It makes your paper sound less formal. It takes away from your main argument. It weakens your writing. It sounds repetitive. The reader doesn’t care about your opinion, only the research.

Those are a few pieces of “advice” I heard throughout high school and college in reference to writing with the word “I”.

Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree that there are types of writing where “I” should be left out. And I don’t think the advice I received was totally wrong. Actually, it helped me write strong and quality academic papers.

But now a dilemma has presented itself. I don’t know when to say “I”.

As I pursue creative expressions, such as journaling, posting on Medium, freewriting, and dabbling in starting my first novel, I feel so uncomfortable. I would like my novel to be from a first-person point of view, but do I sound too repetitive? Is it weakening the character and their journey? Will people relate to the character more or get annoyed?

I’ve read countless books from a first-person point of view and it never bothered me to read “I” over and over again, but now that I am actually paying attention I seem to notice it more. It still doesn’t bother me, but I’m catching the difference between just enough and too much.

All these old pieces of “advice” (which work for formal, academic papers) haunt me. I can’t even begin to write without feeling redundant and silly. When can I use the forbidden word in creative writing?

After all that, this turned into a weird post about my confusion over the word “I”.

This is a cry for help. After hearing one way for most of my writing life, I can’t seem to get past this block. Has anyone else felt this way? Does anyone have any advice or tips?

If so, please leave a comment. It is much appreciated as I continue to grow my writing!

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