Just how old are you anyway?

Another thing that I've been struggling over in my story is the age of my MC. Her name is Glory, so from now on, that's what I'm going to call her. (Quick aside: if you've been around here for a while, you know that she's had MANY names over the last few months. Somehow, the name "Glory" just clicked with me. And of course, since her family is very Southern, she has to have one of those names that sound Southern, right? No, it's not a stereotype thing. It's true. My grandmother was actually named "Ima Mae Day". No joke. So, Glory Bea Baker just fits for me. If you don't like it, tell me why.)

Anyhow, Glory is a grown woman. That much is already clear. She has this thing that she's running from in her past. So she can't be an early twenties person. She's also had time to build a small career, so again she needs to be older than early twenties. I think she needs to be older than late twenties as well. I'm thinking she needs to be mid-thirties.

This is rather convenient, because that is the same age as me. I happen to know a little bit about how a woman in her early mid-thirties feels. That part should be easy to write. I hope. What I worry about is writing the older woman, Granny Grace. I think I should be able to write the scenes that are from Glory's POV fine, I don't have too many fears about those ones. But I know that there are going to have to be scenes from Grace's POV as well. At least I think there will be. Since I have much of the story already down, and I am making adjustments and additions for Grace (basically that amounts to re-writing EVERYthing, but that's ok, see, because it's gotten so much stronger), I don't have a POV for her yet. But I hear her so clearly, that I'm pretty sure she's going to have her own voice in the story as well.

I'm just wondering if any of you have struggled over the age of your MC, or any of your characters. Have you thought at first that maybe your person should be younger, then realize that she needs to have a few years? Have you thought she should be older, then just known that she needs to be younger? I think of this with Glory because of where she needs to be in her life to make the decision that she has to make. She needs to be older, she needs to have gone through some schtuff already, she needs to have experienced loss and grief already, but not be debilitated buy it.

I don't know. I guess I'm just rambling. It's just that it seems that people sometimes define us by the number that we use to describe ourselves, whether that be the number on the scale, the zip code we have, or even our age. I want Glory to be something more than just her numbers. She's pretty average in her weight, she lives in rural Mississippi (a place where I have spent no small amount of time. Remember, I was raised in the South), and she's past the sweet peach of her youth, and is ripening before her very own eyes. She is MORE than those numbers that people use to pigeon-hole you, to lock you into their own version of who you are.

So am I. And knowing most of you the way that I do, I think you are as well.

But still, she has to have an age. Doesn't she?