Since people are debating the present tense (exactly the level of mild literary conflict I'm up for today) I want to share this: When I was very young, I was subscribed to two magazines: Wee Wisdom (as twee as it sounds) and Jack and Jill, which is apparently still around. 🧵
(My mom apparently thought Highlights was lowbrow trash, but I was allowed to read it at the doctor's office.) One issue (I was like five), Jack and Jill printed a story in the first person present tense. It was about a child at the playground.
I had an EXISTENTIAL MELTDOWN. This story could not exist. If the child in question was going down the slide and running to the swings, he could not also currently be writing this story! It was impossible!
I was so deeply upset that I became a Wee Wisdom loyalist. They would never do such things to me.
Every future issue of Jack and Jill, I kind of warily flipped through when it arrived, to see if they were messing with the time-space continuum again.
Anyway, the book I'm currently working on is entirely in the present tense (for good reasons) but I keep thinking about how betrayed my young self would be.
(Just looked up Wee Wisdom, which I do remember having weird religious undertones, and have now learned that the original 19th century editor wanted children to “follow the harmonious law of the soul’s unfoldment.” 👀 It might have been a cult.)
@rebeccamakkai But clearly not a lowbrow cult.