Third time lucky?

I have just finished my third attempt at Chapter 1 of Hide and See.  I am still not happy with it.  I think it's better than my second attempt, but then that isn't really saying much as I wanted to burn that one in a fiery tribute to the Gods-of-making-words-sound-good.

It gets better towards the end, I think: it's just the first 1.8k that's the problem.  Out of just under 2k.

I have decided, however, that I'm not going to start it again, regardless of how much I hate certain passages.  I am instead going to charge on through to the second chapter, which I abandoned half-way through the second attempt.  Does that even made any sense?  I feel like I've got too many numbers in this paragraph.

My problem partially lies in the fact that I am (or was?) probably intending to use this novel for the Good Housekeeping competition.  That means that it MUST BE GOOD.  IT MUST BE THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER WRITTEN EVER!!!  Obviously, this is not really a good mindset in which to write, especially for my contrary brain which sees such a challenge and decides to do the exact opposite.

Maybe if I tell my brain I'm using Fall instead it will stop being such a big poopy-face (yes, I am five-years-old) and let me write something half-decent.  Do you reckon that will work?  Can I use one part of my brain to trick a different part into believing something which may or may not in fact be true?  Or will I just end up giving myself a headache.

I think we all know the answer to that one.

In other news, you might have noticed that I wrote my first book review a couple of days ago.  It's pretty shockingly bad but then I realised (on reading back) that so were my first blog posts.  I think I've got better at those so hopefully the same will apply to the reviews.  Here's me, crossing all my fingers.