What part does gender play in your writing?

"Raised in a matriarchal environment by an iron woman I am profoundly used to feminine interference, feminine tastes." (Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey).

A man is always a momma's boy. You could say men only start wars because their mothers aren't there to smack them across the back of the head and make them go to bed early. When it comes to deciding the best course of action in my work my mother's voice is always loud and clear, trying to make my intoxicating tangents capitulate. Although my mother has never been particularly imaginative or creative, she has never erred in her propensity for pragmatism. Coupled with my father's reticent poetic spark, my identity as a writer is torn between the goal-oriented aspect and the creative indulgences.

Having a mother with masculine undertones and a father with feminine undertones has affected how I perceive the sexes in my writing, and for this I am eternally grateful to my parents for their respective idiosyncrasies. I am inherently encouraged to challenge gender paradigms; I envision women as the smug heroes and men as the cowering damsels, thus nullifying any notion of rightful association these stereotypes might convey. Either sex is as powerful as its opposite, in both fiction and life.

Recently I have begun to see and be excited by the visceral and philosophical complications inherent within our divisions as gender-centred entities (note: man is always written before woman, unless intentionally otherwise. Why?). I am fuelled by both desire and duty to construct characters who aren't slaves to archaic concepts of gender roles. So, undoubtedly, gender does play a pretty substantial part in my writing. My conscience is a war zone of masculine and feminine ideals, and as such my work is quite often a massacre.

How did I become a writer?

In this world of contracts you are never at liberty to proclaim yourself one thing or another until your stature has been consolidated in the eyes of your peers. Once you've been referred to as a writer by a jury (unofficially speaking, of course) of your peers, you can rest at least knowing that your evidence of skill and dedication was proof enough to see you emerge from the abyss of anonymity and into the ranks of recognised contributors to the craft.

It is human nature not to trust or believe someone simply at their word. If a person were to go outside one morning and tell everyone on the street as lucidly as possible that they were Jesus Christ incarnate the degree of scrutiny leveled on them would be immense and would result in widespread dismissal of that individual's righteous claim. And here we have a real dilemma. You can know your role among the great billions at heart, but you won't become your part until you've won over the minds of the masses - a surprising wedge of the final cut of writers thus far have only 'become' since their deaths.

But don't mistake me for preaching fame and fortune, far from it. What I'm saying is there must be evidence to support your claim to be a writer, there has to be proof that you aren't just a raving lunatic in a sea of unfathomable faces. Our trajectories are ours and ours alone to steer, and if you keep a steady hand and have those invaluable pinches of salt at the ready you will find your own way and enjoy it too. My answer to the question of this entry's title is blunt and to the converse. I am not a writer, yet; but I am becoming one, sentence by sentence, day by day.