I was surprised when at one of my workshops recently a young aspiring author asked whether it was advisable for a male author to write a book from the perspective of a female protagonist. I said if that's what the story demands, yes. It would definitely be wise to have some women read it before you send it out, but to me the joy of writing is creating worlds that don't exist and inhabiting characters I'll never get to be in real life.
Successful young songwriter Benny Blanco writes a lot of his songs from a woman's perspective. Here's what he said about that in an interview in the Huffington Post:
"Is it easy for me to write from a female point of view? Yeah, I am a female. I'm a very sensitive type of guy. I try to put my female hat on and think how a female would think. If I'm watching "The Notebook," I'm definitely gonna cry. I cried during "E.T." too. I like trying to do things that aren't necessarily something that would come easy to me. Like, I like to put myself in awkward situations like trying to write from a girl's perspective or trying to write from a divorced mother's perspective. Or trying to write like if I'm working with someone who was just pregnant or is pregnant. I like the obstacle of trying to make it like a game of telling stories."
If you can't imagine being the opposite gender, or a killer, or someone with only 24 hours to live, or someone who has been abducted by aliens...maybe writing fiction isn't what you should be doing.
(Want guidance in how to write well? How about having Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, as well as many modern successful authors, as your writing coaches? That's what you get in my book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." You can get it now from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller and it also makes a great present for anybody who wants to write or just loves reading and would enjoy a glimpse of how their favorite authors wrote.)