I have a writing-related question that's bugged me for a while and only now occurred to me to ask.

Third person omniscient I get is where you have a narrator who knows everything and can get in everyone's heads. I've seen examples, I've read descriptions of what it is on the internet, everything is fine.

Except, what's the difference between writing an omniscient point of view and just switching between points of view in a way that's wrong? I can't find an explanation of this (perhaps because people only give examples of what's right, not what's wrong) and I just don't know how to tell whether something's been written in the correct point of view or not.

Is there anyone who can explain it to me?

So, the TARDIS Big Bang sign-ups are live and I've signed up to... beta. The deadline only gives four months to get it all done and although I managed the actual writing in that time last year, this year I don't have a plot or even know what I'd write if I did sign-up. But I'll offer a beta to anyone on my friends list who gets that far.

The other reason for not signing up is that there are other things I want to write instead and last year it took over a bit:

• the four requests I have from last June sitting in my inbox
• LOTR: Tale of Arathorn and Gilraen, which I started a looong time ago. If there was an LOTR Big Bang I'd write this for that
• Atlantis: Elizabeth post her last story, with Jack
• Atlantis: Elizabeth ascended, visiting Jack
• DW: Harry in SJA just after Enemy of the Bane (which I actually have 300 words of)
• DW: Sarah & Harry undercover as newly-weds (I don't know why, I just know it would be interestingly uncomfortable)
• DW: What happened to Harry while he was missing (a completely different idea to the other version of this I wrote)
• DW: Tales of Harry losing his shoes

I think that's quite enough to be going on with, especially as I added one of those to the list just this morning.

This is something and I were talking about the other day. If the other day can be construed as a week, or perhaps two weeks, ago. It's about how we write.

I have to have in my head (or on paper, or both) the whole story before I start writing. It might change as I write it, but before I put finger to keyboard, I know where I'm starting and where I'm finishing, regardless of the length of the story. If it's short enough then it'll all be in my head, if it's long then I'll have to write it down. When it came to Sarah Jane of the Chalet School my notes were on a spreadsheet, it got that complicated.

When I was reading RTD's book I found he does pretty much the same thing, although he does the actual writing part far more quickly.

I'll spend days, or longer, thinking about scenes. Sometimes I can quite happily spend an hour in bed at the weekend thinking about it all and never pick up a book because I'm too preoccupied. Plus reading involves opening my eyes, putting my glasses on and admitting I'm not going to get back to sleep. The trouble comes when I have to put pen to paper and I have it all in my head, but once I start to write it all goes. Even if it's just a moment before.

For example, that short paragraph up there? I stopped and thought about what I was going to say before I wrote that, but when I came to write it that's all I could remember. It was a longer paragraph in my head.

So how do you write yours? (although it's probably a bit early for the Cadbury's Creme Egg adverts)

I now have a wardrobe in my bedroom. And right across my right hand hurts from screwing screws into wood where there were no holes. The pack had 80 screws in them and we used... more than 20. So it's quite shoddy but not really quite shoddy. I've filled it up and it hasn't fallen over or fallen apart anyway. I still have more unpacking to do, five weeks after I've moved. The trouble is I have too much stuff for the space - I need a two bedroom house to fit it in. Although then I'd have to bring up all my books and videos and other stuff from home and goodness knows how I'd have the space for everything...

I'm still feeling a bit temporary and like everything is on hold until I get my main laptop sorted and get my flat sorted of piles of crap. So in the meantime, have a couple of long Doctor Who fic recs with Harry in:

Saving Horse Feathers by Weimlady. It's unfinished, but there's another long one to read first. They're both Ten, Sarah and Harry and although I started off not sure about them, I still couldn't put them down.

The Trouble with Harry by Azar. It's a crossover with NCIS starring Ten, Martha, some Harry and some NCIS characters that I vaguely recognise the names of. But even not knowing anything about NCIS, I still liked it.

Now that the Yuletide authors have been revealed, I can do this, and the three I wrote are under December.
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Last year I managed 43 recs, so there are almost twice as many this year!

These recs are in the following fandoms: 10 Things I Hate About You, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Absolutely Fabulous, Anne of Green Gables, The Avengers, Ballet Shoes, Blackadder, Blakes 7, Cambridge Spies, Chalet School, Chuck, Coupling, Dead Like Me, The Dead Zone, Discworld, Drop the Dead Donkey, Father Ted, Futurama, Galaxy Quest, The Hobbit, Hustle, Lost in Austen, Merlin, Nation, Nethack, Posh Nosh, Press Gang, Pushing Daisies, Red Dwarf, Quantum Leap, Sadlers Wells, Scrubs, Spooks, Stardust, Thoughtcrimes, Top Gear/Narnia, Vorkosigan.

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I've been watching Leverage and really liking it. It reminds me of Hustle. I love all the exciting stunts and I hope they keep not delving into the character's pasts because I don't really care that much. I just like to see them in action.

I recognised the name Christian Kane before it started, although I couldn't work out why. Once he was on screen, though, it was obvious - he was Lindsay in Angel. But there's another character in it - Sophie Devereux - and I spent the whole of the first two episodes wondering where I recognised her from. Her flambouyancy seemed familiar too and it drove me mad, until I remembered to look it up on the imdb. It turns out she was Jane in Coupling.

Apart from that I have no broadband at home until Monday But tonight is my only night in this week until Sunday, so I'm probably not going to notice too much. I have a whole load of things on my PVR to watch too, and a Star Trek DVD from lovefilm - when I've watched that one I'll have seen every episode of every Star Trek series. Including the animated ones.

I did get hold of Band of Brothers to try, since so many people on my friends list think it's the best thing since sliced bread, but I didn't even make it all the way through the first episode. Which wasn't that much of a surprise because it's not really my sort of thing.

Also, I might have a soya intolerance. Or a stomach bug, but I'll wait till Christmas to find out where I can be ill in comfort. I finally managed to upload my Yuletide fic. It was typical - I got it done before I moved, but then the uploads went wonky if you or your recipient's name began with P-Z and that includes me since my name starts with P. Once it was back, then I had no internet.

My Yuletide fic is up to second draft and 2000 words. I ought to have it finished this weekend. It was helped a lot by my neighbours being surprisingly quiet, although not helped at all by work being stupidly busy. Today was one of those days where every time I started to do something I got interrupted by having to do something more urgent. But I got two projects launched and another should go tomorrow so that'll help a lot. Maybe I'll even get a chance to listen to the SJA audios I bought at the weekend.

I've been watching Lost in Austen courtesy of Lovefilm. I didn't watch it when it was on TV, I think it was because it clashed with something else. I liked the idea of modern girl in Pride and Prejudice, I'm just not that excited about the book. I've never actually read it, but I've seen a couple of adaptations. I think. I have a feeling the only part of the Colin Firth one I've seen is the bit where he comes out of the water. But I am liking Lost in Austen, it's interesting. But only half of it was on one DVD, so it'll be a little while before I get the next part, depending on what Lovefilm decide to give me - you never can be sure with them.

I finally managed to get myself out of holiday mode and cleaned the house yesterday. It's hard to motivate myself to do it when I know I'm going to be moving out of it, but I'll be even less motivated when I'm not living in it, and the dirtier it is then, the worse it's going to be to clean. But it does all look so much better now I have cleaned it.

I also finished the book I started while I was away and it felt never-ending. I'm now a third of the way through The Graveyard book. I have two piles of books from the ones I bought in Canada and the Pratchett I finished just before I went. They're just the right size to fit my laptop on in front of the TV, so I can plug the TV into it. Now I've changed the books the two piles are more level too.

I made the mistake, when I got back, of watching all four Spooks episodes, which included the one from BBC3. So although I put it on last Monday because I was too tired to take it in much the first time, it's not the same as watching it new. So now I am back on watching them on Mondays because Monday needs something to look forward to, since I only watch SJA every other week. Suffice to say I enjoyed tonight's, even if I spent most of it wondering where I knew the bad guy from. Turns out it was one of the recent Poirots.

And just to make all the other people doing Yuletide jealous: I have a first draft of mine. At 1200 words I'm doing better than last year where I managed 1006 (but any padding to that one would have been just that, padding). I'm aiming to get it finished by the end of the week and hopefully writing every night will get me back into it and who knows, I might even get round to the requests I asked for back in June that are sitting in my inbox...

I'm so excited about Yuletide this year. An eighth of my LJ friendslist are participating and I am excited about my assignment for four reasons, none of which I can give because then it wouldn't be secret any more.

Dear Yuletide Writer

First of all, feel free to ignore anything I've said in the prompts. If you can write any of those then that'll be great, but they're mostly just what I'd most prefer to get. At the end of the day I’d far rather get something well-written than something you’re less happy with but fits in with what I’ve put.

I don't have anything to add specifically about the fandoms I requsted. Generally speaking, I love stories that have an emotional punch in some way. Whether it makes me laugh, cry, be happy, be all gooey inside, be shocked etc. What particularly fascinates me, as you might have gathered from my prompts, are relationships between characters, whether they're romantic or not. I'm quite happy to read about canonical ships, but you can't go wrong with gen. I'd just rather not have any sex above a PG-13 rating.

Yesterday, while driving back from swimming, I suddenly picked my four fandoms to request for Yuletide: Spooks, Quantum Leap, The Hobbit and Merlin. They're not necessarily the four that I'd most like to see, out of all the fandoms listed, but they are the four that I can think of something specific (ish) that I want. There were some that I'd love to see stories in but couldn't even decide which characters I wanted. Although The Hobbit feels a bit like cheating because that way I get Elrond fic. I was surprised to see it in there given that they'd disqualified all fandoms that were part of a larger one. But I'm not complaining. But I am looking forward to reading all the fic at Christmas.

I also wrote a fic! Well, actually I wrote it just before I went to Canada. It's Jo and the Eighth Doctor getting the goodbye they should have had in the Eighth Doctor book, Genocide. I put up a poll ages ago about whether I should crosspost my fanfic blog to LJ. The results came out even, so I decided I'd go with the answer that involved the least amount of work. But, the other day I've temporarily got a paid account to see if I'd use any of the extra features that it has (so far I have, but it has required extra effort, which isn't quite the point). With that I was able to set up an LJ for the RSS Feed for the fanfic blog. Sadly, though, LJ has decided it doesn't like it and won't update. So you can read the fic here instead.

Over at one of the RPs I'm in, they had a thing the other day where we wrote some cliched drabbles for various characters. I managed six (well, five and one drabble and a half), so I thought I'd share them here. Read more...

Thank you to all the people who commented to my last post, it did make me feel better.

And what I was planning to do last night was the fic commentaries requested on this post. The double drabble first, as I can only do one LJ cut from here:

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I wrote fic: Rain, Rain, Come Again for the Sarah & Harry ficathon, which has lots of good fics in and you should go and read them all.

So now, my list of things to write consists of:

1. LOTR request from
2. Atlantis request from
3. LOTR request from
4. Doctor Who or The West Wing request from
5. Ian/Barbara fic I know the start of and no idea yet how to end
6. Post-Genocide fic with Eight & Jo, as we never see their goodbye in the book
7. Arathorn & Gilraen long fic I started years ago and mean to finish

That lot'll certainly keep me going till Yuletide.

(I was interrupted in writing this post when the Athletics stopped and I looked up to see a medium-sized, very black thing with eight legs on my ceiling. It's now in my hoover.)

For ages I've had two stories I've been meaning to dig up and post. And rather than let July not appear at all on my list of all fic I decided to polish them up and post them.

So, there's the second (or third, I can't remember) LOTR fic I started: Last Alliance which is Haldir/Isildur. It came from the random pairing generator and that was the first pairing in which the two people were alive at the same time. So I wrote it. And then got to v14 in edits. And then it's sat around on my hard drive for three and a half years. So now I've posted it to HASA.

The other one is the first Stargate Atlantis story I wrote, albeit a crossover with Stargate: Five Relationships Jack O’Neill and John Sheppard Could Have Had. It represented my OTPs at the time: John/Teyla, John/Elizabeth, John/Rodney, Jack/Daniel and Sam/Jack. It was only afterwards that they were all trumped by Jack/Elizabeth. And I'm also quite partial to quite a lot of other pairings - I think I once found one pairing in Atlantis I didn't ship, but now I can't remember what it is. But this fic I even managed to post to Wraithbait. I did get an account to post fic there after all. The rest of my Atlantis fics I'll put up there too, but not all at once.

After dinner (and making flapjacks) I sat down and wrote the first draft of my Sarah & Harry ficathon story (which is due three weeks yesterday). There's something to be said for working out the plot in advance and writing it down (especially handy since I had forgotten some of it). And I think writing prompts helped me to get the plot down too.

I just need to go back and add in description, expand the two paragraphs that ought to be a scene and the 101 other things that need revising. But I feel more like I might actually finish in time now!

I have finally managed to read through all the TARDIS Big Bang stories and have a list of recs. I also liked all the art and vids, and commenting on art was a new thing for me because I never usually look at any of it. In order of author: Read more...

I am determined to read all the TARDIS Big Bang stories, despite the rampant Americanisms in many of them, but there was one I read this morning which really made me laugh. I don't know that I could describe it as an Americanism, but it was certainly funny.

I once saw a story describe Mickey as African-American which remains the worst Americanism I've ever read (I mean, how can you not notice that you're describing someone British as American?), but this looks a lot like someone trying to transcribe that into British English and failing completely, when Owen describes Martha as Afro-European. Admittedly, the phrase is in Wikipedia but that doesn't make it any less nonsensical and it certainly isn't something Owen would say.

Although now I'm wondering how you could describe me using the same phrasing. Euro-European perhaps?

The second worst Americanism I've seen was when the Torchwood team drove down a highway in Cardiff.

Just a reminder that the sign-ups for the Sarah & Harry ficathon close tomorrow - and by tomorrow I mean once I get up and look at my emails on Sunday it'll be closed, so that'll be 10am GMT ish.

(There will be Wimbledon squeeing and photos soon, but I'm just distracted by the moment of the 9+ hours of tennis a day still going on.)

For a bit of it seemed like a good idea at the time and still hasn't seemed like a bad one, I'm running the Sarah & Harry (with optional Sarah/Harry) ficathon. Sign-ups are open till 5th July (Ladies Finals Day).

At some point I will wake up enough to post about having my tooth out and tennis, but today should have about eight hours of good tennis followed by Glastonbury and Doctor Who might have to wait till tomorrow morning when there's nothing else on.