Just curious. I am female but I seem to always write Male leads. I don't know why, but I don't like to write female leads and not real crazy about reading stories with female leads either (sorry!) Just wondering what your prefrences are.
Same here. I tend to prefer male writers and my favorite stylists are definitely male. If my writing has a voice it's probably what you'd call a male voice: sort of this post-Hemingway style you see in magazines and online - short, blunt, sarcastic, few adjectives and fewer adverbs.
Writing the opposite gender is sometimes a way to ensure that your character isn't entirely autobiographical. Sometimes that's a crutch - you can say "No, this definitely isn't about me, cuz I'm not a guy!" But on the other hand, it does challenge you to think outside your own experience when writing, so maybe that does ensure that even mostly autobiographical material has some distance. If I want to write about a situation that happened to me in real life, I always have to consider how a male might approach that situation differently - for example, with anger instead of tears, or with sexual assertion rather than shy flirtation.
Sometimes I write female leads just to mix it up. I definitely prefer males, though. I think the thing is that with a male character I feel more comfortable letting my natural voice shine through. With females I tend to pick characters with personalities much different than my own (maybe as another crutch to create that psychic distance?). I've been accused of creating female leads who are less sympathetic than my males, though...