This ever happened to you?

I've been thinking about this a lot, recently.

I'm interested in first-person/third-person dichotomies, and especially interested in the ways the two "perspectives" can be combined.

I'm just re-reading John Fowles' book Daniel Martin (which I think is by far his greatest work - much better, more interesting and more compelling than all the much better-known ones like The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman), and he has a bizarre (but fascinating) way of alternating between third and first person, sometimes even in the same sentence, according to "how the writer is looking at himself". So you'll get a sentence something like "I realise that what Dan was actually doing was ..." ("Dan" and "I" actually being the same person!). It sounds messy and complicated, but he brings it off very well, of course, and it adds a lot to the various points he makes. He's writing "as a writer", looking at his own life, so it's all quite recursive.

Good luck with yours, Sal - and with NaNoWriMo!

There's so much in here that resonates with me it's spooky. 11 years ago this past Monday I lost a very special pet, a cat. Saying he meant a lot to me is a gross understatement. I mourned for several weeks and still often think of what he meant to me.

Then one day something came over me. Complete clarity. I looked at the kitty I'd buried and realized he'd done everything on his terms. He was smart and wise and affectionate and as handsome as a boy cat could be. I know it sounds sappy but right then I understood he had been with me as a role model. He never forced anything, he just expected things to go his way and they did.

I thought about this and began to sort of assume that type of behavior. Obviously it's been a work in progress but I have changed a lot in the past decade and much of that change for the better was inspired by a 10-pound creature who was both a powerful wizard and a warrior doing things his own way.

I believe those moments of clarity come, Sal, when we stop trying so hard with all that white knuckle determination. A few years back I spent six straight weeks working 10 hours a day on a novel. I thought it was really good. It was and is actually good. But I wrote myself into a corner and didn't know where to go.

I tried and tried to pick up the story but eventually I put that book aside. And then one day I was walking in the woods and the answer came to me. I had been really ambitious with three sub plots in this story and suddenly knew exactly what to do to tie them together and bring the story to a great climax.

Sometimes the answers we seek come by doing the exact opposite of what we've expected or what we've learned. TAKE ACTION everyone says. Of course that's true much of the time.

But I'm finding that more often letting go is the answer because when you're not sweating and fretting and filling your mind with static and fear the right solutions have a way of showing up out of the blue. And when you're not forcing things and actually have the right solution, the work becomes a joy.

Yes. That's what it was. It wasn't something I did with volition, though. It just happened. I've been in turmoil on the home front and the financial front...........and losing Ricky was a final straw. I just wen numb. I was browsing over things on the computer, but nothing was registering at all. My body was going through familiar motions, but I was gone. Suddenly I got a thought out of nowhere that was accompanied by some form of electrical shock.

I've felt a bit different since then, too, mentally anyway. Still a little physically ragged, but have a whole new outlook after a long time of veritable stagnation. Ricky was my anchor. I was able to handle just about anything with him around. When things got disgusting, I'd just close myself off with him or we'd go out somewhere and just be together and it made all sorts of things bearable that I find I am no longer able or willing to tolerate. I just lost the last thing I really gave a damn about. He was my buffer from a hostile environment. That buffer just dissolved. Good clear head to move forward again.