A Few Thoughts on First Person

Hi friends.

I have like three different letters to you all that I have started and stopped only because I am letting some ideas simmer. These letters are mostly related to various adulthood revelations and nothing to do with craft whatsoever. Do we like it when I tell you stories about my life? Did we sign up for this letter exclusively for craft thoughts? Impossible for me to know but I Can Only Write What I Can Write. And today I am thinking about writing in first person.

For a few weeks I’ve been working on something just for fun but whenever I sit down to handwrite it in the morning I end up writing it in first person. It feels pretty entertaining and easy to just be in this character’s head. Yet when I transfer the handwritten words into my word doc I’ve been converting it to a close third person.

This is sort of arduous—why am I even doing this? It feels like I’m forcing my narrator into a box. Cutting off part of her and folding her neatly into a new shape. And yet, I have my reasons.