a set of deeply-ingrained yet false ideas of what is good and saleable in fiction, because it is hard and unseen work and so often feels like one step forward, two steps back

Like all of this? Everything I said above? It comes from a place of relative *freedom* I receive as a white/straight/abled lady author. It's just a drop in the bucket compared to the expectations placed on others

So whoever you are, writing against faulty instincts you were taught but never asked for, I'm rooting for you today

May the story and your truth shine through