First Person:

I was struggling. This first-person POV versus third-person POV thing had me confused. When to use which? Could the same book have both? Opinions flew at me fast and — dare I finish the cliché? — furious. Some said if I was to use both POVs in the same paragraph, it would prove I was the Son of Satan. Others laughed and told me to, and I quote, “Mix it up, dude.”

Third Person:

He struggled for clarity, reading opinion after opinion about the use of first-person POV versus third-person POV. Each opinion was forcing him to decide about who he was, what he was, where he was going in life…and this story he was now cursing as he stared at the blinking cursor.

But this writer’s dilemma was worse than even he knew for, you see, our writer was not a deep thinker. Oh, he thought he was and when he would come up with what he believed to be an original thought, though stolen from a long-ago read, his chest swelled and he pranced around his living room saying things like “I’m bad. I’m bad. You know it. ShaMOAN”, “Eat your heart out, Fitzgerald”, and “Up yours, Hemingway and Frost.”

Second Person:

You struggled for clarity, reading opinion after opinion about the use of first-person POV versus third-person POV, when all along you could have used second-person POV. If you could use that one well, then you could thumb your nose at just about every other writer in the world. Then your dances in the living room would actually mean something. But you know that I know that you would only screw up that POV well and good, too. And why is that?

Because you suck as a writer, that’s why. Why do you keep writing anyway? Don’t you know you are the worst ever? Give it up. Stop torturing yourself. Stop telling yourself to shut up.