I’m in the middle of plot revisions for my new novel, so I’m thinking hard. It’s a novel for teens titled The Yo-Yo Prophet, and it’ll be out in Fall 2011 with Orca Books – an fine publisher of quality books for kids and teens. So right now, I’m trying to think like a slightly geeky 15-year-old guy named Calvin Layne who is obsessed with complex yoyo tricks. I’ve been tossing my yoyo to get into character, although Calvin’s much better at it than I am. Here’s what Calvin is thinking about right now: “The world is spinning at the end of my string, and I’m not about to let go.”
New Book Deal: My Creek Speaks
Have you ever stopped to think about the buried creeks and waterways tucked under our parks, homes, and streets?...
Don’t know where you are with this by now, it is a couple months late, but I have been thinking about the power of doubt, just enough doubt.
R
Just enough doubt to … what? Motivate a person to try harder? Or motivate a person to give up?
it depends on the scenario, maybe to see another path that certainty had obscured, or maybe to realize the goal isn’t what it might/should be, an opportunity to change direction in order to get to the same place, or maybe to give up on what was an unimportant goal.
I should have said, self doubt.
Ah, yes. Re-evaluation while on the path. Re-visioning where we are and what to do next.
Thanks for finding fewer words to say exactly what I meant, and forgive me for using religious belief as an example. It can probably be said with a degree of accuracy that it is those who are certain who are more likely to do bad things in the name of religion.
Am I correct in making this observation, the title of the book refers at least subtly to a spiritual if not religious experience?
Hmm. Spiritual, perhaps. Here’s my one-line blurb for the book: Fifteen-year-old Calvin Layne becomes an overnight sensation as a yoyoing street performer who thinks he can predict the future.
That line introduces doubt by using the word, “thinks,” but in your plot revision above, which I am taking completely out of context so my analysis could be grossly flawed, seems to indicate certainty, control, and power over the world.
Just to be a butt like I usually am, what’s if, he knows he can predict the future, it gets proven to him and to others, then the struggle becomes the management of the power, and how doubt impacts that.