How to Write a Book Series - Writing in the First Person

Oh, it's great to be in the driver's seat! Control is yours and yours alone! When you write a book You choose where your writing will take you, and sometimes, in the best possible times, your writing chooses where it will take you. When writers have the option to write in first person, they have the luxury of maybe not thinking too much about an audience.

That is a very good thing. Whose pants are you flying by? Not General Motors. Not your best friend's. When you write a first draft, in First Person, for any reason, do not listen to the critics who tell you to be concerned about an audience outside yourself. There is plenty of time for that, but not in early drafts.

We all know why they tell us this. They want us to stay within the boundaries of understanding, or general understanding. They want us to be careful and write so that other human beings will be able to grasp our story, our essay, and our far-out expository meditations on the page.

How to Write a Book With Concern For Your Audience

Well, there are some times when you need to be concerned about your reading audience and how well they will comprehend what you have written. But that should not always be the case with your writing.

There are some great books of fiction and poetry that were not written with an audience in mind. Not an outside audience anyway. Sure, when James Joyce wrote Dubliners and Ulysses, he pulled in the reins a little and concerned himself with form. Those collections are comprehensible, at least. But what about Finnegan's Wake? Do you really think he wrote that book with any other reader in mind but himself? Did he mean for ten thousand 21st century critics to untangle the literal meaning of what happens in this novel?

Granted, Joyce did not form his career upon Finnegan's Wake, but upon the other more accessible stories and novels. But he certainly didn't hesitate to write this most difficult book that he considered to be his Personal Best masterpiece.

He was on the right track in writing that book, and the other books, too. But if you can sit down and write just for yourself, you may reach a greater level of personal involvement and achievement than if you were writing with an audience in mind. Hey, if somebody wants to read it and figure it out, great. But that is not always the reason you should write.

You know what William Blake said when they asked him to whom he could possibly be writing all of these strange poems? He said, "The angels." He was serious, because that was the audience that mattered to him.

Sometimes, the writing, which addresses Spiritual States of Being, is not written so much with other people in mind. Yes, it may be inaccessible. Yes, William Blake was practically unknown at the time of his death. About twenty copies of Songs of Innocence exist in the world today. Blake printed and circulated many more copies than that during his lifetime. Do you believe he would have ignored the angels for a measure of fame and fortune? The angels gave him plenty of chances, and he lived with his vision instead.

If you do not write first for yourself, you run the risk of never really discovering the best quality of your own voice. This discovery happens for many writers in the beginning of their serious writing years, and it happens to those who listen to their own hearts and minds and write for themselves first.