lauren3210

Why oh, why is the onset of winter always heralded by viruses of every kind you can think of? Well okay, I know why, so nobody throw any science books at me, but ugh, I wish that just once I could appreciate the lovely colours and fresh breezes that the changing of the seasons bring without also wishing I was dead. Ben's been suffering from an ear infection that just won't go away, so I've had to suffer along with him while he's been at home the last two weeks. Eryn has got a hacking cough to rival that of the best chainsmoker, keeping us all up at night while she barks and barks until she almost throws up. Imogen has caught a stomach bug from somewhere, and has been spending the last three days sprawled across my lap and searing me with her fevered skin, and I can't breathe without needing to sneeze, or sniff, or cough, or just generally gargle snot until I drown in it. Madison is the only one who seems unaffected, and we all hate her quite a lot right now.

On the plus side, I have managed to start my hd_erised fic, after months of planning but without the actual words. Well, now I have words - not to mention an awesome alpha reader and cheerleader, whom I am going to owe the biggest present ever by the time I'm done. I also have another H/D fic in the works, which I might just post on its own - which I've never done before, all my previous fics have been either birthday gifts or fest submissions. Of course, I'm also busily planning my gifts for hd_owlpost, which I'll get around to writing once the Erised behemoth is completed. I've been writing more original fic too, my muse having finally returned after the 60k loss earlier this year. I'm struggling with a hundred different ideas, which is better than staring at a blank page wanting to cry, so, progress!

And, I think that's pretty much all I have to update, really, other than my RL being crazy busy lately. I know I haven't been around much, and I've missed you all, not to mention things like birthdays and mini fests and online_bookclub reviews and chats, and don't you just hate that feeling when you remember something only to find it's too late for you to do anything for it? Yeah, that's pretty much my life right now, which sucks, but it's looking like it might let up a bit soon, which will be great, because I'm really looking forward to reading all the lovely fics that always come out this time of year!

Hope you're all doing well, my flisties! ♥ ♥

Oh my God, I'm so excited for hd_erised, guys! I fucking love this fest, every year I've participated has been so much fun, and I can't wait to get down to it all over again! However, my brain being such a special place, the whole sign-up process leaves me feeling like I've just run a marathon backwards while juggling watermelons and singing a song in a language I don't even know. I'm ridiculous, tbh.

1. First of all, last night I dreamt that I'd missed the sign-up time, because all of you lot (looking like your icons, btw, it was fairly awesome actually) kept tripping me up and poking me in my ribs while I tried frantically to type. (birdsofshore, your beak is really fucking sharp, mate. Ouch.)


2. THEN I yelled at the kids to get out of the house so we could be back in time for 2pm, only for me to COMPLETELY forget until 1:58pm.


3. I was in such a hurry that I dropped my laptop down the stairs, left it there and ran onto my kids' computer, nearly throwing the keyboard out of the window because I couldn't remember my bloody LJ password.


4. I was like 2 minutes past 2pm, and already like a dozen spaces had been filled!

Jesus fucking Christ, people, how fast are you all?

Luckily though, I got in in time, only for my anxiety to shoot through the roof again when I got an email from the mods about something I'd left off the form, but of course the first thing I think is that they missed my comment the first count through and so I was out, or they've just decided they'd really rather I didn't bother them this year. This is nothing against the mods, btw, who are all wonderful, beautiful geniuses, it's just how my weird-ass brain works - I literally spent the first few months at university convinced that any second someone was going to come up and tell me they'd made a mistake and could I just save everyone some embarrassment and go home now, please?

But anyway, now the stressful part is over! (For me, anyway, I'm sure it's just getting started for our poor mods!) So, now I'm going to go bounce around my house while I wait for my assignment!

Have a great weekend, my lovelies! ♥

Title: If at First you Don’t Succeed...
Prompt: PROMPT #3
Word Count: 6,000
Rating: NC-17
Contains (Highlight to view):A lot of bottom!Draco sex, for people who don’t like that.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Epilogue compliant?: hah, please.
Who is pregnant?:Draco!
Summary: After five years of not wanting children, Draco suddenly changes his mind. Harry is totally on board with this new plan...

This was my pinch hit for the harrydracompreg fest! I had a great time writing it, and it actually gave my writing muse a good kick in the backside, which was very needed after pouting for so long over that lost story. I've been writing a bit recently, so I have kitty_fic to thank for asking me to join in, and all the people who read and left lovely comments!

Read on LJ

Read on teh AO3

I've been writing a book the past few weeks. For the first time in ages, I had the entire story mapped out in my head from start to finish, and every time I sat down to write, I knew exactly what I wanted to say and how to say it. I've been optimistic that THIS would be the time I would actually finish an original story. It was going great, I had 60k words written, and I was on the home stretch... and then Ben borrowed my laptop and closed down the word doc WITHOUT saving it, and now the entire thing is gone. SIXTY THOUSAND WORDS. Thinking about it even now is like a punch to the gut.

We took our kids to see my parents, because they came close to us on their new narrow boat, and my middle daughter fell backwards off the boat onto the tow path, and gave herself a concussion.

My eldest daughter is so stressed about her upcoming exams because the bloody school won't let her stay home for study leave that we had to rush her to hospital on Friday with a stomach ulcer.

And because all of this has been happening, I did my grocery shopping online, and they didn't deliver it yesterday. When I called to find out why, I got told that the delivery man knocked on the door and left a card when we didn't answer, but either he made that up or he went to the wrong address, because I was in the living room all day waiting for the fucker to get there and there is no bloody card.

And that was the point that I sort of just... broke. There I was, staring into the depths of my freezer and wondering what kind of meal I could make out of a bag of frozen peas and half a pack of mince, and I didn't even realise I was crying until Ben pulled me out of the kitchen and sat me down on the sofa. Which I then stayed sitting on, staring at the wall opposite for a good few hours. Funny how it's the little things that break you, isn't it?

You ever just want to meet God just so that you can junkpunch him? I kinda want to junkpunch God right now. Like, really fucking hard.

lmao, I write a post to say "hey, I'm back!" and then I promptly disappear again, sorry about that! I have been trying to respond to more posts on my friends list though, so I guess I'm making progress, slow as it may be. But I've just finished another epic rewatch of the Lord of the Rings (it's a thing I do every couple of months, because I'm weird like that) and I'm about to start reading a new book, so I thought I'd take some time in between to talk about what I've been up to lately:

WRITING:

I haven't been writing much recently, or at least, I haven't finished anything. My head seems to be teeming with ideas at the moment, some fanfic, some not, and I write like a woman possessed for about 10k, and then I look at it and think, "what the hell am I doing, this is crap," and then I start something else. It's weird, and it's annoying, and I'm wondering if I should in fact have signed up for some fests if this is how I write when I don't, tbh.

PARENTING:

So, as you know, Eryn, my eldest, is getting ready to take her GCSEs in a couple of months, and she's doing really well in every class except History. Now, in this subject, her fairly new teacher downgraded her coursework from a C to an E; told the class the wrong thing to revise for their mocks (the results of which go on college applications); spends most of her time trying to control the class instead of actually teaching anything of substance, and gave my daughter an Attitude to Learning level 1 - the worst mark you can get, and the only one she has ever received, EVER. So, last week I went in to talk to the History dept. about Eryn's work, and after a bit of back and forth about how Eryn should do this and Eryn should do that, I got kind of annoyed, and brought up everything the teacher has done in the past 6 months to knock Eryn's confidence in general. And then we got into a fight:

ME: All I'm saying is, there seems to be a common denominator here, and it's not Eryn.
TEACHER: *scowling* Well, Eryn, what did you say to me in class yesterday?
ERYN: *shrugs* I don't remember.
TEACHER: *yelling* How dare you shrug at me?! That's so rude!
ME: *smacks hand on table* Excuse you very fucking much, that's not rude, that's a social anxiety tic, along with her shaking hands and her inability to make eye contact. And how dare you try to teach her manners when I'm sitting right here? That's MY job, your job is to teach her history, and so far you're sucking at it!
HISTORY DEPT HEAD: Um, okay, so, Eryn you work on your revision, I'm sure you're going to do great!
BOTH TEACHERS: *run out of the room*

Yeah, I scared away two women in their 50s. Apparently though, I am well known in the school for winning arguments - one teacher tried to pull Eryn out of class for wearing nail varnish, and her head of house told the teacher not to because, and I quote "you do not want to tangle with Eryn's mum, believe me. She nearly made me cry once." (I did do that, lolololol)

FAMILY STUFF:

I had a little bit of a panic attack over my parents this weekend. I'd never really thought about it before, because until Joe left for Australia last week (and a guy nearly died in the seat in front of him on the airplane, bless him), he's always lived with them, but when I couldn't get in contact with my mum for two days, I freaked the fuck out, because what if something had happened? I'm 150 miles away, Jo is halfway across the world, how the hell would I even know if they needed help? It was the first instance I had of realising my parents' mortality, and I ended up spending 3 hours on the phone with my mum this afternoon, alternating between sobbing down the line and yelling at her to be more careful (turns out they'd gone on their boat for the weekend and forgot to tell me OR take their mobiles, for fuck's sake).

Also, I've been suffering from sciatica pains (a pinched nerve in my left bum cheek, all the way down to the back of my knee), and the other day I woke up after having slept in a funny position, and I can't move my right shoulder without whimpering. I'm walking around like a hunchback with a limp right now, I look utterly ridiculous! However I did get VERY VERY drunk on Thursday, because it was St Paddy's Day, and it's a rule for us Irish folk. Ben and I went down to our local Irish pub, and Ben wore a pair of my green leggings. I tried to get a picture of his hairy ankles, but I was utterly trolleyed and they all came out completely blurred. And now I'm going to have to buy a new pair, because he completely stretched out the crotch area (which he is ridiculously proud of, because he's a gross boy). One of these days though, I'm going to stop just telling you about the stupid things this man does, and just provide actual documentation!

Anyway, that's what I've been up to lately, and now I'm gonna go read a book. I hope you're all doing wonderful things, my darlings! ♥

I've been thinking a lot about whether or not to join in with some fests this year. I signed up to quite a lot last year, and while every one was a lot of fun for different reasons, I'll admit to feeling a bit burnt out by the end of the year. So this year I kind of decided that I would only sign up to the ones I enjoy the most, both writing and reading, to cut back on some of the stess that I felt before. The only problem with this is that I kind of thrive on prompts. When I see one I like, the entire fic unfolds before me, and I get that itch to start writing. It's both a fantastic and frustrating feeling, because the stress comes from having to sign up and not knowing if I have the time to get it done.

What I'd really like, I think, is the option to jump in at the last minute, kind of thing? Like, if the prompt I liked hasn't already been claimed, and I find that I do have the time and end up writing it, I can just submit the finished fic to the fest? Does that make any sense? I've seen prompts at both dracotops_harry and harrydracompreg that I would love to write, I'm just... not sure I can fully commit, so I haven't signed up.

Idk, maybe my anxiety is just playing up at the moment, and I'm feeling the stress of signing up even before I actually do it, lol.

A few other people were doing this stats thing last week, but it took me a while to work out a) how to use the stats page on ao3, and b) my total word count after holiday fests. But I finally worked it out, yay! So, here's my stats for the year 2015:

My five fics with the highest hit counts are: Unexpected Consequences (16097); The Rewards of Bravery (15003); Special Magic (7444); Make My Demons Run (6947), and Teach Me (5099).

Including holiday festfics, I wrote a grand total of 14 stories last year, and 11 of them were for the different fests I signed up to throughout the last 12 months, holy shit! My grand total word count for the year was a whopping 181,583!! That's like, two entire novels, I'm completely shocked.

While I'm here, I thought I'd list the fests I joined in last year, just so people truly understand how utterly crazy I went:

• hp_kinkfest


• dracotops_harry


• harrydracompreg


• hd_collab


• hd_smoochfest


• hd_remix (That Picture Remix Flash Fest)


• hd_eighthyear


• hd_erised


• hd_owlpost (3 fics)

I mean, man, that's a lot of fests, right? I had a lot of fun, but I will admit to getting a bit stressed out over it, so I don't think I'll be doing quite so much in 2016. Erised will be a thing, obviously, and probably also Smoochfest if they have a theme that calls to me, and I also signed up to hd_remix, now that I have a few fics in my arsenal for my writer to choose from. Everything else will just have to be down to if a prompt inspires me so much I can't stay away.

And now I think I'm getting a bit addicted to this ao3 stats page...

I was totally going to sit down and veg in front of the tv with some handy Netflix, but now I can't stop thinking about all the things I didn't put in my comment on blithelybonny's Buffy post. I'm going to have to write them down now, aren't I?

Problems with writing slash for years and then suddenly switching to het and panicking about it:

1. "Hang on, how can they be 'chest to chest' when there are breasts in the way? Oh, no, it's cool, they're squashy enough."


2. "No no no, fingering is easier from the front, not the back, especially when clothes are still on."


3. "WAIT. WHERE DID THE COME GO??"

Man, writing about dicks is so much easier, I think I'll go back to that, tbh.

So, I found a website that sells Converse Hi Tops in a range of different comic book characters, and I thought, hey, Eryn loves BOTH of these things so much, how about I spend loads of money on them for her for Christmas? But, I wanted it to be a surprise, so instead I asked Madison to go in and ask her if her fave was either The Joker, or Harley Quinn, because I couldn't remember. And what was Eryn's response? "shut up and go awaaaaayyyyy!"

Nice. See if I get you anything for Christmas now, you absolute buttface.

Sigh. I'm sure I wasn't this difficult as a teenager. But then again, my mother would probably tell a completely different story...