TQ: Where are you when you do the best of your writing?The place where I do the best of my writing is wherever my laptop happens to be. Sometimes that’s sitting at my desk in my study, or curled up on the sofa, or tucked up in bed. Apart from that, I think I tend to have a best
time rather than a best
place; I seem to get inspired late at night, and will often sit up until two or three in the morning because I’ve suddenly got a whole rush of things that I need to write down.
The most infuriating place to be for writing is lying in bed, after I’ve turned the light out, when I suddenly get inspired and just don’t want to get up again and start writing! Sometimes I manage to put the light on without disturbing hubby, and scribble a few words down on a scrap of paper to jog my memory next day; other times I just hope that the inspiration will stay with me so that I can remember it all next time I’m at my laptop.
CritiqueThe One Where it Wasn't The SameTatteredThoughtBaloon
Friends
OK, looks like I’m the only one to do this, and boy am I late, so... apologies, but here it is. I’ve never read a Friends fanfic before, but having three guys at home who love the show, I’ve probably seen most of the episodes.
Spelling and grammar and stuff:I spotted quite a few careless mistakes that maybe could have been rectified with a read through to check spelling, grammar and punctuation. Things like putting “though” instead of “thought”, “and” instead of “an”, and mis-spellings like “restraunt”, and “reconcile” instead of “reconciliation”.
There was a sentence that seems to have lost its ending:
Once he'd paid the cab fare they slid out of the
Out of the what? Will we ever know?!
There were a few inconsistencies like sometimes spelling Dad with a capital “D”, sometimes with a small “d”, and a couple of “phoebe”s without a capital.
And finally – and this is just a personal thing – I thought that there were way too many Author’s Notes. They were at the beginning and end of every single chapter, not always relevant, and with info that I really didn’t want or need to know, e.g. about what your cousin said, or about what other stuff you’re writing, and so on. Yes, I know I don’t have to read them, but I feel sort of compelled to do so in case I miss something important! And then I find that I’m irritated and it detracts from the story. But like I said, that’s just a personal thing.
Things that worked:What really interested me about this story was the way that you wrote it so many years in the future. Although you wrote the characters as that much older, I could still see their younger selves in the way you wrote them – just little things, like Joe and Phoebe going through the bag, and Mike’s sort of tolerant bemusement at what they were doing. You got that balance just right, I think.
You had me thinking that Alexa was Joey’s girlfriend to begin with, so it came as an unexpected (but pleasant) surprise to find out that she was his daughter, and as the story went on, to have the family story revealed a bit at a time. It would have spoiled it if it was all “wham-bam-done” in one go. I liked the way you wrote Joey too, showing a serious, more grown-up side to him that just wasn’t there in the series. I wasn’t sure it was going to work without it being a totally different character, but like I said before, you got it just right between the younger Joey and the more mature Joey.
It was good too how you brought in all the other characters, and updated their lives a bit at a time too, and adding extra characters like Monica and Chandler’s other kids. I liked the angle too of Mike and Phoebe not having kids – it would have been too many happy families if you’d done that! But you handled it really sensitively too, explaining their feelings and their philosophy about the whole issue of childlessness.
I wonder, if you’d carried on with it (maybe you have since I read it for this critique), were you going to bring Ross and Rachel and Emma in as well?
Things that didn’t work so well:Just a couple of things, really.
At the beginning of the first chapter, you wrote:
He'd managed to lease the same apartment he'd lived in for ten years a long time before. That was another lifetime though and the apartment didn't feel at all like it had when he'd lived there, but as was life, things changed.
But then later you wrote:
They'd been living in that apartment for two weeks already and it already felt more like home than any other place ever had in his adulthood. He guessed it was because of all of the history he'd had in that apartment.
It just stuck out for me when I read it, because the two almost seem to contradict each other.
And the second thing was a line that Phoebe says in chapter 4:
“Who mister give the guy who's trying to help you the finger guy?”
Now, I know Phoebe says some weird things, but I could not make this make any sense at all, even for Phoebe!!
But, having said all that, I liked it very much indeed. It was well written, coherent, a good story-line, well paced, and I’d be interested to read more if you’re going to carry on with it.
Jude
I've learned so much from my mistakes... I think I'll make another one!
Mon Oct 12, 2009 6:20 pm 
) or in class. This year, though, different school, and we have an auditorium/theatre instead of a gym, so the house lights are off and I can't see, and I actually need to pay attention in class. 
