In Process: Follow Your Instincts, or Don't

Why's it so hard to listen to yourself?

Young Woman Reading, 1896. Alexandre-Louis-Marie Charpentier (French, 1856–1909). Embossed color lithograph; The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund

Recently, I found myself thinking about a conversation I had about the first draft of my last novel, late 2018-ish. I’d written this draft in first person, which is many writers’ defaults but not mine; I’m much more pulled to, and comfortable in, a healthy distant third. In conversation with this reader they’d said the voice was giving them trouble, felt off, like a cipher and not a voice of a novel. Oh, I said, the scales falling from my eyes, I actually hate to write in first person, as if I’d just figured it out.

Then why are you doing it? this person asked, understandably confused.

The answer was:
a. because someone else told me this was a good choice
b. because it seemed hard
c. I don’t know
d. all of the above

D. The answer was d, obviously. Each of those reasons damning in their own ways.