As I was doing my third Mercury Retrograde rewriting retreat this year, I ran into a Point of View (POV) problem again — this time I wasn’t trying to switch from first person (I) to third person (she/he) 50 pages into the novel. No, the new issue was: Equilibrium — making sure my two main characters get equal time to tell their respective stories — you know, like competing political candidates on a single media outlet.
My current draft starts with alternating POVs between my two main characters for a span of five chapters:
- First character: 13 pages
- Second character: 6 pages
- First character: 5 pages
- Second character: 1 page (see what I mean???)
- First character: 8 pages (ugh!)
HOW did I get to this problem? Mercury Retrograde asks us to look backwards, so I re-traced my writing steps:
On New Year’s Eve, I had a super emo telenovela meltdown and decided I needed to get at the root of it for the sake of my upcoming marriage to the best human I’ve ever met. The way I would do that? Write a novel through my new, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) lens. If you haven’t heard of this type of therapy, it activates the logical side of the brain in order to unpack the emotional side. It made tons of sense to me because I use this logical side of my brain every day for work, so I knew it existed — problem is I’d just never learned to apply that logic toward these meltdowns that have ruined many of my relationships and dreams. Just watch a telenovela, and you’ll understand what it looks like.
I hope that makes you laugh. It certainly makes me laugh…after the fact.
When I’m inside the meltdown, I spin. I can’t see clearly. A barrage of negative messaging downloads into my consciousness:
- Don’t abandon me.
- You’re always this or you’re never that (black and white thinking).
- You’re the best person ever vs. you’re the worst person ever (splitting).
And more! Obviously, this way of thinking sabotages all the good relationship building BEFORE the spin. My Latina therapist, who has seen and understands these meltdowns ad nauseum, said this DBT would help me manage these “traits of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD),” because ultimately I am an “untrained empath.” In other words, DBT helps my BPD-programmed brain transform information into empathy for all humans who are all of the above and everything between on a beautiful spectrum of colors that include black and white. Yes, lots of isms and concepts listed in one paragraph, hard to keep up, right? Imagine being me. And so…
Writing helps me unSpin, slow down, and see clearly. This is why I write.
It’s not just a coping mechanism — it IS the mechanism by which my life depends: financially, emotionally, medically, physically, mentally, spiritually — all of it. I’ve had the best trainers. Lavonne Luquis. Hazel Henderson. Maria Ibañez. Jennifer Laudano. Shireen Mitchell. All my writing and film peeps in Miami, SF, DC, NY. I’ve had the best inspiration: My family. And a husband and stepdaughter I love more than anything else. So…stakes are hella high. My stress levels are through the roof because there is so much to lose. Too much to lose. Yeah. Deep breath. I figured I could re-read/re-write all the traumas I had documented in my journals when I was 13 and 14 with this new DBT/empathic lens, develop empathy for myself, and come out by the end of the year with new wisdom and no more (fewer) super-extra-flavored emo meltdowns triggered by unresolved, unprocessed teen angst….easy, right? Reasonable goal, right? 🤯
In February, when I took Colette Sartor’s Character and Conflict class at UCLA, she advised me to turn the blob of writing I had started into my “Personal Narrative,” which I literally NEEDed to write from first person so I could “find my voice.” The result? I won/earned a membership to UCLA’s Writers’ Program Network of Writers (see Instagram post to the right — It is here I decided to add a “win” because everything above sounds so…hardcore serious, hopeless, scary!!!).
By May, I added a best friend, who I wasn’t sure was real or imaginary, but after workshopping some pages with a classmate, I decided the best friend should be real. Suddenly the story morphed into a life-long friendship between two Puerto Rican girls from Orlando, and I changed the name of the story from I AM LA CEIBA to MODEL RICANS.
By summer, while taking an advanced novel writing workshop at UCLA with Mark Sarvas, my classmates called my main character an “unreliable narrator,” so I started writing from the Best Friend’s first-person POV (instead of “she” the pronoun was “I”). The most amazing thing happened: empathy. I could see all the things she experienced from her POV, as if I were in her skin. When I shared the best friend’s POV with my class, every single one of my classmates was relieved because she brings context to the unlikeable, unreliable main character. So then I kept going with this POV experiment by writing a couple of chapters from the POVs of my family members, and dang, it felt like straight-up BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, literally walking around in their skin, their shoes, understanding their fears, their desires, their traumas, their obstacles.
By the end of my Novel IV class at UCLA, I ended up with seven POVs! Que loca.
Keep in mind, though, I was writing in first-person, from each character’s respective POVs, not limited third person. It was pure magic. For the first time, I could really see myself from my loved ones’ POVs, and it was scary. I could see why they may have hated me throughout the years, and thus my hatred for myself heightened. Uhh. That doesn’t sound like a good thing. Sounds like a recipe for another emo meltdown. And yeah, I’ve had a couple more since the wedding, but thanks to the DBT, they’ve been less…intense. Have I refrained from taking it out on others? No. And this is why I NEED to write this story: to grow. And growing is hard, my fellow snowflakes…because it takes time and lots of hard work.
Lots of uncomfortable questions arose in the process of writing from other people’s POVs, like: Ugh. Am I a narcissist? As a Leo, I unintentionally and naturally see myself like the sun with all the planets revolving around me, me, me. Perhaps I can feel comforted that in the 21st century, with Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and TikTok, et al, you and me are all the sun and our friends and family and followers are the planets surrounding us. In other words, social media encourages us to become the starring character in the media version of our life, and everyone else is just a supporting actor or a mere spectator. It’s not a very empathetic world we’re creating here, people.
But I’m not writing this personal narrative because I think I’m awesome.
In fact, I’ve hated myself most of my life, the way the LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE describes, of course with one exception. In that movie/novel, the main character says she doesn’t take her self loathing out on anyone but herself while I have taken mine out on both myself AND many others around me (in the past). Yeah, I’ve been quite the toxic sun toward the planets in my orbit, which means it’s time to do some Googling: according to the interwebs, narcissism and borderline personality disorder (BPD) have overlapping traits, but the biggest distinction is that narcissists literally can’t empathize with other people’s needs or opinions or POVs. Hmm. Cool. We know who these folks are — lots of them showing up in politics. But I digress.
I know I should not be using the interwebs to self-diagnose, especially a past version of myself, but for the sake of fiction, here’s a fun hook: “A narcissist learns to become a skilled empath.” OK. Great. Perhaps that’s my main character’s journey. She graduates from narcissism to BPD to trained empath. Ha. Lovely happy ending.
Is that the most honest story, tho? Hmmm.
Something just popped up in my head: This is the National Novel Writing Month (NanoWrimo) version I can write.
Keep going, Mel. Go Deeper!! OK. I see how writing from others’ POVs is helping me personally grow out of overly self-reflective tendencies, but is that the same thing as “narrative purpose?” More importantly, is it something I can pull off? I have delusions that I can write like Julia Alvarez in YO! where she tells her story from 15 — yes, fifteen — points of view, not just in first person, but also in third person. But she is Julia Alvarez, and YO! is not her first novel.
Narcissists often have delusions of grandeur, and the reality? I’m just lil ol me, Mel Feliciano, still trying to get my first novel published, not because I think I am fabulous and everyone needs to read my stories. I’m just a writer, and I need to write all day long, and my whole life I’ve been trying to figure out how I can do that while paying rent. It’s not that the resources aren’t out there, and I haven’t been plugged into the right networks, it’s that I’ve been perhaps paralyzed by fear. And I think that’s relatable, not specific to me, me, me. Hm…What I’ve learned from literary agents and reading more novels in the past few months, is that the way to achieve this connection between reader and writer is by getting brutally and painfully honest — which helps a reader connect to a main character:
- I am ugly even though on the outside I’m supposed to be pretty
- I am stupid even though on the outside I’m supposed to be stupid
- I am beautiful because I am ugly (haha that one got ridiculous)
I know I REALLY want to connect with one main character when I read. This is why I’ve gotten so hooked on LUSTER by Raven Leilani, who does such a good job of connecting me intimately with only one voice: her own. She said in an interview with LitHub: It’s “more humane” to allow the narrator be unreliable. Good for her for knowing that at such an early age.
When I was 26, I wasn’t ready to be honest with myself like Raven Leilani is in LUSTER.
At 26 years old, I thought I could write a third-person novel about a Puerto Rican suburban girl (me) watching a fireman fall in love with a trans prostitute in San Francisco and call it SIRENS. A few years later, when I was about 30, I thought I could write another third-person novel about a Puerto Rican suburban girl trying to be a tech entrepreneur in Miami and call it LOVE CUBED. At 33, I thought I could write a script about a fleet of FEMMEBOTS who brainwash Investors into buying shit they don’t need. At 41, I thought I could write yet another third-person novel about my great-grandmother running rum in 1920s Puerto Rico and call it THE NINE LIVES OF MARIA LA GATA.
Well…now I am 47. I’m literally running out of time. I NEED to get honest.
The honest truth is I NEED to write about my life so I can become more self-aware and less of an unreliable narrator in life — for the sake of my marriage and my emerging role as a stepmom. Soooo, do I write this current novel all in first person, from my own POV, even if everyone hates my character? For the sake of being the most honest? Or is it even more honest to write from all the other characters’ POVs? Or what if I write from my stepdaughter’s POV? She already unknowingly identified all my BPD issues in the Spinel character in STEVEN UNIVERSE, hence my Halloween costume this year….yeah, that’s scary !
Let’s see…if there is anything I learned from reading halfway through OLGA DIES DREAMING by Xochitl Gonzalez, just when I was starting to really get hooked on the main character, she switches to her brother’s POV, and I became less interested, and put the book down. So, that should answer my question, right? Hmm. Maybe I should finish reading that book, and then I can decide…