Patience

It’s been eight years since I last went trout fishing with my wife. 

She’s has some physical difficulties and doesn’t have the ability to do all the things we used to do together. We never caught much, yet it was always a very special time we shared together. I loved watching her gracefully meade her line into a small pool. Not just because she looked hot in those leg waders and jeans. It was the patience with which she address

ed the sport. My strategy was to make three or four casts in a potential pool, move to the next opportunity, and repeat the process. She would fish the same area for twenty minutes. Why the difference? It relates to the difference in patience between men and women. By moving in and out of many pools, I optimized my potential of finding one with a hungry trout. By focusing on one pool, she insured if one were there, it would see her fly again and again until maybe it became interested. Which is the best strategy? It’s likely somewhere in the middle.

I think the different degrees of patience between men and women carries into many facets of our lives, including books. You see, when I read a fiction story, you have to grab me fast. If you don’t get me in one or two pages, it goes in the “forget it” pile. I’ve talked to women that would hang in there for 30 or 40 pages before discarding it as a sleeper. Since I’ve become a published writer, I’ve been exposed to a bunch of stories I would never have given a chance in the past. This opportunity resulted in an epiphany of why most of the fiction I enjoyed in the past was written by men. The stories could have been great, but they didn’t grab me fast enough. I recently found two exceptions that have forced me to expand my horizons.

I began reading a novel by Kimber Chin, fully expecting to toss it aside after two pages, but it never happened. The novel, called Invisible, is about a female character named Maeve, that in my view, suffers from self induced confusion about her worth as a person, and as a woman. What grabbed me? Several things. The writer’s unique voice, it was real and gritty. The internal struggle of the heroine, something was going on inside and I had to know. And trying to figure why the hell she had so many internal voices hammering at who she was as a person. I won’t mess up the story for you by giving away the punch line (I hate when reviewers reveal too much), but the title of the novel is well toned to the storyline. The question remains, why does the heroine intentionally try to become invisible? Why did the uncle create such a strange prerequisite for the hero to acquire his part of the will (and it’s not what you think at the onset)? How will the hero and heroine ever resolve their confusing back and forth battle? Don’t get me wrong, I adored the heroine. But just like the hero, Hagen, stated in his internal monologue, I wanted to put her over my knee and spank her till her bottom was beet red. I know. What a terrible thing to say, right? As a male, like the hero, Maeve was an enigma, so alluring, yet so frustrating. I’m analytical in nature. I always delve into the core of the character and try to deduce why, what is it that makes this character so appealing and real, yet so confusing. And that’s what makes a great story. It grabbed me and didn’t let go. What more could you want.

Another terrific story I read by a female author was Noble Sacrifice, an off world SF by Ciara Gold. I literally couldn’t put the book down until I finished it. I fell in love with the hero and heroine, their unique circumstances as pariahs in their world, and the intriguing storyline itself. The hero is an outcast because political strife on his home world has forced him and his clan of loyalists to create a new existence on another planet, without women. The heroine, because she is different, I mean really different, is a literal pariah to everyone in her tribe. In the end, as with most romance oriented novels, they both learn they need each other to be complete and together they are better than apart. I also had an awakening that women, at least in the fictional world, have a need to help the hero fight the demons in the story. I know; that’s a big duh. As a large alpha male, I was so busy slaying the dragons for my mate, I never figured women wanted to be in on the action, side by side with their hero. I should also mention, this story won the EPIC award. This was only the second Off world SF I read from a female author, and it compares with my favorite, Blade Runner.

What’s my point? To say that too little or too much patience is wrong is too simple and myopic. We do approach the world, as men and women, with a different degree of patience. The wise person recognizes the differences and works with it, including if you’re trying to attract men to read a story. Fortunately, now that I have opened my eyes to what I was missing, I will force myself to delve deeper in a story before I can it, maybe at least to page four, Ok page five, but that’s my limit.

Big Mike
Davisstories.com