The second question I have to now ask myself is a nagging one at best. It is the subject of present tense in contemporary fiction, which also goes along with the question of first person or third person, too. It's as if writers no longer have a choice on how to construct and shape their fiction, that we are now limited to first person and present tense, along with overly stylistic prose. I have probably read and analyzed this subject to death in the last five years. And yes, I wrote drafts in different tenses, then revised them, some half way through just to see how the story read and felt to me. Now I have to choose. How strange and small the world feels when I realized that David Jauss, someone I respect, had written this book and devoted a full chapter to the present tense. It's also funny to add that on Twitter the other day, author Phillip Pullman tweeted:
I don't care how many people enjoy it, fiction in the present tense is an ABDICATION OF NARRATIVE RESPONSIBILITY. I resent having to re-calibrate my entire attitude to time whenever I open a novel in the present tense. Away with them!
And so I have to choose. Oh, well. I will be glad to have this behind me. I choose past tense.
2024 Uodate done on Dec 17th. I am writing present tense. Smile. Irony.
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