Us pronoun, untie

I'm back. I hate to say it. I'm back. I'm surprised this hasn't been deleted. I'm not surprised that out of five sentences, all of them begin with "I."

David Zindell wrote a book that hasn't been published (in the U.S.) yet that I had the opportunity to review where he created a character whose culture didn't use the pronoun "I". He tells the reader this partway through the book, and as a reviewer, I went back to the beginning and skimmed to see if such is the case. It seemed to be.

The one time an agent called me about a query I had sent, he suggested I remove "that" and "this" from the book as much as possible, and "it" and "there" as well. This is a difficult thing, until you realize, for instance, that statements that start with "There is" can easily be rewritten, and "It was" is often better written, and "this" and "that" are hardly as descriptive as "the homicidal monkey".

The interesting exercise is avoiding the use of such phrases. Of not writing about oneself (even in a first person story, is it better when "I" is rarely used?). And in conversation, if you're talking about yourself, aren't you boring other people? And so on.

Thus, in my opinion, blogging is a complete waste of time. This may be the last one. Yay!