I’m not really sure why people have so much trouble with this, but here you go.

We’re gonna discuss: Writing in a Male POV

Seriously, why does everyone find this so hard? It’s not.

Guys aren’t as different from girls as we’d like for them to be (stay with me kids. Don’t point out the obvious).

If you read the chapter, “Inside the Mind of a Man” you would understand. There really wasn’t anything special about the way a guy thinks. Seriously. I had people asking me if I answered for my best friend, but no. He answered those questions.

We just think alike. (Because we’re awesome.)

Too often people want to say “guys aren’t emotional. Don’t write any emotion in their character. Make them strictly fact.”

Wrong.

The Sociology professor I had my first year of college (was a quack) told us how men have a smaller corpus callosum, which is the part of the brain that connects the left and right hemispheres. Now, supposedly, this is why guys typically are less prone to think as emotionally as women…they simply don’t have the capacity to process their emotions at a level of women. They can’t carry emotions into the logic side of the brain like women can.

(I’m not sure just how much merit this argument has. The guy was old…as are my notes, so I don’t know how much is fact and how much was Dr. Morton just teaching us shit he thought was funny because he was retiring anyway).

But that doesn’t mean they simply don’t have any emotions. Not at all!

Guys aren’t made of stone. They can be sad. They can get angry. They can be happy. They can get complicated. They can be irrational.

They can have their own personalities.

And whatever you do, don’t make them tough and hard on the outside, but inside they’re just overly poetic softies. At least not if you ask me to read it, because I hate that. Lots of people like it, but I don’t.

That’s on me, though, I guess. I don’t like it with female characters either.

I don’t want them to cry over everything because inside they’re a huge baby.

I like intense emotions. I like the whiplash of each new chapter.

Another issue (let’s just get them all while I’m here), I’m not sure why the moment someone mentions eye color or hair color in a male POV everyone jumps and says, “no! Guys don’t notice stuff like that”.

Bullshit. I don’t notice stuff like that (and I can assure you that, yes, I am of the female nature).

My coworkers are always getting pissed at me because they’ll ask me about certain customers and I have no idea who they’re talking about because I don’t pay attention. I don’t make eye contact with people unless I absolutely have to.

I don’t look at people. I don’t remember their eye color or hair color or that crap because I’m probably not looking at them.

My brother can though. If you ask him at the end of the day all the people he communicated with that day, he could describe them.

So it’s not true that guys can’t notice smaller details. Yeah, lots of them are about the bigger picture, but they don’t all always have to be.

When you write in a male POV, they can notice things. It’s okay.

And they don’t have to be so manly. Don’t try so hard.

It makes me want to gag when I read “yeah, she’s got nice tits. Damn, I’d fuck her hard.”

No. Just no.

That’s not manly. That’s creepy.

My best friend once told me that I probably think about sex more than he does. And his reasoning was, “I think about it for a few seconds, like ‘hey. I haven’t gotten laid in a while’. You imagine entire scenarios and all this shit I don’t have time to think of.”

So I think he’s right.

I don’t think guys have to constantly be about sex.

They can have feelings; they can have emotions; they can notice things besides women.

No, they’re probably not going to cry over everything or ogle over someone’s outfit or accessories, or even worry so much about what people think of them.

But that doesn’t mean they won’t ever.

And not every other word has to be a swear word. They don’t all think “well goddamn, shit bitchin’, motherfucking, jackass, yeah” about everything.

My brother doesn’t even swear ever. And I…have problems. But I try not to, because it’s not classy or cute.

Swearing isn’t a gender thing. It’s a personality thing.

Why is that so hard to grasp?

The reason it’s hard is because you make it that way.

Just think of guys like people and you’ll be ready to write.

Now, can I share with you this article a semi-local travel critique wrote about me? (there's no reason to read it unless you want to). He decided to publish a different article he wrote about my restaurant, but he gave me this one and said I could do whatever I wanted with it’s “unedited messiness”. And I want to share (because he wrote it to be shared!)

And I wanted to cry. Sure, he's not really anyone special I guess (who cares about his opinion? (and obviously he has no musical background if he thought I was a musician)), but c'mon. It's nice to hear good things. 

My boss has it like framed and hanging up. But I just really wanna share it, because I work my ass off and it’s just nice to get some feedback like this. (And yes, I’m bragging major by posting this article, but c’mon. Give me this one).

When they told me that a girl sang at [insert where I work] I almost rolled my eyes.

Then she walked on stage, holding a guitar that was bigger than herself, and I almost laughed.

Before she even began I tried picking apart her character. The classic black t-shirt said punk but the loose, gray sweater said classical enthusiast. The jeans said southern and the shoes said folk. The Les Paul said rock goddess.

Everything was contradicting and I couldn’t figure her out, but I was certain it was a joke.

She was probably another pretty little thing capable only of churning out four chords and a handful of self-written bubblegum pop songs about boys breaking her heart. Or, if we were all lucky, one of the ones that was decent karaoke at best.

“Hi. I’m Addy and I play guitar,” was how she introduced herself and it was all the introduction she needed.

A few bars into the first song and I realized that I was the joke. The only thing exceeding this girl’s beauty was her immense talent.

For almost three hours, she breezed through countless genres with so much sincerity and conviction that it made sense I hadn’t been able to place her. She didn’t belong to any one group—she belonged to all of them. Easily she bounced through personalities ranging from punk princess to rock goddess, country cutie to bluegrass picker, folk baby to blues beauty.

Cover after cover she churned out crowd favorites, switching between artists, genres, keys, and instruments effortlessly.

From beginning to end, the girl was a delightful ball of energy to watch. Not only was she a masterful musician (switching tuning in the middle of a song good), but she was also a seasoned story teller, a powerhouse vocalist, and arguably the most genuine performer I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching.

Between songs she shared sweet and sad stories ranging from how she learned to play guitar (“obsessively” rewinding old VHS tapes of her favorite rock stars) to the reason she taught herself to play instead of taking lessons (she hates being told what to do). To top it off, she did impressions of celebrities that kept the crowd laughing.

Demonstrating just how well Addy played guitar (both electric and acoustic), she covered the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Hank Williams, Fall out Boy, Leadbelly, Alison Krauss, Tom Petty, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Panic! At the Disco, Steve Miller Band, Led Zeppelin, Third Eye Blind, and Dierks Bentley (to name a few).

However, the most beautiful moments came when she sat at the grand piano taking up permanent residence on the stage. In addition to hits by the Eagles, Meatloaf, Lana Del Rey, and Garth Brooks, she also did a haunting rendition of the Dylan classic (and Guns ‘N’ Roses hit) “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”. It left a chill of emotion running through the restaurant that she quelled with a crowd sing-a-long of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude”.

Throughout the three hours she played five instruments (guitar, piano, mandolin, banjo, and violin), which I later discovered isn’t even half of her repertoire. Add in the impressive range of her emotional vocals and the five foot two, hundred pound, twenty something, blonde bombshell was filled to the max with talent.

And although she made every song her own, my favorites happened to be the two songs she had penned herself.

When she first announced she was going to perform an original, I thought it would be the moment I’d see the act fall apart into the four chords and basic lyrics I’d expected at first.

Again I was wrong. Not only was her instrumental work the envy of every other musician in the house, her writing was on a superior level.

The first song, the appropriately titled “Damn You”, was a spicy song of anger at a deceased loved one filled with “all the things you can’t say in church”. Not a dry eye was left in the house as she played with so much emotion and conviction that you could almost see her heart break on stage. Tears glistened in her gaze and those on-par vocals cracked for moments in time, leaving everyone breathless.

The other song she introduced as being a response to her best friend’s suicide attempt from years before. Again, “Coward” was a song of hurt and anger mixed with sadness and desperation, further solidifying the fact that she is a genuine artist. She wasn’t afraid to be controversial or tackle the tough subjects and I could not admire her courage more.

Miss Addy was a sweetheart through-and-through. Every round of applause was met with a “thank you so much” and every tip placed in the jar at the foot of the stage was followed up by a handshake and a compliment of the utmost sincerity.

She deserved every bit of praise, but continually insisted that she didn’t.

Rarely am I as wrong about an act as I was about this girl. I would highly recommend her to anyone, because her performance has something for everyone. Calling her an “act” is an insult to the genuine nature of such a fantastic artist.

Well done, Miss Addy. God bless people like you.

A+