Updated: July 14, 2021

Writing in the first person–which is to say, describing reality from the perspective of you the writer, usually signified by the use of the word “I”–can be a wonderful thing. Many memoirs and autobiographies rank among the most imperishable in literature. St. Augustine’s The Confessions is a classic example. The North African Christian recounted his spiritual journey from sinner to convert in the fourth and fifth centuries.

After reading the book my senior year in college, I felt as if I had I been shallow and should plumb my soul, which I did…and try to do still!

Plenty of other less momentous memoirs deserve their popularity. I enjoyed and admired Seymour Hersh’s Reporter, the late Stephen Solarz’s Journeys to War and Peace, and the late Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. Not only were their stories compelling, but the prose was vivid. Witness the opening line of Ms. McNamara’s book: “That summer, I hunted the serial killer at night from my daughter’s playroom.”

The four books shared a common virtue. While they were written in the first person in part or whole, they served readers. Augustine sought to convince his readers to become Christian; Mr. Solarz to show that members of Congress can contribute to the nation’s foreign affairs; Mr. Hersh that reporters can uncover horrific government abuses and cover-ups; and Ms. McNamara that sometimes we must wait for the devil to get his just desserts.

The problem is, most writing in the first person, in not just memoirs but also blog posts and social media (!), serves few people other than yourself and a few friends and family members, and perhaps not even them. This is sub-optimal. 

Some blog writers seem to be oblivious to their audience. “For me, there is nothing more rewarding than being heard and properly understood as the person (or the business, or the cause) you really are,” Nina the writer wrote.

Even a writing guru, the late William Zinsser, discounted readers. In On Writing Well, a well-respected, even beloved book, he advised writers to forget their audience:

Soon after you confront the matter of preserving your identity, another question will occur to you: “Who am I writing for?” It’s a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You are writing for yourself. Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person. Don’t try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don’t know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they’re always looking for something new. Don’t worry about whether the reader will ‘get it.’

One blog writer, TheFairyBlogMother, acknowledges she views readers as her personal psychoanalysts:

Posts like these will become more readable if the writer is allowed to explore their self-expression as if they were having therapy with the reader. It’s a bit like lying back on the couch and letting is all spill out (though obviously tears, swear words and violence is not advisable), totally against the British ‘stiff upper lip’ idea we were all taught to do in the past. Blocking it off and stifling your emotions will not create a good post, but with a good rant it is always wise to write it first and save it in draft, then go away and do something totally different before coming back to edit and publish it.

Although these writers ignored or used their readers, this is a bad idea. Who likes to be dismissed and ignored?

Most likely, readers will skip your stuff or quit reading it altogether. They won’t even use your prose as a treatment for insomnia or other sleeping disorders. As Larry McInerney, former head of the writing program at my old school, the University of Chicago, said,

No one cares about the inside of your head, at least not unless you pay us. If you pay us to care, we will care, right? In the real world, you are going to stop paying your readers to care about the inside of your head.

Other times, readers will find the writer’s failure to put their needs first irritating.

In The French Connection, the book that inspired the 1971 Oscar-award winning film, journalist Robin Moore made the near-fatal mistake of assuming his readers were cartographers—they cared about New York City’s myriad streets. In one passage, detectives Sonny Grosso and Eddie Egan chase two suspected drug traffickers on a frigid night:

Grosso left the bar and took up the chase, far behind the Frenchmen on the north side. Jean and Barbier turned downtime at Third Avenue. They walked past 42nd Street…The detectives changed places with each other, alternating back and forth to either side of the avenue, even switching hats occasionally to minimize any chance of the subjects perceiving a pattern of men following them. And they grew more puzzled: surely any minute something would have to happen. The Frogs would make some significant move; who just walks on such a night, with the mercury sinking toward zero, and the wind whipping at a man’s body. But Jehan and Barbier went on down Third Avenue, hardly looking about them past 23rd Street to 14th Street. There, finally, without hesitation, they turned right. It was 1:45, and they had strolled third-five blocks, almost two icy miles. The chilled, weary officials perked up: this might be it.

The detectives, famously, didn’t catch the trafficker Jehan. And readers were left with mind-numbing details about New York City streets.

In any other industry or profession, performers who ignored or used their audience would reap what they sow. They would not be hired, would not be promoted, and would not get book deals.

In the book industry and blog world, performers can survive because the line between the work of an amateur and a professional can be fuzzy. Consider Duffy Jenning’s memoir Reporter’s Note Book: A San Francisco Chronicle Journalist’s Diary of the Shocking Seventies.

The book had the hallmarks of success: Jennings covered San Francisco in the city’s earth-shaking, rip-roaring decade of murder, massacre, and heroism and wrote and reported with sensitivity. He was even a character, albeit a minor one, in the 2007 masterpiece Zodiac.

Yet the memoir disappointed me. It wasn’t about the shocking seventies, or it wasn’t in any meaningful way. It was a personal tale about the toll of family dissolution and alcoholism. While that’s a perennial and important subject, that wasn’t how the book was marketed. Mr. Jennings and his publisher failed to give readers their due. They should have been more upfront about the dysfunction plotline.

Mr. Jennings’ memoir shows the peril of writing in the first person. Writers fail to connect with readers in which case a relationship never begins. Or they become divorced from readers in which case the relationship ends. In either case, the end result is the same: the two parties are alienated from one another.  

Professional writers should avoid writing in the first person as a rule, and in the next post I will attempt to show ways they can.

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