Doubt.
So here are some of my doubts and worries about the process so far.
1. Why this story? Why this character of Emily? Okay so my starting point was a fight between faeries and gnomes and I stand by that idea as a premise with entertainment potential, but the character of Emily doesn't come from anywhere personal in me. Her whole story was literally the first thing that came into my mind. I think I chose a female character because I was conscious of trying to write something outside of myself. I didn't want to create a boy character because that could all too easily become a thinly veiled version of me, and for whatever reason that's something I don't want to do. Actually I do know the reason I wanted to avoid that, I wanted to prove to myself that I could create something out of my imagination and not just rewrite myself into a fantasy world.
2. Emily is still so very vague in my mind at the moment and that's frustrating.
3. In choosing to follow Vogler's method (God knows I needed some way to get myself started doing this) i'm therefore following to choose the hero method of storytelling. The thing is I very rarely read books about heroes, for example a couple of my favourite novels are 'White Noise' by Don Delillo and 'The Music of Chance' by Paul Auster, which are more or less literary novels. The main character in White Noise is a professor of Hitler Studies who is terrified of death and the main character of The Music of Chance is a man who abandons his child after receiving a large some of money so that he can just drive around America doing nothing with his life before he finally gambles away himself as a slave to a couple of rich freaks when his money runs out.
4. In thinking of this thing as a Young Adult novel i'm essentially trying to write something I would have almost no interest in reading. Furthermore I don't read fantasy novels lately unless they're written by Terry Pratchett, yet I want to write about faeries and gnomes. Pratchett would do something fun with these kind of characters, so if I want to bring life to this thing I think I need to take a lesson from his style. I should try to make this thing as funny and as twisted as I possibly can with little to no consideration of how a YA audience might react to it or even if it would be suitable for them. I'm now writing this for anyone who might find a Pratchett book funny irregardless of their age. If sex, swearing and violence become a natural element of this story then I don't want to be stopping to think about the moral implications for young minds. I just want to write whatever I think would be the most interesting way to tell this story.
5. I started thinking about another book I want to write. I started thinking about who my heroes are in real life. I don't really use the word hero as part of my vocabulary but there are artists who I admire. People like Mike Mills, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman. I started thinking of a story that takes composite components of these kind of people as a basis for a stories protagonist. Now I want to start planning that thing out instead.
6. Somewhere at the back of my mind i've started rewriting Vogler's rules. I think this might be a good thing though.
Now for something positive.
I did recently join the email list of a new writing website being launched called LitReactor. They sent me a free PDF of brief interviews they've done with writers they're working with. Two pieces of advice stuck out that i'm going to paraphrase. Neil Gaiman said to ignore the advice that you should write what you know. This can get in the way of you imagining things you've never experienced. Bret Easton Ellis said writing everyday is overrated.
I think I should stick with what i've started. This fairy/gnome thing can be a learning curve, I guess.
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