All those years ago in school I remember that every story I wrote, and every piece of creative writing for school work, was written in third person.  I used to hear people talking about first person writing and think to myself “But that’s crazy!  Only one perspective?  I could never write like that!”.

Yet after leaving school, and college, I started reading a series of books that was written in first person and that series is actually what spurred me on to actually focus on a writing career.  I decided to try out this crazy first person malarkey…and haven’t looked back since!  I find it so much easier to write and realised very early on that it definitely doesn’t limit the “sides” of the story that you can convey.

So now, I’m sitting here working on a short story for a competition and feel like I’m back in school because it has to be written in third person.  They give you the first line of the story and you carry it on, to wherever you feel like taking it.  But try as I might, you can’t do anything with that first line other than write in third person.

It’s strange to me that something I used to do so often, and for so long, is now like a foreign concept and I’m finding it really difficult to write from an outside view.  I keep asking myself “Why is this?” and maybe it’s just because I haven’t done so for so long.  But I feel it’s more than that – writers choose to write in first or third person and tend to stick with one or the other throughout all of their books.  Personal preference and all that.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just like stretching a muscle you haven’t used for a while.  Or maybe I should just stop pondering these things and get back to, you know, the actual writing part!  Procrastination, oh how I missed thee.