I know that most of you know that I did not complete my 50k goal this year... but I just got the courage to hop back on the NaNo website, and the messages there touched me. You all were concerned about me and how my writing was going. Though there were more, Paloma, BedouDragon and kaephei in particular deserve a special shout out. Although I feel like I let you down, I'm so thankful to have spoken with you all and made friends. Please, please stay in touch. You're all so dear to me.
Between work, being sick, and my frustration at my writing, I did not finish, but in the process I made some pretty great friends. There is always next year! And of course the rest of this year.
bedoudragon replied to your post:hi what's up we haven't talked it forever! not that we need to. but. How's your summer so far? Or do call it winter...or is that confusing.
That’s impressive. Hehe. No snow here either. SPEAKING OF WHICH. do you say eye-dher or ee-dher? Curious. So what are you doing for break?
mmm both. Ee-ther I use after a vowel sound so "No me ee-ther" and eye-ther after a consonant sound such as "But eye-ther that or that" you get me? That's how I tend to use it.
I am going to the beach. I will sit on the sand and read a book and not enter the ocean no matter the familial pleading I receive due to my fear of jellyfish and I will lament the fact that I have four siblings and a dog and two parents in a small apartment for a week because we have a tendency to get into snits. But it's Christmas so fingers crossed it will be fine.
1. Answer the five things question about writing that you’ve been tagged with.
2. Then create a 5-things question about writing of your own.
3. Tag another 3 - 5 people with your new question.
What are some things you try to avoid in your writing? (Tropes, certain types of characters, etc.)
1. I've found myself more conscious of not automatically reverting to male for genders of characters that are only there for a short period. I used to go "I need a throwaway character," or a minor character of some sort, and just automatically make them male without even realizing it. I've begun to think more about it and go eh, why can't they be female? I feel like it helps make my writing more balanced - not to mention sometimes being female gives the, how ever minor, character more... well, character. Heh.
2. I try to avoid useless errors. You know the ones, an awkward phrasing, or when you forget to put the proper indentation on your paragraph, those kinds. And even if I'm changing a sentence up because it sounds strange, I delete the whole thing and rewrite it right then and there.
3. Repeating a word too many times - in a sentence, that's more than once, unless it's necessary to make the point. In a paragraph, that's more than three times or so. I hate repeating words in my writing, because I know when I go back I'm going to have to edit every single one of them. Also repetitiveness is never fun.
My question issssss
What are five things you do to help yourself get past writer's block?
Tagging Rachel, and Ruppy, and Ceili and uhmmmm let's see who do I know who writes... Marcus annnnnnd EM HOW COULD I ALMOST NOT TAG YOU IN THIS EM
WELL IN THAT CASE. I'd love to read a short christmas fic with John and Molly, and Rory and Amy. And they're all kind of mutually thankful for the amazing people they've known. :)
I wasn’t sure if you wanted them all together or not but I’m not good at crossovers so I’ll just do one of each. I hope you like them.
Sherlock: Merry Christmas
John wasn’t certain why exactly they were having the Christmas party in the morgue of all places. He thought it might have something to do with the fact that it was a mostly neutral place - 221B had a predisposition to being blown up every now and then, the police department weren’t overly fond of Sherlock, Molly’s neighbours weren’t overly fond of Sherlock, the general public wasn’t overly fond of Sherlock, Lestrade’s neighbours weren’t fond of Sherlock at all…Okay, the morgue and the dead people didn’t mind Sherlock. That was why they were having it there.
"Merry Christmas, Molly." She looked up at the familiar voice and smiled at John.
"Merry Christmas, John." She looked around. "No Sherlock?"
"I’m sure he’s around here somewhere." He thought about it for a moment. "Probably in the fridge." Molly nodded. That was certainly likely.
"My present is in there. I found a man whose organs were abnormally large so I stored them for him. I even hid the report so he won’t accidentally read it." John nodded. That was a great present for Sherlock. He’d be done with it in about five minutes but it was a nice thought. He was a hard man to buy presents for.
"Molly!" Sherlock shouted from the morgue fridge. "Can I keep these?" John blinked. Sherlock was constantly surprising him. "I’d love to do some more tests." He took a step into the room, making Lestrade cringe at the sight of the consultant detective holding what appeared to be a liver, and quirked a brow at Molly.
"Yes." She blushed a little at his attention, but not much. John nodded. Good for her.
"Excellent." And with that, he disappeared again. "I’ll be out in a minute. Don’t mind me - I’ll just finish up with the rest of these."
"Sanitize everything before you come out again, Sherlock!" John shouted. He thought he might have heard a grunt in response and shrugged. Molly would be doing it later anyway. She was fastidious like that. "Wonderful present, Molly."
"What did you get him?"
John smiled. “It’s actually kind of perfect now,” he admitted. “He’ll try it when we get home. I bought him a fridge for all of his…experiments.” Molly laughed and John’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. “I’m getting sick of opening the fridge to a plate of eyes.”
Doctor Who: (I haven’t actually watched the more recent Matt Smith episodes so I have no idea what’s going on.)
The doorbell rang and, not for the first time, Rory hoped that it wasn’t his mother-in-law. He muttered under his breath all the things he would do or say if she got up him again about becoming a doctor instead of a nurse, none of which he would actually ever do but it did make him feel better to think about it, and flung the door open.
He stopped.
"Oh." There, standing in front of him like, well, like an excited alien who didn’t realise that occasionally he should call so Rory and Amy didn’t worry about him while he was away saving the universe time and time again, was the Doctor. “Bloody hell.”
"Who is it?" Amy called from the kitchen. She didn’t know what she was doing but Rory had asked her to look after the pudding while he got the door and so she was standing over this thing and jabbing it occasionally with the spoon. "Rory, I really don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing with this so you’d better get back here before - oh." She’d looked up halfway through her sentence and promptly threw the spoon at the Doctor.
He ducked and watched at the spoon bounced off the stairs. “Rude,” he chided Amy. “Amelia Pond,” he then quickly said, infinitely fondly. “Merry Christmas.”
"Merry Christmas my arse. What? You think it’s okay for you to go? TARDIS gone, no note - what were we supposed to think?"
The Doctor looked a mite dumbfounded. His hands opened and closed a few times. “I’m sorry?”
"Too right you are! Go and wash up. Dinner’s ready in," she turned to Rory, having no idea for herself how long dinner would be.
"About twenty minutes," Rory filled in. He went back to the kitchen and tried to salvage the pudding.
"Right. I’ll just…bathroom then?" He moved down the hall and Amy sighed and grabbed his arm.
"Come ‘ere then." Her accent thickened, he realised not for the first time, when she was emotional. And she was definitely emotional. She tugged him in for a long, slightly breath-taking hug. That is, he was finding it hard to breath what with her crushing his ribs. When she released him, she brushed away tears and shooed him away to the water closet.
Amy retreated to the kitchen and Rory turned to take her into his arms. “Hey,” he whispered. “You alright?”
"No." His face fell in sympathy. "I’m better than alright." She chuckled and then landed one on her husband. He grinned dopily at her and ducked in for a second kiss and then a third. "You know," Amy said, "I really hate that man."
"I know."
"But by God I love him."
"I know," Rory said again. How could they not? He’d swooped into their lives, rearranged them, made them stronger and weaker and then stronger again, given them the opportunity to see sights that were amazing and horrifying and terrifying sometimes in equal measure, and how could they not love him?
"Oh," they heard his voice in the dining room. "You laid for three."
"Of course we did, stupid," Amy retorted. "Did you think we’d forget you?"
*announcer voice* th-th-th-thanks for the follow! I enjoy reading your posts and such, i find them useful for my writing. Have a good day! see ya round.
11, 12, 17, 31, 33, 53, 60: tell me something that you wish might have been one of the questions, or something fun to share that would take a long time to find out in person.
11 - are you listening to music right now? I am not. I usually am but I'm watching tv so it's hard to listen to music at the same time.
12 - what is something you want right now? Um. Hugs. Cuddles.
17 - opinion on insecurities? On my own or on other peoples? I have a fair share of my own so I guess, I don't know. What do I say about them? I feel that it's really sad when someone is amazing and they can't see it for themselves and I think it just SUCKS that people find ways to exploit them.
31 - 3 random facts -
33 - something you want to learn - I want to learn a language. I know a little french but I think it would be awesome to be fluent. I'd love to spend a while somewhere and learn a language.
53 - 5 things that make me happy: One - My friends. I love my friends. Two - I love reading and organising my books. The other day I was moving into my sisters room because she moved out and I got to dust off all my books and place them exactly where I wanted them and it was the greatest. Three - I quite like swimming. Four - Chocolate. Five - my dog. Her name is Penny but she's getting old so we like to call her Nana.
60 - something fun to share that would take a long time to find out in person: I'm kind of an open book. I just don't feel like I'm fully living unless I'm being honest. But my name is really Fat Patricia. (Ooh that's a good one - I've watched Pitch Perfect like 200 times.)
I already answered Blue so I'll just answer the other three :)
Cup: Coffee. Always coffee. But I didn't realise that you were allowed to put sugar in it until a little while ago. I was fairly sure that it was a rite of passage or something if you could drink the bitter coffee and then one day I was given coffee with sugar in it and my world has changed forever.
Game: The last board game I played was Risk. The one where you have little armies and you conquer Asia and europe and defeat your friends - fun for the whole family! I was doing really well and then I was crushingly defeated.
Harry Potter: The last book I read for fun or for uni? Uni - anything to do with Shakespeare. I think it might have been Henry V. For fun - I don't remember. It was probably some short stories from Lovecraft's Best Weird Tales.
