Tuesday Tears

Okay, it's a little after midnight and it's not technically Tuesday anymore, but so what. I found a good one.

I should be back posting again tomorrow. I had a bad week. Patricia died. Then Sweetie Belle died. Hence the trolling of youtube for tearjerker Doctor/Rose vids to make me feel...better. Yeah, I'm like that.

Today's vid rec is by xMemoryLanex and is a lovely AU vid of Ten/Rose with cameos by Eleven and the War!Doctor.

Okay, I'm Finally Getting Around to Answering That Meme

Sorry, having two animals die in the last...well, I thought it was a week, but I guess it's closer to two weeks now. Anywho, it is hard, plus being sick and the fever and all...well, intentions didn't follow through. But now I am answering it. So...

fannishliss asked for question 4, What are some themes you love writing about?

I'd say the first one is difficult pregnancy. Which is probably a big fat duh to anyone reading this. I love writing about Rose getting pregnant. I used to do it a lot. In fact I had to put some rules in place to stop myself from doing it in the Better With You series. As much as I enjoy it, baby!fic all the time does get tedious. But it's an important theme in my life and I think I used it to work out issues I'd held in for years. Some of you know that I had several miscarriages and the two pregnancies I did carry to term were very difficult, involving hyperemesis gravidarum in both cases, which is why Rose has it in You're What? And in my daughter's case I also had the relaxin hormone kick in way too early so that my pelvis started spreading several months too early. I was on bed rest for the better part of those pregnancies. So that is why I gave Rose such a difficult time of it in that story.

It's also part of why I put Rose through such an emotional wringer in Moments in Darkness. And, well, I suppose Rose being kidnapped in To Call Our Own and all that ensued there while she was pregnant with Dare, and then Rose getting hit with an arrow in You Reap What You Sow and then Cassi regenerating in the womb later on when Rose saves Donna...well...yes, Rose cannot have an easy pregnancy. Even when she finds out she's pregnant in Glow it took 8 years. And Rooftops...well, that wasn't exactly peachy acceptance, either. So definitely a theme.

I don't know if I have any other overriding themes. I mean I enjoy the misunderstand each other to the point of Rose thinking the Doctor wants to take her home and the Doctor thinks Rose wants to leave him, angst, angst, angst, followed by them finding out that isn't true, and fluff, fluff, fluff ensues.

I like the whole Rose and the Doctor accidentally end up sharing a bed and both are sitting there debating with themselves to be good and not "ruin" the relationship by making unwanted advances that are very much wanted. Dealt with that one a few times.

Of course the whole alternate universe 9th Doctor thing.

I don't know. I suppose there are more out there, but I'm drawing a blank on any other themes right now.

Then she asked for question 11, What are your weaknesses in writing?

Commas, homophones, run-on sentences (cause that is how I think), tense shifts, and hurrying the plot (which usually my betas make me not do that so you never see it much).

And then she asked for question 8, Is there a character you like writing for the most? The least? Why?

That's a hard one. I enjoy writing Rose the most. I relate to her, even though I am nothing like her. I can get inside her head. She's easy to write. She flows. For a long time I didn't like writing Martha. I didn't feel like I really had a good handle on her character. I resented the whole kiss thing, though I never disliked her for it. I disliked the lovesick puppy storyline because I thought she'd be stronger than that. I felt like the times I wrote Martha I didn't have the characterization right. I feel like I definitely got it at the end of You're What? and I know I have it in The Watchmaker's Daughter. So I suppose that she really no longer is the character I like writing for the least now that I've found my way with her. Now if you ask me a character I won't write for, it's River. Lovesick puppy times a million. Enough said.

Answering the Meme

jer832 sort of combined questions 2 and 3 about favorite tense and favorite point of view. Her actual question was, "Have you found that one specific tense fits a specific pov or theme best or better than others in your short stories?" (e.g., Rose ->UST->present tense)

I prefer writing past tense and 2nd person point of view with an omniscient author. I want to be able to get into anyone's head in the story and not be limited by one person's thoughts and motivations. I rarely write 1st person. I did with Repercussions, but that fic was an experiement, sort of a serial, where I'd release a new bit twice a day, back when you could post whenever you wanted on Teaspoon and there was no moderation. That style of writing wouldn't work today over there because you can't set your own time table of when posts appear. But it worked then. It was also my first AU fic and the only one with an alternate Tenth Doctor and an alternate Rose. (Remember Zeppelins is an alternate Rose and a fob watched Ten2) Actually, I think when I posted it to LJ, I might have actually changed the tense to past and then corrected in on Teaspoon. I can't honestly remember. It was a long time ago.

I do think the extremely action heavy stories benefit from being in present tense. It puts you in the center of the story in a way that past tense doesn't quite provide. More bang for you buck, I suppose. But they shouldn't be epics.

She also asked, "Are there stories that, looking back on now, you would have done quite differently?"

Oh, yes. If I'd realized that A Sky Without Zeppelins was going to turn into the behemoth that it was I never would have wrote it in present tense. Don't get me wrong, I love the story as written, but it is quite difficult to stay in present tense so long and then I was tied down to writing any sequels in the same tense. And I didn't want to. If I ever get back to writing A Sky Without Stars, I will probably go back and change the tense. Also, I think that Zeppelins should have been written in two parts. There is quite an obvious place to me where the first story could have ended and the second began, but at the time I wrote it, it wasn't so obvious.

When it comes to that, I would have split To Call Our Own and You Reap What You Sow up differently and it would have likely been 3, maybe 4 stories instead. I have to say I was really learning things on the Time Eternal series.

I've also had a couple stories that I went back and rewrote. Stories from my first year of writing fanfic. I had skimmed some of the characterizations then and I wanted to go back and expand that. I also became a better story-teller in the intervening years, learned more about pacing and anticipation and added those elements into the fics. I had lived with the characters longer and knew them much better by then.

Most stuff stands as written originally, though. Stories I'd never change, except to correct the occasional spelling error or something.