Nanowrimo Day 10

I'm gonna make this quick cos it's nearly 3 hours into Day 11 and I'm still awake. But it's weird that I count the words I got after midnight as part of my Day 10 work - I spose it's cos I consider the day not over until I go to sleep ergo everything I write pre-sleep is part of that specific day regardless of the time that I actually go to sleep.

So yea, today I faffed about for most of the day waking up late, doing laundry, cleaning the bathroom, managing to break our decrepit hoover etc. until after having my rather yummy dinner of spag bol and garlic bread I decided to actually sit down and write. But then I hit a snag.

One of my friends who I occasionally send bits of my writing to (Not Jess btw another friend) had sent me a reply to the email I sent him with the first chapter of my Nano novel. In that one email he managed to compare my story to a mundane chapter of Twilight (Which by the way he has never read), suggested that it is merely an account of a day *I* would like to have and not a piece of writing for an audience other than myself. He also said that by having my FMC go to work like she does every day that I was "writing myself into a hole" and that I should have trashed the shop instead. His exact words "In a good book, shit happens" - I grant you this is valid point but just because the shit doesn't happen in the first fugging chapter doesn't mean that it isn't gonna be a good book. Lots of books I've read have a taken a couple of chapters to get going properly, it's incredibly snobby to dismiss a book as being bad if it's merely setting up the norm at first to blow it up in your faces later rather than plunging straight in with the action.

He also said that by using the bits of French in the dialogue like I do, although it adds to realism (They are all French after all) I'm supposedly "limiting my theoretical audience to French Teenagers". I say bollocks to that - Firstly I am not using so much french within the story that it's incomprehensible, granted I realise that I may have to adding clarifying statements to sections where a sizeable chunk appears but the grand majority of the story will be in English, Secondly there are plenty more people outside of France that know enough French to understand the bits that I use (if you're up on your swear words then you'll be able to translate the rather choice phrases I use in the excerpt of Ch. 1 here) and even if you don't know a great deal of french it's still possible to decode what it means from the context and the similarity between the spellings.

(BTW I'm sorry that this is turning into a rant- I can't help it)

But what really irked me was how he bookended these statements with "don't take this to be negative criticism" and "Despite these few tiny problems" erm yes... right THANKS! Next time I want my novel to be kicked and ground into the dirt I'll send it to him. Otherwise I'm sending it to beta-readers who have actually *read* a book in the same genre as I'm writing (YA/Adult Urban Fantasy) and therefore know what is good or not for that genre. Plus you sound like a right arsehole when you compare the story to a book you've never read and misspell the author's name. Just sayin'

*Deep Breaths*

ON TOPIC - so yea today I wrote chapter 6 of my nothing-like-Twishite-totally-accessible-to-non-French-Speakers novel. I ended up writing a good deal of the 2,092 words after midnight cos I was too cold and pissed off to really focus before then. But after a quick Word War with Emilee of Penultimate Page via twitter and then a good dose of procrastination in the form of Jackson Pearce's livestream show discussing trends in YA fiction (Really interesting) I finally knuckled down and met my word count target.

Total word count one third of the way through November - 17637 words!


Right terribly sorry about the ranting detour but I needed to vent about it, any suggestions for dealing with rather unhelpful criticism like that would be greatly appreciated.
So I'm shattered it's almost half 3 in the morning and it's cold and rainy - oh yay! /sarcasm

Night y'all
LadyV