Monday, June 22, 2009

First Person


At college, I was taught to remove the first person from my writing and stick to the third. First person was tawdry somehow. Cheap and easy and adolescent. I bought into this hard and wrote many stories about she and he.
But now, for the sake of putting pen to paper, or fingertips to keys, one must, screw that, I'm going to abandon that concept. I've been avoiding my own voice for so long now, that I really have forgotten what I sound like.
I know I will re-read this shortly and feel an illicit thrill that I managed to convey even this small amount of information coherently. So this is about finding my voice. How horrible does that sound? Like some super-positive Oprah spoon-fed pablum.
Then let's just say this is about writing and not about editing. This is about finishing.