I keep thinking I should update, but then I have nothing to say. I feel like my life has nothing going on it at the moment. Or at least nothing interesting. Which I’ve just realised is a terrible lead in to this post, which is a summary of what I’m up to… Read more…

Back at the end of May I signed up for a challenge to write 100 drabbles by early September (I forget the exact date). And I intended to write them all about Harry Sullivan, not knowing if that was possible.

And it turns out it is. I’ve written 100, 99 of which from his point of view. You can see them all using this tag. If you look at the tags at the end of each post that’ll tell you who is in the drabbles in that post and when they’re set. I started off posting them in sets with similar times and characters, but by the end I was mopping up a bit.

On the whole I quite enjoyed it. There were still some ideas I had to do that I had left over. It was good to get into the mindset and write 5-10 a day. But it’s a hard way of writing 10,000 words!

My drabbling’s going well. The trouble is I keep wanting to get to milestones, so I wrote seven today to get to a third of the way through, although I stopped one short. I think I am all drabbled out for the day.

I’ve posted twenty of them. Since I’ve been writing Harry stuff for ages I’ve got some fanon to fit into the gaps, so I wrote a character guide to explain who my OCs are.

1-5, set during Harry’s childhood and featuring Will Sullivan

6-10, set during Harry’s childhood, with just him in

11-15, set after Harry leaves the TARDIS and featuring Sarah Jane Smith

16-20, set in the present, and generally about the OC Harry marries when he moves to Geneva to work at UNIT Medical

TGI the weekend. This week has been so busy at work – I’ve been doing 9 hour days. Which at least means I leave after the rush hour, but doesn’t leave very long evenings or energy to do anything in them. This would be why I haven’t been around very much.

And my right wrist hurts. It’s caused by me sleeping on it, and I sleep on my right when I’m stressed (and I’ve been dreaming about work this week – and not sleeping much because my brain won’t stop working). And the bit of my left hand between my thumb and forefinger hurts. I only just worked out last night that it must be caused by holding the mouse. I might have to try a small mouse out next week and see how that goes.

On the plus side I didn’t get as tired and as dizzy as I thought I would. But I did get a sore throat instead. And had to miss my two Rotaract meetings this week, which is really annoying. I do only have a four day week next week, as on Friday I’m going to see ISIHAC. Although this does, of course, mean doing five days work in the space of four. Mind you, this week I did six and a half days work in the space of five…

I did, however, manage to write 25 of my 100 drabbles (well, I started on 1st June). I ought to sort out posting some of them this weekend. I did also find mini eggs in the health food shop, which kept me going in the afternoons (I was looking for smarties, and got some of those too, but mini eggs are nicer).

Because our overtime year ends at the end of June and I’ll have at least three and a half days then, I’ll get paid for it at the end of July. And I’ve just won tickets to the final Saturday at Wimbledon (Women’s Singles Final, Men’s Doubles Final, Women’s Doubles Final) and because I know this money is coming to me, I can afford to go. I am also going on the first Thursday – both times are to Centre Court too. Mind you, if I’d got tickets to the final Sunday I wouldn’t be caring how much money I had

I have finished my month of drabbles a day! I really did write one a day and not get ahead at any point. The month suddenly feels like it’s gone really quickly. Although I had a few days where it was a struggle to find the time to write or I couldn’t think of what to write, I did manage it. And never felt the need to make any of them a double drabble either – they nearly all came in at roughly the right length. They’re all on my website under the drabble a day tag. I also wrote every single prompt I was given.

I also wrote for Remix – although that I finished in April. I wrote Of Memory (The Poker Face Remix). Since I quite wanted to write Stargate I was happy to get someone who wrote Stargate. So that worked out well for me.

You might well ask what’s next. Well, apart from the unfinished fics I have sitting around that I will finish one day… Now I’m going to write 100 drabbles between today and 6th September (which is 99 days, incidentally). I didn’t mean to, it just came up in one of the comms I’m in. The plan at the moment is to write all of these centring around Harry Sullivan. We’ll see how well that goes, but the comm has only given me 75 prompts, so I’d love some more to fill the remaining 25.

The last drabbles I have written are:

24th May
LOTR
Holding Knowledge
Elrond observes a discussion between Elladan and Elrohir.

25th May
Quantum Leap
Leaper’s Fatigue
It’s the end of a leap and Sam’s tired.

26th May
LOTR
Homely House
All the Elves in Rivendell have their duties, Celebrían especially.

27th May
Torchwood
Cure for Claustrophobia
Jack finds out a secret of Ianto’s

28th May
Doctor Who
Give and Take
Amy and Rory are trapped and need the Doctor’s help.

29th May
Doctor Who
No Explanation
This time Sarah doesn’t need answers.

30th May
Ashes to Ashes
Waking Up
Gene has work to do.
Spoilers for series 3, episode 8. If you haven’t seen it, don’t even think about reading this.

31st May
Doctor Who
The Importance of Being in Love
Sarah and Harry and a discussion about love

Cure for Claustrophobia came out at 161 words and I had to beat it down. Since I had to delete so many words, here’s the extended version: Read more…

So Remix went live late last Sunday and since then I’ve been reading everything in the archive. Well, everything in the fandoms I’m interested in. And I have managed to get it all read before the reveal tomorrow as well. So I have some recs. Read more…

Since the last update I have written:

16th May
Doctor Who
Science
The Doctor has a plan for Ace.

17th May
Press Gang
Cucumber
Colin has a new scheme.

18th May
Doctor Who/The West Wing
Fatherhood
They’re both fathers.

19th May
Doctor Who
Gallifreyan Fairy Story
All planets have fairy tales.

20th May
The Bill
My Friend, My Boss
Sometimes having the boss as your friend isn’t all that useful.
Although it does reference a comment by Mickey in Walk On My Grave (18th May), if you haven’t seen it this won’t spoil you for any events in that episode.

21st May
Stargate Atlantis
Leadership Debate
Elizabeth and Teyla commiserate over how hard it is to be leaders.

22nd May
Spooks
Dealing with loss
Harry tries to help Wesley.

23rd May
Doctor Who
Ruby Red
River goes shoe shopping.

Last week I was a bit resentful at having to write a drabble a day, but this week I’ve been enjoying it. That’s partly because last week I was determined to write lots of different things and this week I decided I can write whatever I want. Although this week the hardest part has been coming up with summaries…

Since the last update I have written:

9th May
Stargate Atlantis
No Return
Elizabeth has to get used to a new place.
Spoilers for The Return

10th May
LOTR
Good News
Arathorn has good news for Elrond.

11th May
Doctor Who
Just Friends
Harry has to break up with Sarah.

12th May
LOTR
The Best and Worst of all Things
Elrond’s feelings at Arwen’s wedding.

13th May
Stargate Atlantis
What’s Not Lost
Jack can’t give Elizabeth what she wants. This is sort of a sequel to No Return in that it happens afterwards.
Spoilers for The Return

14th May
Sarah Jane Adventures
The Right Question
Luke has a question for Sarah.

15th May
Doctor Who
Misplaced Trust
Will has second thoughts about finding out Mandrake’s secrets.
Spoilers for the Sarah Jane Smith audio Fatal Consequences

I have been good and I’ve been writing a drabble every day. Even today and yesterday when I’ve been replying on the spellcheck due to my inability to type. The hardest part has been thinking of titles…

So far I have written:

1st May
Press Gang
You Say Potato…
Lynda in America.

2nd May
The Bill
The Canley Arms
Jack and Mickey discuss the day’s events in the pub.

3rd May
Doctor Who
New Tube
Donna discovers the train system on New Earth isn’t quite like the one she’s used to.

4th May
Doctor Who
Parry and Riposte
The Doctor and Ian practise their sword fighting skills.

5th May
LOTR
As Kind as Summer
Elrond is as kind as summer.

6th May
Spooks
In the Event of an Emergency…
Section D do what they do best, even under trying circumstances.

7th May
Doctor Who
Left Behind
Harry considers his decision at the end of Terror of the Zygons.

8th May
Ashes to Ashes
Trust
Gene has a problem with Alex.
Note: this drabble is set during series 3 and therefore has spoilers for series 3 as a whole, and for the ending of series 2.

After writing a few drabbles for fandoms I was one short on being eligible for for Remix, I remembered how much I like writing drabbles. And how little writing I’d done up to that point.

Then I remembered how tanaqui had written a drabble a day for a year. Twice. I’m not that crazy, so I’m just going to write a drabble a day for the month of May.

In some respects it’s a terrible month to pick: I have remix to write and read, the election will mean not getting much sleep, the French Open starts at the end of the month and last but not least, it has 31 days in it. But it does at least have two bank holidays. And June has three weeks of tennis in it.

So what I need are some prompts! Because I’ll never be able to think up 31 drabbles on my own. As I write them I’ll post them to my fanfic archive on my website, which is automatically cross-posted to pa_fic if anyone wants to follow that to check I’m doing it. I might well do a weekly roundup here.

Fandoms I’ll be writing in: anything I know really, even if I haven’t written in it before. If I really can’t do any prompt for any reason I’ll let you know – although there’s nothing to stop anyone putting in more than one prompt.

After a week I’m now sick of the election. Or rather, what I’m sick of is listening to politicians fail to answer questions. Although there was an amusing moment the other day when I was listening to the news on my way home, wasn’t quite concentrating and thought Nick Clegg was Tony Robinson… Chris Addison has an amusing blog about it all. After my post about not being able to decide who to vote for I discovered the BBC website has a page where you can look at the policies of three parties side by side. So I spent a whole two days as an undecided, and decided to vote for the same party I decided I would have voted for in 1997 had the election been a week later.

I got my remix assignment and the person I’m remixing has mostly written in fandoms I know. So I could write pretty much anything. I’ve been skim-reading and I think I’ve decided, but reserve the right to change my mind.

I’ve discovered I’m intolerant to all gluten, although I can eat quite a bit of it. At this rate I’ll be intolerant to all food in ten years time. If they could just invent a pill to take every day that means you don’t have to eat that would do me. Although I’d forget to take it half the time…

Remix is coming up again this year and I’m looking forward to it – it’s fun and it’s different and I always seem to end up writing something I never have before/never thought I would.

You’re eligible if you have at least five 500 word stories or at least seven 100 word stories in one fandom on their long list (which they are currently discussing adding to).

Since I know that there are people who are nearly eligible, but not quite, or people that are nearly eligible in one fandom but not quite, how about a little drabbleathon? All those drabble comms I used to be in, years back, are now paying dividends because I’m eligible for four fandoms, one of which I’ve only ever written drabbles in.

So, anyone who wants to write a drabble – for whatever reason, even if it has nothing to do with remix – comment here with fandoms, and characters too if you like, other people can give you prompts, then you write some drabbles.

It’s probably a good idea to link to your comment, so your friends who aren’t reading this can give you prompts – or you can post another entry on your LJ/blog. But since this post is in three places, lets keep all the prompts etc in the LJ post.

This weekend I have:

• Tidied
• Cleaned
• Done my finances – and discovered the electricity bill I thought I’d paid on Christmas Eve I actually hadn’t
• Sorted out some paperwork – and found a two month old letter from the doctors inviting me for an asthma review
• Baked chocolate chip cookies, fairy cakes (with purple icing), chocolate chip biscuits, flapjacks and chocolate sponge puddings

And if that wasn’t enough, I have uploaded a load of stories to A03. These are some of the stories I have on Harry’s journal that are written for weekly prompt comms. It’s useful to have them in order, but these are essentially quick things that I dashed off. They’re not the greatest things I’ve written ever, but they’ve been useful for getting me writing – and sometimes it’s useful to just get something over and done with without spending weeks on it. Think of them as flashfic if you will.

I thought it’s entirely possible that some people might be vaguely interested in them, so they are:
Harry’s childhood
Harry’s present

The latter starts where the Sarah Jane Smith audios stop and run concurrently with New Who, Torchwood and SJA and I did work out what went where at one point, but I have since forgotten.

And now I am tired and fifteen minutes late with Being Human.

I asked a couple of posts ago if anyone wanted drabbles and lost_spook asked for:

anything to do with Press Gang, Kenny and wrong numbers

so I wrote:

Wrong number, right thing to do

“Lynda?” Kenny frowned upon hearing the voice on the other end of the phone. “I didn’t call you.”

“I know.” Her tone was smug. “I had the line re-routed.”

He sighed. “Lynda, you can’t stop me from going to Australia.”

“Oh, can’t I?”

He had to admit it was hard to stop Lynda doing anything she didn’t want to, but he hated to leave it like this. “Come and see me off at the airport.” When she said nothing he added, “Please?”

“I’ll think about it.” She slammed the phone down.

Kenny hoped she would forgive him for leaving.

And I didn’t write as much this year due to being ill, but I do this every year and it will be interesting to see how it all compares. And since WordPress tells you the number of words in a post, I can easily tell how many words each story has. Read more…

Now that the Yuletide authors have been revealed I can reveal that I wrote a 5000 word Press Gang story, Hoops and Bumps. I didn’t intend to write any full length treats because I knew I wouldn’t have time. But while I was writing this one I had some Spike and Lynda banter I couldn’t fit into the story, but wanted to use. So I made a story out of it and ended up with 1003 words for selenay936: Memories Are Not Made of This. I had wanted to write some short stuff on Christmas Eve, but I was just too tired and work had been too busy and I didn’t have the energy or time.

Although I didn’t mean to, I managed to read everything I wanted to in the archive on 30th December and therefore two days before the author reveal (as that was quite late yesterday). In the past couple of years I’ve done a recs list of everything I’ve read and enjoyed (and therefore commented on) but it was just never going to happen this year. But I have already reviewed nine (I think it was nine) stories for Sel’s site.

And on a completely different subject, I took some photos of the cat (the first three of these). He is very sweet and a complete idiot.

I think there were other things I’ve been meaning to blog about, but I’m buggered if I can remember what they might have been.

I thought this last week would be quite quiet, I’d get lots of things done… I don’t know why I thought that. It didn’t help that I kept waking up at 6am – except on Friday when I woke up at 5am. Monday it snowed during the day, and I was sick of waiting in the freezing cold for a freezing cold bus and getting home half an hour later than I would have if I’d driven, so I drove to work on Monday. I contemplated leaving my car at work, but decided to drive home. It was the scariest thing I’d ever done – not helped by two police cars and two ambulances going past me in the opposite direction with their blue lights flashing. They couldn’t go above 20mph the same as the rest of us, though, so the blue flashing lights didn’t exactly do them much good.

But now I know what it’s like, I won’t be driving in the snow again. But I’d only ever seen it snow and settle during the day once before, so I assumed it was a freak event and it would just go back to snowing in the night again. But I also live further North than I grew up, and there it snows every year, which I find utterly ridiculous weather, but moving back South would mean I was living far from anywhere, so I supposed I’m stuck with it. If the Gulf Stream ever goes away, we’re seriously buggered.

On the plus side, I have a week off work and it is now Boxing Day, which is miles better than Christmas Day. Except that for some strange reason all the good TV is on on New Years Day.

And I have a Yuletide fic! The site’s really slow, so it’s best visited in the mornings before the Americans get up, but it’s a Quantum Leap fic: Returning Home and Meeting Memories for the First Time. Reading through the rest of the archive is taking time, not just because of the slowness, but also because I find the contrast between the text and the background gives me a headache. But fortunately, the other week I came across a site called Readability, where you can decide what you want the page to look like, then create a bookmarklet. So all I have to do, once the fic is loaded, is press on the bookmark, then hey, presto, I can read it! And to think that when I found it I never thought it would be useful…

Which I’ve been meaning to write for the past week…
Read more…

I am so busy at the moment, it’s crazy. Yesterday at work was terrible – I worked straight through lunch and didn’t leave till late. Today I didn’t think it would be quite so busy. I did get a lunch break, but didn’t quite manage to start on today’s work until 4pm and then left late. Tomorrow I have so much to do I can’t see how I’m going to start on tomorrow’s work. Then I’m off on Friday and Monday and going to the Balance Clinic on Tuesday afternoon. Which means the only way I can get tomorrow’s work done in time is going to be to do it at the weekend, I think. Everyone else is busy at work too. The only good thing is that at least there are only two weeks left after this one.

I’m still catching up with stuff I need to do at home after spending my week off ill. I got really anxious about Yuletide and wrote the first draft while I had a really bad cold and felt awful. Which is something I’ve learnt to do from being ill for so long, it’s just something I’d rather not do until I have to. And then I had to work hard to get it into something vaguely readable. Tonight I managed v3 – of 5500 words! I should just have to read it through a couple more times, then it can go to beta. Which is good because I need to get it out of the way so I can do betaing, treats and my TR secret santa. And maybe catch up on my viewing.