Point of View

I start my creative writing certificate this weekend with an intensive course on dialogue and point of view. I feel fairly confident about my dialogue (I used to think dialogue was my weakness, so I worked on it) but I have a confession about POV: I nearly always write in first-person for fiction.

First-person has even crept into my articles occasionally, but only if the magazine's guidelines state they have a conversational or folksy style. Gardening magazines seem to like first person, for that "chatting over the fence" feel.

Anyway, one of our assignments is to bring in 250 words of our own writing--not a polished piece, but one that we feel we are having trouble with. That will definitely mean one of my third-person pieces (I've never tackled second-person). I'll probably bring in one of my picture books since the sample only needs to be 250 words.

And I'm a little bit nervous, which I haven't felt about my writing in a while. That means I'm being pushed out of my comfort zone, which is a good thing!

Anybody else venture out of their comfort zone, and if so did you discover a talent you didn't know you had?