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In my previous post I explained why I chose to write my memoir from a child's perspective. Today, I'd like to discuss why I decided this voice would work best if I told my story in the present tense.

The convention in storytelling, of course, is to use the past tense. But in the last few years the present tense has come into vogue for both memoirs and novels, especially those that can be described as literary.

Let me confess something right of the bat. Part of the reason why I chose the present tense was because of its popularity among what we might call the literati of my generation. My secret hope was that using the present tense would therefore increase the likelihood that my fantasy would come to pass, namely that Dave Eggers and/or Jonathan Safran Foer would read my memoir and be impressed with how incredibly hip and post-modern I am, and perhaps we'd all get together to sip lattes and chuckle at New Yorker cartoons in a swanky coffee shop.

But I also chose the present tense for more practical reasons. It's a powerful device that allows the charm of a child's perspective to really shine. A child narrator doesn't understand everything going on around him. You, as the reader, however, are able to read between the lines and fill in the gaps in the narrator's understanding.

For example, here's a scene from the book where I'm getting fitted with my first artificial leg at age ten:

You also have to decide what color skin you want. The prosthetist has a book with a piece of rubber skin glued to each page, and you flip through it and choose the color you want. It's like the book with little pieces of carpet at the hardware store that you look at when your family is trying to decide what kind of carpet to get in the living room. You ask the prosthetist why there are twelve different kinds of skin for white people and only three for black people. He says "um" a few times, and then says it is because that's the way the skin company makes the skin, which doesn't really answer your question.

See what I mean about reading between the lines? You, as an adult reader, detect subtle racism in the available skin choices, but I, as a child narrator, don't fully understand the implications of the situation.

For the sake of discussion, let's say I was telling that same story in the past tense. Not only would I have to rewrite the paragraph to fix its simple vocabulary and childlike run-on sentence structure, but I'd have to conclude the passage with some adult-style retrospection, something like this:

At that age, I didn't understand why there were more skin choices available for Caucasian amputees, but now I look back and realize that it's one of those forms of racism that still lurks below the surface of our society.

Appending a paragraph like this would neuter the charm of discovery you felt when you read the first paragraph, don't you think? Yet that's what happens when you read a memoir in the past tense. The writer is forced to filter events through the lens of hindsight. Yes, sometimes that filter can provide insightful reflections, but I decided that for my story, at least, those insights would be inferior to the delight of looking at the world through the eyes of a child telling a story with the limited perspective of the present tense.

In my final post I'll explain the unique challenges of writing with a child's limited vocabulary.

For more information on Josh Sundquist, visit his website: www.JoshSundquist.com

Josh Sundquist, Just Don't Fall, Paralympics, athletics, skiing, Penguin Books