I’ve been experimenting with a book I wrote years ago but was never really happy with. It was loosely based on experiences I had in Europe back when I was a naive know-it-all. Or, at least, that’s the image I had of my younger self. Here’s the thing, I wrote the book from the viewpoint of a nineteen year old when in actuality I was a forty year old, recently divorced woman with two children, deeply doubting many of the choices I ‘d made when young. I think you can probably guess which of the choices I was doubting.
So, I rewrote the book from a third party point of view. I’m not sure if it improved the novel but I felt better about it. Thanks to Bruce Lee. I don’t think I’ll ever have his level of self-confidence, but writing a book from a first person perspective when you don’t particularly like that person, is not such a good idea.
This is not to say that all stories written from a first person perspective do their narrators a great disservice. I think the lesson learned for me, is to treat your narrator like all your other characters. No better; no worse. Has any random bit of wisdom ever changed your perspective. Bruce Lee – who knew!
Saying nothing in particular 
I remember those computers! High tech stuff…
🤣
It’s amazing how fast computers went from being humongous to itty-bitty!
It really is… and yet it’s hard to remember a time I was without a cell phone.
This is very interesting and I should listen to the message.
Will you publish the book? I remember those computers and the trim phone 💜💜
Hopefully someday but I would like to find a good editor first. I don’t want to make the same mistake twice.
That computer! Oh I remember them, so LARGE and in the way all the time. Having rewritten your book, what’s next?
A good editor!
Bruce Lee was very special.
He definitely had a lot of chutzpah! I wish I had just an iota – I’m extremely self-effacing. Trying to change though.
Not surprisingly (right?), I used to live close to the Lakeview Cemetery. It was known locally as the Volunteer Park cemetery. Anyway, I’d take people to visit the Lee graves. In order to be buried there, one had to bequeath to the cemetery the whole or a part of an estate. Of course, it had to be a large estate. I knew I’d never do that, so I came up with a plan to rest in the cemetery for less than hundreds of thousands of dollars. I would make a very small name plate, three by two inches. I’d engrave Duke Miller, date of birth and death, and “Nothing Matters” on the small plate. I’d put one hole in the plate. Then I’d get someone to agree to climb one of the various low-limbed trees in the cemetery and nail the plate at about 30 feet above the ground. They would, of course, do this after my death. I’d be cremated and Teresa would spread the ashes at the base of the tree. When people visited my “grave”, they’d come with binoculars to see the plate. Should a groundskeeper ask what that were looking at, they’d tell him they were birders and there was a rumor that a bird, previously thought extinct, had been spotted in the Lakeview Cemetery trees. I’m in Mexico now. Too bad. That would have been a good one. Duke
Definitely not surprising! Duke Miller – the extinct bird that can only be seen with binoculars. Love it. We’ll need to start a movement.
Quite the plan.
Leave it to Duke to prearrange tours of his final resting place … although resting and Duke are two words that don’t seem compatible! ; )
Not sure I’d be capable of not writing the bad guy as myself. Fatalism’s a bitch.
I get the point, though.
I guess it goes back to – if you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all – also applies to yourself.
Thumper had multiple-personality disorder.
I hadn’t noticed!
Hi Jan, generally readers seem to prefer past tense and third person POV so your changes are probably for the best.
I can think of many great novels written from first person – Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby and Moby Dick – but those writers were nicer to their heroines than I was! It took me ten years to figure that our.