Thank you to everyone for such good (and quick!) advice. I think a large part of it may be that I'm being self-destructive.
If 1 of 3 POVs is bad and they share equal screen time, as it were, then you've produced 66% decent work by your own standard and that standard and your skill is ever improving. So, for now, absorb the self doubt. Accept it, embrace it. Repeat "memento mori". It'll pass. It may take hours, days or weeks. If you dwell on it, move on to something else. You'll love yourself for having a 66% great work and a solid basis on the other 33% that you can edit and shape into something you're proud of.
In short, you never quit, you just ride the waves.
This is a really lovely, optimistic response, thank you.
Maybe go read something where the POV character is the same(ish) age as Grace? Then you've got that voice lodged in your head.
Thanks. I've read quite a lot of this age - just finished SK's
It for the third time, and as a SK fan, I've read a lot of his work which often has young characters in (Jake, in
DT,
Firestarter girl, the kids in
Under the Dome etc) and recently read Victor Canning's T
he Runaways and
Flight of the Grey Goose.
There is a lot of 11 year old me in Grace; she is an animal lover and I spent most of my childhood at the lake or river bank, immersed in wildlife. I think that may be what is throwing me; that part of my life is so vivid and fresh I feel like writing this is too easy and therefore must be all rubbish.
I yam, I yam!
You will get it right later because you know what to look for, and because you will undoubtedly send bits to various lovely people here who will also know what you're looking for, and it will all get sorted out.
You can't sort it out if you don't finish it.
That's what I'm kind of hoping
and will try to crack on with it.
Alternatively, you could work on *ahem* "something else" for a while....
Hahah. You're never going to let that one go, are you?
I'm not of the "just finish it" school. There is such a thing as being paralyzed by your doubts, and that is when you should try to shake it off and go on. But "going on" does not exclude going back and dealing with whatever is raising those doubts. "On" can go in both directions.
Sometimes, I think you have to trust your instincts. Are these doubts because you think you feel you are not qualified to write this story from a 11 year old girl's viewpoint? That could be rectified by getting better acquainted with any young girls in your family, or whom you already know. (Talking to real people you may know counts as research.) Or do you feel that you could do this but have made a mistake somewhere, one that had an effect on everything that comes after. If that is the problem, then I think you need to go back and look for the place where things start to go wrong and start again from there.
Uncertainty about where to go next is not always "faffery." Sometimes the right decision is one that takes a lot of thought.
Thanks Teresa. I do feel a certain sense of paralysis. To a large extent Grace is writing her own scenes now and I think this is causing me some worry. I'm expecting a 500-1000 word scene but then something comes up and we're off-piste for a while. It's germane to where I'd like things to go, but I'm starting to worry a little.
As far as not feeling qualified, yes, I do feel that I am blagging it a bit, but as a teacher I am surrounded by kids from ages 10 - 19 with the majority between 11-13 so I figure I'm probably in a good space to identify character traits. And as I mentioned above in response to Mouse, so much of this seems too easy that I'm doubting myself. If I could identify an actual 'here's where I went wrong' moment I'd probably feel a lot happier. What I'm worried about is the gestalt. That it's all wholly off-target, if that makes sense.
This weekend I think I'll export the 20k-something words of her POV and analyse them.
Hard to know. You'll learn lots from writing it however it comes out. And I've hated every wip at some stage and had to plough on.
Maybe take a (short) break and let your subconscious work it out. Churn out a couple of shorts and then go back?
Good tip. I'm going to get my feet wet in the 75 word challenge after a 2 months hiatus. May attempt the 300, too.
At eleven I would have used the word circumspect - why not just make her an eleven year old who would?
Personally, (and I am bad at taking my own advice as I am always going back to the beginning when I have a new idea) I would plough on then if you still haven't got into her voice you will probably have a clearer idea about how to write her out of the story on the rewrite.
Me too. But Grace mispronounces or mishears words; for example she says 'imbread' instead of inbred and 'Somaliam' instead of Somalian. I think it may be a little untruthful to allow her to say circumspect. She's no idiot, but I think it's a stretch.
I think the general consensus is to carry on so I think I will do that with a a measure of Teresa's advice, too.
There's probably a good reason for the doubt and my thought would be that you should at least find someone else to read this and do a reality check[more than one would be optimal, but at least one other].
One reason for this -- if you were considering self publishing-- is that it is better to address it now than during or after the process of publishing.
I'm not intending to self-publish, but either way I need to get this right. I may pass a few thousand words on to a friend and see what they say.
Thanks all, for the encouragement.
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