I find it easier to write in the first person, current tense. I can ‘inhabit’ the character; write from their perspective and in so doing, get to know them better. This is not how I want to write an entire novel, but because it’s easier, it’s a way around writer’s block for me. No pressure that the ‘scene’ I write has to be in the novel, or that the words I use are perfect … I can just write for the pleasure of being the person I’m writing about. These vignettes often do end up in the novel, rewritten in the third person, or referred to indirectly as a memory.
Here you can read my first person, current tense account of the event I imagine to be the motivating force that causes William, the protagonist in Clouds Will Break, to break away from his father’s family business to become a children’s medical specialist with an intense interest in public health. If I was writing a film script, this would probably be the first scene in the film. In the novel, I bring it out part way through, as a painful memory that William confesses, much to his own surprise, to the woman he loves.
Brenda Hall 