How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

Point of view is one of those things that happens so automatically that a lot of writers don't really talk about it. I've found that my stories fall naturally into a point of view and rarely slip from that, but an experience I had with The Book* had led to me to think carefully about what point of view does to a story and what changing it can do. Then I read this post from Marie Brennan over at Fangs, Fur, and Fey about the difficulties she's having with a project. This is how she puts it: the damn thing can't decide what point of view it wants to be in. When I started writing, it defaulted to third. I cranked out a couple thousand words like that in the first day of "whee fun shiny new toy!," but then when I came back the next day, I got a couple hundred in before I noticed it had morphed to first. And ever since then, it's waffled back and forth. Heh . I feel her pain. What this means (t0 me--I don't know what it will mean to Brennan) is that at