Greetings. I’m the second of your Linda’s Christmas Holiday Substitute Teachers. Eyes front. No hall passes.

I have a sort of preoccupation with things I don’t understand, like time and space and Black Friday and the minds of toddlers and why the English language has words like “kerfuffle” (utterly useless) but no answer for the German “schadenfreude” (I would use that word EVERY DAMN DAY). Also, Helen’s prompt gave me a certain kind of nudge in a certain kind of direction, and I find that when you feel nudged, the thing to do is nudge back, unless of course you’re a senator nudging toes in a bathroom stall at the airport.

Er, right. The prompt. I had about a thousand variations on a theme that I pondered for the prompt, from the highfalutin to the plebeian (and, see, now I’m just doing wheelies on my vocabulary bicycle since I’m playing in somebody else’s sandbox). But as intrigued as I was by some of those ideas, I ultimately came to the conclusion that simpler is better, and I, for one, could use a dose of simplicity after the week I’ve had. Let the distractions and the stresses fall away. Take a step back.

So, for this week your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is one word: “Back.” Use it however you’d like: as a standalone, as a prefix, a suffix, noun, verb, or adverb (can you tell I’m an English teacher in my daytime life?); just make sure you have fun and enjoy the words flowing onto your screen so you can share them with us!

After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at this week’s prompt page and check to make sure it’s here in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!

To make your post more visible, use the SoCS badge! Just paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!

Here are the rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours.  Your link will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.

5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. Have fun!