*sigh*
The thing is, dude, I already have so much work to do that it's like my ears are shitting things for me to do at high velocity. I'm studying two languages this summer, doing mathematics, preparing a course I need to teach, reading in preparation for my honors thesis in rhetoric, playing Metal Gear games because I'm almost certain there's another big thesis there...
I have writing ideas I think about sometimes, but it's so hard to write a female character in the cultural setting we're currently living in. If you write a female soldier, you have to think about the problem of rape in the military... she can't go around and seduce all the dudes in an actively sexual way because of the pregnancy-and-rape problem--and if she did, anyway, you'd have to deal with the cultural context of slut-shaming. LOOK MORE MANDATORY SOCIAL ISSUES =/
The fact remains that to write a strong female character who exists within this culture, you will probably have to write about the prejudice she encounters--or the flavor will be entirely too unrealistic. It will feel off. And the thing is, it is precisely for this reason that I used to hate reading books about or by women when I was younger. Books about men don't need to discuss those issues... they can talk about problems that apply to everyone, problems like Truth rather than simple equality. I feel like that is part of the appeal. When you write about a woman, you are always writing from a place of weakness. Then there is that problem of being trapped within feminist symbolism, so that the interactions of your female main character with male characters becomes charged, imbalanced, symbolic in a way that they would not be if the genders were reversed.
Simply put, it's a hard problem. I do have a book idea I'm working on, but so often I start working and I think "No, Vector, you can't do that, it's ridiculous. A girl doesn't get to just set off on an adventure. You can't write a fantasy novel in this time and place and have her act this way... it's illogical. What about her parents? She's still someone's property, in that era..."
And so on, and so forth. So, I am working on it. I have a story which I think will be very promising. I'd like to have a female heroine and a male POV character, with all sorts of rigamaro, but, you know, this sort of thing is so tricky. I'm trying for a love interest without a Love Interest, so that the main characters end up buddies rather than in love at the end. Go off, defeat the villain, yadda yadda.
But all the same, I don't know how to balance it yet. It's one of those things where I suspect it will take years to develop an understanding of how to write it non-crappily.
At the very least, I do know I have years and years to think about it.