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numbers to chew on
Mar. 6th, 2007 04:35 pmWhen the Sword & Sorceress antho call went out, I sat down to see how many stories I had around with female protagonists (as that's one of the requirements). I was startled to find the answer was: not many. Which surprised me; I thought I wrote female characters on a regular basis.
So I sat down and did some counting. These numbers have changed some since the original count (story sales, new stories in circulation), but the pattern's still there, and still interesting. (At least to me. Your mileage may vary. If so, skip this post.)
( Number crunchiness ensues )
In other words, I don't have any firm conclusions to draw. I can, however, tell the pattern's there. The reason I have so few female-protag stories on hand is not that I haven't been writing them; it's that they've been skipping out the door more quickly than their male counterparts. (If I were really hardcore, I'd count how many times each sold story got submitted before being sold. But that's way too much work.)
I have a slew of new things to get out the door that have female MCs ("Kingspeaker," "The Last Wendy," "On the Feast of the Firewife," "Once a Goddess" when it gets finished), so maybe in a year or so we'll revisit these numbers and see if they've continued to hold.
So I sat down and did some counting. These numbers have changed some since the original count (story sales, new stories in circulation), but the pattern's still there, and still interesting. (At least to me. Your mileage may vary. If so, skip this post.)
( Number crunchiness ensues )
In other words, I don't have any firm conclusions to draw. I can, however, tell the pattern's there. The reason I have so few female-protag stories on hand is not that I haven't been writing them; it's that they've been skipping out the door more quickly than their male counterparts. (If I were really hardcore, I'd count how many times each sold story got submitted before being sold. But that's way too much work.)
I have a slew of new things to get out the door that have female MCs ("Kingspeaker," "The Last Wendy," "On the Feast of the Firewife," "Once a Goddess" when it gets finished), so maybe in a year or so we'll revisit these numbers and see if they've continued to hold.
