One of the challenges I face as a writer is because a lot of my characters are quiet, shy, introspective. I struggle with how to depict them interacting with their environment, because when you are quiet and shy oftentimes you’re very interior and it can be difficult and exhausting for a writer and reader to write interiority without an actual interaction with the external world.
So I think a lot about that and sometimes I’ll change the point of view. In Hello Universe one of the characters, Valencia, I use first person because she’s interacting with the reader. And with Virgil, he has a very important person in his life that he interacts with.
But it can be a challenge. And one of the things I love about writing long hand is that it allows me to cross things off and put new thoughts in thought bubbles and write little notes to myself. And those are things you can’t really do on a computer. So I feel like that experience even makes it more textured and three-dimensional of bringing a story forward and working through some of those challenges.