As soon as I realized I was going to be writing a lot from inside a woman’s head, I wanted to write women that women thought were women. I thought getting myself into a woman’s skin would be the hard thing.
Certainly I talk to my wife: she’s my editor as well as my wife, so she’s intimate with the books. Sometimes I’ll ask her, ‘Do you think this character would behave in this fashion?’ I also read books written by women for women, I read magazines, and I eavesdrop on women sometimes. It’s a low trick but it’s the only way to find out how women talk when men aren’t around.
One of the best compliments I got was very early, when I was touring for the ‘Dragon Reborn’. Some women said that until they saw me they believed Robert Jordan was the pen name of a woman. I thought, ‘All right, I did it!’
I’ve tried to write in layers. In addition I’ve tried to write each book so that every time you read it, you’re standing in a different place, you’re reading a slightly different book. And when you read the third book it shifts your position again. Things you thought were innocuous are important, and things you thought meant one thing, meant another.
Even if you do it unconsciously, you have to refer to religion if you’re writing fantasy. You’re stepping into the realm of the supernatural and so you’re stepping into the realm of religion.
A few years ago I found myself thrown into the company of theoretical physicists on panels. I thought, ‘I’m not going to be able to talk with these men because my knowledge of this field is 25 years out of date.’ But I found that I could hold my own not by talking physics but by talking theology.
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