I can nearly breathe out of my nose. This wouldn't normally be an achievement but it is the first time in a week. My mouth and throat were so dry that I was drinking 1.5l of water a day, which is ridiculous. I know you're supposed to drink 2l a day, but I was going to the toilet every hour and only really drink about half a litre a day usually. I just don't have the capacity for large amounts of liquid.

And a drabble meme from lost_spook I've been waiting to put up until I'm feeling well enough to think:

The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request that I write a drabble of any pairing/character with a prompt. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level.

Although feel free to ignore that last sentence - it's not like I'm going to be checking. By first ten people, I mean first ten notifications in my inbox regardless of whether they come from my blog, LJ or DW.

There's a list of fandoms I've written in on the left of my fanfic archive, but feel free to request anything I know. If I really can't write it I'll just get you to pick something else.

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...

Since everyone else is doing 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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First of all, what is definitely morbid curiosity:

They changed the clocks in Canada this weekend, so I'm five hours behind home again. But no one told my body clock that, so I woke up at 6am. And being Sunday the World's Biggest Bookstore doesn't open until 11am.

I uploaded loads of photos of Niagara Falls yesterday. So many that I had to delete kittens to make space on my card. It turns out the hotel by the airport tomorrow night does have free wireless internet, so I will upload the last of my photos - which will be lots of views of Canada from up the CN Tower. And hopefully me on the glass floor. Watch this space... (or rather, watch my flickr space because I haven't been posting to here everytime I upload photos)c

This has come round again, and pretty much everyone on my friends list has done it, so:

Request any fic of mine and I will provide you with a commentary/annotations, like a DVD extra.

My fic is all here, on my website. If you pick something old, I might well not remember anything about it, but you never know, I generally have quite a good memory.

Wooho! My Ian/Barbara fic now has about 1000 words and is nearly finished. I did have three v1s of it, two half the size of the first one. But now I know what I'm writing about, which is much better. And I have a few pieces from the first version of v1 that I could potentially re-use sometime later.

A fanfiction meme from pretty much everyone else by this point:

The thing is, when people look for stories, they always make it sound like badfic. Now, often that's because it really is badfic, but sometimes it's good and they just suck at describing the story.
So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to summarise badly any one (or more!) of my stories and I'll try to guess which it is. You could even pretend you don't remember the pairing or fandom to make it harder to guess.

Here's a handy link to all my fanfic to help you

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First lines of unfinished fics. It's terrible but there are some I can't quite tell whether they're unfinished or not, they're so old and I've changed my system since! Some unfinished fics are older than this computer and therefore won't open in Wordpad, and I'm too scared to go there. The rest, below, are Doctor Who, Stargate (Atlantis) and a LOTR. I should point out these are all first drafts, and had I finished them, would probably be unrecognisable from these snippets. I haven't changed anything in these, though, not even the typos.
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From agapi42:

Ask me what happens after the end of one of my stories. I may have more than one answer depending on the story (and the question). Or tell me your own theories--really, I'd love to hear!

All of my stories are on my website.

And that TV meme that's been going round for ages:
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A writing questions meme from Melli:

You reply to this post and I ask you five questions about your writing. It can be about anything. Then you post the answers in your own LJ and can if you wish do the meme yourself.

Melli asked me some questions, which I have finally answered:
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Post an excerpt, anything from a sentence to something more substantial, from your current WIP into my comments.

From Jen:

Name a character that you know I write or have written, and I'll tell you:

a. What initially prompted me to like the character enough to write about him/her.
b. One of his/her best traits.
c. One of his/her worst traits.
d. How easy/difficult I find it to write the character.
e. The story/chapter/paragraph/phrase where I feel that I truly captured the character.
f. My plans (if any) to write the character in the near future.

It occurred to me I haven't posted in here for a bit, and I'm off this long weekend to the Rotaract National Conference to celebrate my birthday.

So a couple of memes that are both quite similar that I've seen everywhere recently:

Tell me about a story I haven't written, and I'll give you one sentence from that story.

Name three fics you think I will never, ever, ever write. In return(and if inspired), I will attempt to write a snippet of one of them.

I keep thinking of things I want to write, so I wrote a list:
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Because other people are doing it and it sounds interesting, if you want a commentary on any of my fics, leave a comment and I will. I've never done a commentary but it looks like fun, and lets face it, it's basically me talking about me, which can't be a bad thing.

Everything I've written up till the end of January when I last updated are on my website.

I left work at 6pm yesterday only because I brought something home to do. So today I thought I'd get up an hour early. So the network was down and I didn't get to start until 9.20. Grrr. And it meant I didn't leave until 6.30, but I did finish everything I wanted to get done before I left. Hopefully it'll all be working at 8am tomorrow morning.

Just before I go to check my whofest thing one more time before the deadline's up, a meme from Una and Marta where you link to a story of yours beginning with each letter of the alphabet:
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It is tempted to have a rant about work but I won't. Work finished two hours ago and therefore I will not be thinking about it for another thirteen and a half.

I just updated my friends & family numbers, discovered you can have more than ten, although I only have ten. Mind you, of those, one is work, one is the doctors and three are Emma. Who is, incidentally not in, so I can't rant to her other and discuss Ewan McGregor.

This morning when I read my RSS Feeds I saw one with a meme I've seen before about posting three lines from a WIP. So I looked through my folders, found some things I've worked on this year and thought that'd be more interesting to blog about.
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I actually got my cross stitch out last night for the first time in a while - I've been tired and on the backstitch, which is never as interesting. But I wanted to watch Sunday's Midsomer Murders and it's slow, so needs me doing something else at the same time.

Last night I dreamt we had a company day out (although there was no-one in my dream I actually knew) and we had to split into teams to complete a cross stitch. The teams somehow managed to change into 2-people ones, although I have no idea how two people are supposed to complete one cross stitch at the same time. I spent a fair bit of the dream thinking about this. I managed to get out of the cross stitching though on the basis that I did it in the evenings anyway. I ended up helping two blokes who didn't really know what they were doing. It obviously got a bit strange(r) though because it started involving candles.

A meme, from Melli and Avon:

What are you working on? List your current writing projects (fanfic and/or original). Include a small segment describing the plot.

1. A long Gilraen/Arathorn one current called The Tale of Arathorn and Gilraen. In the Tale of A&A it's not stated explicitly that Gilraen loved Arathorn when they married, although he loves her. So I started from that premise and worked out reasons why she married him and didn't remarry and ended up writing the story of their lives together.

2. The HASA Tag Team Challenge fic that was due, er, last October. Never mind. Definitely untitled, and un-worked on by either of us for quite a while. It stars Aragorn and Faramir when they're King and Steward respectively but before Aragorn marries Arwen. It is not either serious or sensible at any point.

3. A Lord of the Rings fic I started two and a half years ago and haven't worked on for a while either. The plot is currently a secret to all but three of the people on my friends list who have beta'ed/read it at various points.

4. A have a file for this even though I haven't actually written anything, merely photocopied the relevant but of the Silm and forgotten the plot. In it, Elrond introduces his sons to the sunrise and explains it. It turns out he finds out something else is going on with his sons, if I could just remember what.

5. Because I still mean to write it one day, a Sam/Jack slash piece. Partly because it defies classification.

Following on from the other week when I wrote an Atlantis snippet I was trying to do a McKay piece and got sidetracked by trying to do a similar thing with Sheppard/Weir and accidentally writing Sheppard/Teyla instead. I could almost do a Five Things fic with Sheppard pairings (although given I ship Sheppard/McKay, Sheppard/Weir and Sheppard/Teyla, as well as Sam/Jack and Jack/Daniel, that makes five...)

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First a link: Word Perhect - it's a word processor along the lines of Windows RG.

The week started off so well, then I accidentally ate some bread with milk in at the Rotaract barbecue, so spent the rest of the week trying to catch up on my sleep. And reading the last Doctor and Ace BBC book. Pity the ending was so crap.

Today was our tinshake, so I got to sit in a nice garden for five hours and spend one hour standing in the sun in a fairly empty town collecting. I managed to spend most of my time with my left side in the sun (or towards it) so I now have one brown arm and one white one. I will have to spend tomorrow the other way round so I have a matching pair. I also got to count money and we made just under £400 for the local toy library, which is pretty good going. For some reason it seems that any collection in the town gets between £300 and £500 no matter the time of year and the weather.

I enjoyed sitting around with nothing urgent to do so much I made plans to do the same tomorrow. Although finding shade in my landlady's garden is sometimes a bit tricky. After the tinshake I went to Tescos, mainly for some pink grapefruit which they couldn't manage to provide anyway, and got Harry Potter. To read tomorrow (although I read an hours worth this evening in the garden). I did tell myself in advance I wouldn't buy it if it was more than �8 and it wasn't, so I felt vindicated. Sort of. After all, I get the Discworld books in hardback when they come out for �8 or �9.

I have to say that as soon as I started it I felt like I was being talked down to. I've got more used to it now but it does serve to remind that it's a children's book. And I certainly have the children's cover - it's prettier and more colourful. And I certainly didn't re-read the others in preparation - I've read them all twice (or more, I haven't been counting) so I remember them now. I only usually need twice through anything to fix it in my memory for a good few years.

I also discovered Atlantis was on Channel 5 yesterday. It's just as well dad wasn't waiting for it to be on terrestrial to see it - otherwise I'd have been taping it for him because they don't have Sky and no intention of getting it. Sometimes mum asks me if they're missing anything by not being able to get Channel 5 and I can reassure her they're not. That's when I remember to read that column in the TV guide - I got so used to ignoring it before I went to uni I often forget it's there entirely.

Anyway, I enjoyed Atlantis. I had forgotten that Major Sheppard knew nothing about the whole Stargate thing before it started. And I can definitely see a Sheppard/Weir thing going on.

Annmarwalk and Avon did this one:

The One-sentence Meme

If you happen to be working on some new writing project, fanfiction or what have you, post exactly one sentence from each of your current work(s) in progress in your journal. It should probably be your favourite or most intriguing sentence so far, but what you choose is entirely your discretion. Mention the title (and genre) if you like, but don't mention anything else -- this is merely to whet the general appetite for your forthcoming work(s).

So I had a look through my wip folder and found all sorts of things I'd entirely forgotten about, some of which may even be finished one day in the distant future. Don't hold your breath though, some of these were last modified in 2001.

* Unfortunately the ship was running smoothly and Trip temporarily run out of things to take his mind off the situation. (untitled, Enterprise)

* "You don't see me eating pecan pie off just anyone's plate." (untitled, Enterprise)

* "Aeryn can we please have a sensible conversation that doesn't involve talking in riddles and going round in circles." (Lost Without You, Farscape)

* "If you are referring to our destination of Place A then it is still 5 days away. We are only 2 arns from Place B, however." (untitled, Farscape)

* If he had been thinking clearly he might have noticed that not only was Aeryn not breathing, but there was also a bullet wound in her stomach, accompanied by a fair amount of blood distributed between Aeryn, the floor and the guards. (untitled Farscape)

* It has been said that hell is being stuck in a room forever with your friends, and we've certainly proved that. (Trapped, Stargate)

* Elrond made to get up and get some bandages but from the corner of his eye he saw Celebri�an's eyelids flutter and her breath falter. (Abduction, Lord of the Rings)

* He momentarily wondered if he shouldn't have cleaved to Arwen so early, in which case he'd now understand women a little better. (working title Adjustments, Lord of the Rings)

* Elrond did not easily express his emotions and Arwen was glad he had at least felt something. (untitled, Lord of the Rings)

* "I'm trying to seduce you and that's all you can think about?" (untitled, Lord of the Rings)

* There was always one or other of the Northern Rangers injured or dying and Elrond couldn't help worrying that one day one of the dead would be his son. (Choices, Lord of the Rings)

* He could taste the lembas that had been the last meal for both of them; he could smell metal and earth; he could feel the handle of his bow pressing against his palms and digging into the skin. (Last Alliance, Lord of the Rings)

* It was always dark these days and my mother had only found one candle to light the room we were in. (working title Servants 2, Lord of the Rings)

* They had an unspoken agreement not to reveal to anyone else the truth of their marriage but still his actions surprised her. (The Tale of Arathorn and Gilraen, Lord of the Rings)

* He could imagine what would happen if it got round that the king and steward were moonlighting as seamstresses. (untitled, Lord of the Rings)

* The Doctor, on the other hand, had clearly decided Paris was at its best during the French Revolution, when half of the population was trying to kill the other half (untitled, Doctor Who)

* Instead, I am scared of the future - it stretches before me, long and empty without you in it (My Angel, original)

Saz and Nic did this one (which I must reply to):

Why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself? Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's so and so...she/he wears mismatched socks." I'd love it if every single person who friended me would do this. Yes, even you people who I know really well. Then post this in your own journal.

What type of slash writer are you?

Well, d'uh. But then that goes for everything, not just for slash.

Finished the latest Jedi Quest book - poor Obi. He just doesn't know what to do.