Re: off topic: query to editors

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

> I said, Felknor said, the secretary said?
I think it all depends on the context, and how playful you turn out to be.
You may find it appropriate to use all three at different times. The
context will always guide you, I think. Once you start writing the
material, it will be clear what is right to do and when.
I, representing myself as plaintiff in a lawsuit against a distinguished
attorney very proud of his literary achievements, was just involved in a
torrential war of correspondence to the judge, and I found myself
identifying myself sometimes as "Plaintiff", sometimes as "Troop" and
sometimes as "I". What I found was that in this rather complex and dramatic
correspondence, there were times when all three of these forms were
necessary, and it would have seemed tonally false or trite to have
substituted one for the other.
I found that there were times when I addressed the judge as "this Court"
and found that there were other times when it seemed more useful to say
"your Honor".
It is no easy task to write both as one's self, and as one's
self-representing-one's-self -- but it can be done, and the slithering in
and out of the different roles can be fun in the writing and, we hope, in
the reading.
To give a more specific suggestion, you may find that for the first third
(let us say) of this history, where your role is small or incidental, you
may be most comfortable writing in the third person. Now, all of a sudden,
you take a large part in the story. At this point you may want to indicate
clearly to the reader a change of voice and role for that section. You may
even want to indicate by typographic emphasis of some kind that you are now
speaking in the first person -- a different font, or size of font, or
italic, etc. This has been done a thousand times over, but I can't
recollect any specific great works where it has been done.
Gitta Sereny in her magnificent biography of Speer was deeply personally
involved in the evolving story ... and deals very elegantly with it by
simply becoming "I" whenever she needs to appear specifically as herself.
There is never any question of "this author" or "Sereny". She sets this up
at once in her introductory sentence: "Albert Speer, whom I knew well and
grew to like, might easily have been hanged the Night of October 16-17,
1946, when, in the gymnasium of Nuremberg prison, ten other of Hitler's men
were executed, some perhaps less guilty than he."
From then on, it's absolutely clear when she is I and when she is the
omniscent author. Much though I dote on Sereny, I have just noticed that
"Night of October 16-17" --- ugh! how stupid and pedantic to think that a
single night needs to be indicated by two numbers. What a clumsy way to
start a book! Oh -- and what's this with "Nuremberg prison"? It's either
"Nuremberg Prison" or it's "a Nuremberg prison". Gee. Now I'm afraid to
reread one of my favorite books.