Struggles of an attempted novelist

When I started working on my book earlier this summer, there were two main challenges I was forced to deal with before I could start writing. These challenges made it impossible to move forward, and I had to resolve them quickly and efficiently. I thought it would be helpful to outline what I dealt with, in case other writers out there are facing similar situations.

The two challenges I had to deal with were tenses and names. They might seem like simple problems, but trust me, it got complicated once I started thinking.

TENSES – This was the first problem I faced when I sat down at my laptop to start writing an outline. I initially wrote everything in first person. This seemed natural, as I was writing a collection of stories about a specific person. I have read many novels, and the ones in first person always seemed to work out fine.

But, I personally couldn’t write in first person. I was writing about my aunt, and it felt wrong. I’m not her; I’m just writing about her. Using first person implied that everything I was writing was fact, and I’ve made it clear from the beginning that I don’t know all the information. I make up what I can’t uncover, so switching to third person allowed the outline to flow much easier.

NAMES – This was the second problem I faced, and it was significantly more difficult to overcome. After I decided to use third person, it didn’t seem right to use my aunt’s name at all. I was already referring to her as a character in a story, and not my “aunt” specifically, so it made sense to turn her into even more of a character.

In the end, I decided to change her name to Sophia, and it’s a decision I’m quite happy with. I might change it back later, but who knows...

There are two reasons why changing my aunt’s name has made writing easier: 1) because I am no longer attributing thoughts, feelings, and words to my real aunt, but a character, and 2) because I now have the freedom to take liberties with that character. She’s no longer exactly my aunt, but someone based on her.

I understand this must be confusing, and I’m terribly sorry if I’ve lost most of my readers...

Feeling comfortable with what I’m writing has been very important to me since I decided to take on this project. Many classmates came up with cool ideas – including going to South Africa for the World Cup, visiting all the provincial parks in Manitoba, and learning French – but I wanted my IPP to be as personal as possible. And, you can’t get much more personal than writing about the good, bad, and ugly of the life of someone you’re related to.

With that being said, changing the tenses and names in my book has made it so much easier to write. There is still a long way to go, and much editing to be done, but I'm happy about what I'm writing.