I'm at a crossroads with my book Vloekenville. I can't decide if the whole thing was just a bad idea or not. One minute I'm 100% positive, the next I feel like I'm pissing in the wind.

I've had loads of great and helpful comments already, but now I'm after opinions on one subject please. What I really want to know is - Are kids gonna like it?

There are 5 chapters in my profile. If anyone has time to read any of it; or even better, if anyone has kids that have time to read it. Then I'll be very grateful for an honest thumbs up or down.

Cheers,

Derek.

Hiya mate! So you want help do you? OK, the cavalry's here!

I've read just the prologue and first chapter so far, not sure I'll get chance to read any more today, but I will soon.

I'm going back to put some comments up.

Cheers,
Shay

Hi Derek,

maybe the question you should be asking yourself is, "Would I really want to read this." or, if it was on the shelf, would your younger self buy it?

I'll put some time aside today and have a look today, but if it doesn't feel right to you, then maybe your telling yourself what you don't want to hear. It's shit when you've put so much work into a project to suddenly think it's time wasted; but better to use that experience as a spring board for your next project, or salvage the good bits than continue working on something that you don't feel right about.

I just scrapped a novel yesterday. I had only done the first chapter, but I'd planned the whole thing out. I thought it was great for a couple of weeks, but there was something niggling at me about it. Today, I'm starting something new.

Colin M

Hi Colin,

if only I could remember the mind of my younger self...I've tried, and I think I would have liked it. As for my adult self, well, yeah I like it, usually, but I'm very biased. Depending on my mood, my opinion of it slides from - best story ever written, to the biggest pile of steaming dog shit ever shat, with the opinionometer usually hovering around 'hmmm I think it's half decent'.

I know what you're saying about scrapping it and using the experience, or re-inventing it etc. I'm not scared of doing that. I'm just glad I joined WW, got involved in other writing, and found that I had a few more stories in me. If this one gets binned, I've got another brewing.

Be great to hear your honest opinion.

Cheers,

Derek.

Well, I've read it now, and my opinion is that you should finish it; even if, at the end, you don't feel it's right. It's a good, fun story and by the comments you have received, I would say most other people are keen to read on. So stick with it. Once the whole thing is complete you can decide whether it needs changing, refining or binning.

Colin M

You've cheered me up...Thank you.

Derek,

As you already know, I love Vloekenville. Whether that means kids will, I couldn't honestly say, but it is not shit.

I find the ups and downs of confidence the hardest thing about novel writing - don't listen to the downs. I remember reading Jacqueline Wilson say that about half way through every book she writes the finds herself thinking "This is rubbish, no one's going to want to read it". I think it would take a remarkably confident character never to doubt over the long period of time it takes to write a novel.

I take Terry's point from his comments on the piece; I would be hard pressed to think of a children's novel that doesn't have a child hero.

So here's a suggestion - the children who are lost: highlight one of them, your favourite, and interweave his/her story with the efforts of the adults trying to retrieve them, and set their narratives on a trajectories that will meet at the moment the adults find them.

Interweaving the two narratives won't be easy, but it can certainly be done.

Vloekenville is too good to bin, and there's always a way ....

hope this is helpful.

Take care
Andrea

You read my mind, Andrea. I have just written a short cut scene to the children. Posting now.

Hi Derek,

Don't bin it. I really enjoyed reading it.

I agree with everything Andrea has said about writer confidence. I find it helps just to move on regardless sometimes, to shelve the chapters - or scenes in my case - you've finished and just keep going. Don't look at them again until you've typed 'The End' and then begin the editing process, especially if you've been agonizing over them for a while.

I wish you the very best with it.

Harry

Harry, thanks for that. It's good to know you enjoyed it. I won't bin it...

Derek.