Hail! NOT well met.

[erastes]

  -  - - -

The little bit of an Indian summer we had is well and truly over. Lashings of not ginger beer but sleet and hail this morning and it’s COLD. It’s hailing so hard right now that I can hardly hear myself think. Brr. I have given up trying to get Dad to understand about thermostats etc, he used to know all this stuff, he’s a heating engineer/pipe fitter after all, but he has lost all that knowledge. I’m here five days a week, so hopefully I can keep the damp at bay this winter as he turns all the radiators off!!

Saw a new release yesterday: Kyle Masterson enters the wizarding university at Harvard. It’s invisible to non wizarding types. Hmm. I don’t object to converted fanfic, but I’d like a few more serial numbers scraped off than that, kthxbai.

Hospital yesterday, blood tests to test the blood thinness, and eye tests. My new dosage is double – 6mg – and my INR is 1.5, target 2.5, apparently. My eyes are “improved” even though I can’t really tell. The oculist attempted to move the occlusion film to my gooder eye for some reason, saying that if I couldn’t get on with it, I could move it back next week when I go for my next appointment, but after I staggered ten feet down the corridor lurching from side to side like a drunken sailor I moved it over myself. So things move in the right direction at least. I have an appointment with the eye specialist next week and I’ll see if HE can refer me to a nutritionist. What with juggling a low cholesterol diet, diet for losing weight to get my blood pressure down and help my heart, and the stuff one shouldn’t eat on warfarin, I think I bloody well qualify for one. we’ll see. I can’t drink cranberry juice. I know I rarely did, but now I WANT to. Harumph.

“I Knew Him” is chugging away. I hit 40k today. I missed writing anything on Monday, as I had two other projects to edit and finish off. It’s great to breach 40k, as it feels like a “proper novel” then, and doesn’t run the risk of being a novella. Considering that bugger all has happened (in my eyes, at least) so far, it could easily go on for more than 80k, but I have no clue. I’m letting the narrator Harry tell me what’s happening, as it happens.

What I did discover is that I’ve written far too many first person books recently. I would have given you good money and lost a bet that Mere Mortals was written in 3rd person (which is why – added to the fact that Muffled Drum is in 3rd – I felt happy doing IKH in first) but I just edited a section of it and found it’s in first too.

I do LIKE writing in first, but i don’t think it’s a habit i should get into—Hard & Fast, Junction X, Mere Mortals, Chiaroscuro, I Knew Him… Some readers won’t even BUY a book in first, which I find entirely bizarre, but by writing first a lot, I’m limiting my audience still further.

I really enjoy first, because you can really get into the narrator’s head, and you can play with his perceptions. He’s got to observe, but he can’t be god-like, he can’t really know what other people are thinking, and it’s tremendous fun to have him get it wrong, because we do. Thankfully, The Further Adventures of Fleury definitely won’t be in first, because GAH – trying to write in his brogue for an entire book? No-one would want to read that. I still haven’t really decided what I’m doing next, but I do know it won’t be in first person.

Do you have a preference, to write? to read?

Comments

Do you have a preference?

[baritonejeff.livejournal.com]

Yes. Well-written literature that draws me in and holds me there.

On any subject.

In any voice.

[beckyblack]

I've only done one long thing in First Person but liked it a lot. What you say "he can’t really know what other people are thinking, and it’s tremendous fun to have him get it wrong, because we do" was one of the most interesting things about it. I loved having him get things wrong.

It like reading it too, though I'm not as keen on it in romance, as it can make things feel too one sided to me. I usually want to know what both of the couple are thinking(or however many, not that I'm a menage reader.) I'm not a fan of multiple first person though unless done for very sound stylistic reasons in lit fic, where anything goes!

I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest recently, which is first person, with a very unreliable narrator - he's delusional! So in the middle of his describing the happenings on the ward he'll also talk about his delusions as if they were entirely real. It was very interesting!

[jl_merrow]

I'm like you - I like writing in first, but I know I shouldn't encourage myself. I'm writing a novella at the mo where the narrator isn't all that bright - it's great fun having him narrate stuff he doesn't quite understand! But I do wonder how popular it's going to be... *sigh*

[angelabenedetti.livejournal.com]

I'm suspicious of first person books because it's hard to do well and very easy to screw up. I have to trust an author quite a lot, or get some raving recommendations from people whose judgement I trust quite a lot, before I'll buy a first person book. I've enjoyed quite a few of them, and even loved some, but there've been some massive stinkers in that pile too, so I've learned to be wary.

I hardly ever write first person, although I won't say never. My favorite POV as a writer is deep third.

Angie

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

I don't like to write in first-person; I like having that layer of authorial distance so I can show the reader things about the character that the character himself isn't aware of. But as far as reading, I like all sorts except present-tense--that always strikes me as tremendously pretentious.

[josephine-myles.livejournal.com]

I love reading first and third person when they're done well. Not so keen on omniscient narrators in third, though.

In terms of writing, I find first flows much faster. Once I'm into the character's voice, I go at about double the speed I write third person. Strange but true.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

I love writing first person. I find it so much easier than anything else. It's even easier to do characterization, because the characters automatically come with different voices when I write as them. Yet I mostly write third person. I think that's because in general I don't like to read first person - I find it too intimate and too immediate. It exposes you as a reader to feel more, and you are more aware if the narrator of the book is someone you don't like. So I write third because I prefer to read third, even though I prefer to write first.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Mostly I prefer limited third person, to write and to read, but The Monitors just cried out to be written in first. I felt like it worked well for Stuart's almost-claustrophobic point of view.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

yes,that's the thing - i do try and work out what the book wants. Junction X HAD to be be first person as if it's the narrator writing down his experiences after the fact--Mere Mortals had to (although I tried to do it in 3rd) or the mystery would be exploded too soon, and I Knew Him has to do so for reasons I can't go into!!

:)

[leni-jess.livejournal.com]

Re radiators: can you tape the switch in the on position with so much tape/so complicatedly that your dad will refrain from tinkering? Ie would the taping be a message he would get? It can get damn cold, and it sounds as if you're well into the 'orrible weather there. (I'm enjoying spring in NZ, which is ... cool. When not straight cold.)

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

SC is first and that's exactly what I thought about the 'being inside the head thing'. I liked being there but was glad to get out and write something in third, lol.