So much for taking time today to get caught up on blogging; this full-time work thing is crazy, isn’t it? I haven’t had a “real” job in sixteen years, and even then, I was running my own business. The last time I worked for someone who wasn’t me was in 1995. I think.
Even though I haven’t “worked” in more than 20 years, I have worked. My kids were born in ’94, ’95, and ’00 – one might argue that just being a mom is work. But past that, I push myself to do more. Writing, blogging, and taking courses to improve my skills have kept me on my toes for quite a few years now.
What about me is impenetrable? Probably my hard-headedness when it comes to saying anything but, Sure! I can do it! Just pile it all on. My head is as hard as my plate is large. And nothing is going slow me down… until they both overflow that is. So if you see my brains leaking out of my ears, you’ll know I’ve reached my penetration limit.
At the rate I’m going, it won’t be long.
Thanks to Blog Woman!!! for our prompt of the day, “impenetrable.” You can find her here: https://blog-woman.com/
And a special thank you to Shan, for the wonderful job she’s doing as host. Let’s hear it for Shan! đ https://shanjeniah.com/about/
Hey there! Shan Jeniah https://shanjeniah.com/about/  again, back for the Day Two  of guest-hosting Just Jot It January. It seems we all survived my first day, so letâs just dive right into todayâs prompt before I decide to go into how nervous I was, and how silly that is, andâŠ
Right. Youâre here for a prompt, not a story. * ahem *. <shuffles imaginary papers>. Ah, here we go…your prompt for today:
The Just Jot It January 16th prompt, brought to you by Blog Woman!!! of Blog Woman!!! -Life, Uncategorized, is: âImpenetrable.â Use it any way you like. And make sure you stop by and say hi to Blog Woman!!!, as well! Hereâs her blog: https://blog-woman.com/.
The rules for Just Jot It January are as follows:
1. Itâs never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the âjot itâ part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesnât have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list) counts as a âJot.â If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. The prompts will be posted every day at 2am my time (GMT -5). You donât have to follow the prompt word, but this will be where you leave your link for others to see. Make sure you link your post to the correct dayâs prompt. There will be a post like this every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday, and Saturday, when youâll find the prompt on my usual Friday Reminder post for Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS).
3. As long as your blog is on WordPress, youâll be able to link via pingback. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggersâ entries â the more you visit others, the more theyâll visit you! If youâre participating from another blogging host, just drop a link into the comment section. Note: The newest pingbacks and comments will be at the top.
4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.
5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing â youâre going to title it, right? Thereâs your jot!
6. The prompts are here both to remind you and to inspire you to write. However, you donât have to use the prompt word of theday. You can link any kind of jot back here. Even your shopping list. Note: If itâs 18+ content, please say so in a comment with your link.
7. If youâd like to, use the JusJoJan badge (above) in your post so that others can find your post more easily.
Hey! I almost didn’t make it here today. I’ve been working on this project I landed last week, editing a 150,000-word novel by the end of February, which means I have to get through 25K words a week. I’m absolutely loving the work, but mercy, does it necessitate a lot of concentration on the screen! I have to keep taking eyeball breaks.
This post is going to be very short, and it may not be sweet, but I should be back tomorrow to get caught up with everything I missed over the weekend.
Lindaâs taking a much-deserved breather for the next three days, so Iâm stepping in to deliver your prompts. Iâll have a guest post up tomorrow, and Iâll talk more about myself then. For now, Iâll keep it short and sweet, so that we can get right to business.
Here’s your prompt for today:
The Just Jot It January 15th prompt, brought to you by BarbCT of Gallimaufry,  is âMercy.â  Use it any way youâre inspired to. And make sure you stop by and say hi to BarbCT as well! Hereâs her blog: https://barbct.wordpress.com/.
The rules for Just Jot It January are as follows:
1. Itâs never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the âjot itâ part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesnât have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list) counts as a âJot.â If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. The prompts will be posted every day at 2am my time (GMT -5). You donât have to follow the prompt word, but this will be where you leave your link for others to see. Make sure you link your post to the correct dayâs prompt. There will be a post like this every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday, and Saturday, when youâll find the prompt on my usual Friday Reminder post for Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS).
3. As long as your blog is on WordPress, youâll be able to link via pingback. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggersâ entries â the more you visit others, the more theyâll visit you! If youâre participating from another blogging host, just drop a link into the comment section. Note: The newest pingbacks and comments will be at the top.
4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.
5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing â youâre going to title it, right? Thereâs your jot!
6. The prompts are here both to remind you and to inspire you to write. However, you donât have to use the prompt word of theday. You can link any kind of jot back here. Even your shopping list. Note: If itâs 18+ content, please say so in a comment with your link.
7. If youâd like to, use the JusJoJan badge (above) in your post so that others can find your post more easily.
People are funny. Particularly around authors. Most will give you a blank stare if you tell them you’re a writer… I wonder often if they’re just thinking, “what do I say now? And will it end up in a book?” This is why I don’t tell people I’m a writer unless they ask.
But there was one day, a couple of months ago, when I was sitting by the water on my favourite waterfront trail and a woman came along and started talking to me. She told me she was there to write her novel… as if she expected me to be flabbergasted that I was talking to a real writer. We ended up chatting about Amazon and Createspace for the following half an hour, though she couldn’t help herself from occasionally giving me the odd advice on how to write, edit, and publish. No matter how many times I said, “yeah, I know.”
Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I was sitting in a restaurant, minding my own business, proofreading my own manuscript. It’s printed out in a spiral-bound book and I’ve been working through it with a red pen. The waitress stopped to give me my tea, as waitresses do, and she asked me if I’m a teacher. I said no, I’m a writer. She reacted the way the lady down on the waterfront expected me to.
“You’re writing a book? What kind? Can we buy it at the bookstore? Do you have a card or anything?”
*makes note to get cards or bookmarks printed*
Needless to say I got better-than-average service that evening.
I keep having to remind myself that though many people think they can write a book, not everyone actually does it. I’m surrounded here on WordPress by so many talented people, so many authors and people who know authors, that it has become normal for me. And yet I remember the first time my blog was followed by a “real author” and I was flabbergasted, even though I had already written three novels myself. Because he was published, and I wasn’t.
I love people. People are who populate my novels. I write novels about people, not about events. I don’t write plots – I write about things that happen to people and how those people react, and that builds my plots.
My darling son, Alex, with whom many of you are familiar, is deathly afraid of the dentist. So much so, that the dentist refuses to clean his teeth for fear of harming him as he thrashes about.
A couple of months ago, the dentist put in a referral to a hospital in Kingston where he sometimes works, to have Alex seen by anaesthesia with the goal of having him put under for a cleaning. However, that particular hospital lacks the resources to look after Alex if something goes wrong with his heart — he has a heart condition. Result: denied.
Now we have to go back once again to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), which is about a three-hour drive each way, not once but three times. First for a consultation, then to see their anaesthesia department, and finally for the “surgery” itself. This last time, we’ll have to stay overnight, because they’ll want us there at 6:00am.
Don’t get me wrong – CHEO is a wonderful hospital. But this new thing of having to go there for teeth-cleaning every year is for the birds. Life was much easier when I could get there in 45 minutes from where I lived. …which was a good thing, since Alex lived there for the first eight months of his life. But many of you, as I said before, already knew this.
It’s Friday, and time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. This prompt will also be the one for tomorrow’s Just Jot It January post, so link back here even if you don’t write in Stream of Consciousness style. Here’s your prompt for this week:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday and Just Jot It January is: A word that starts with “P.” Find a word that begins with the letter “p,” and make it the theme of your post. Bonus points for starting and ending your post with a “p” word. Enjoy!
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 or JusJoJan post. Anyone can join in!
To make your post more visible, use our 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.
You can also use the Just Jot It January badge! Here it is:
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 youâre going to write.
2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence â one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry â it doesnât matter. Just let the words carry you along until youâre 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 âWrite about dogsâ; the prompt will be more like, âMake your first sentence a question,â âBegin with the word âTheâ,” or simply a single word to get your started.
4. Ping back! Itâs 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. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If youâre self-hosted or are participating from another host, such as Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.
5. Read at least one other personâs blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If youâre the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, âStream of Consciousness Saturday,â which youâll find right below the âLikeâ button on my post.
6. Copy and paste the rules (if youâd like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers youâll meet and the bigger your community will get!
7. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.
Hi there, and welcome to Just Jot It January! Today is Friday the 13th of January. A day I refuse to get superstitious over… or maybe I shouldn’t say that because now something bad will happen…
Anyway, here’s your Just Jot It January prompt for today:
The Just Jot It January 13th prompt, brought to you by Charlene Bullard of FaithtoRaiseNate.com, is: “Hospital.” Use it any way you’re inspired to. And make sure you stop by and say hi to Charlene as well! Here’s her blog: http://faithtoraisenate.com/ .
The rules for Just Jot It January are as follows:
1. Itâs never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the âjot itâ part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesnât have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list) counts as a âJot.â If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. The prompts will be posted every day at 2am my time (GMT -5). You donât have to follow the prompt word, but this will be where you leave your link for others to see. Make sure you link your post to the correct day’s prompt. There will be a post like this every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday, and Saturday, when you’ll find the prompt on my usual Friday Reminder post for Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS).
3. As long as your blog is on WordPress, you’ll be able to link via pingback. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggersâ entries â the more you visit others, the more theyâll visit you! If you’re participating from another blogging host, just drop a link into the comment section. Note: The newest pingbacks and comments will be at the top.
4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.
5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing â youâre going to title it, right? Thereâs your jot!
6. The prompts are here both to remind you and to inspire you to write. However, you donât have to use the prompt word of theday. You can link any kind of jot back here. Even your shopping list. Note: If it’s 18+ content, please say so in a comment with your link.
7. If youâd like to, use the JusJoJan badge (above) in your post so that others can find your post more easily.
One of the amazing things about writing a novel set in a real city is the opportunity to visit it. I went even further in my book, The Great Dagmaru, and had my main character, Stephen Dagmar, go to school at Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. That I get tingles walking around the beautiful old campus is an understatement.
When I took these pictures, I thought of our dear departed friend, Paul Curran. He went to this school too. I hoped to show them to him, but I never had the chance.
Enjoy.
I took this picture not so much for the doors but to capture the reconstructive work they were doing. Note the missing bricks on the left.
Queen’s Theological Hall, east side
East side door.
Back of the Queen’s Theological building
…and the front.
Sign reads: “Same bat time, same bat channel.
“We’re awesome
you can be awesome too.”
Hi there! It’s me, Linda, back for a limited time to provide you with prompts. We’ll be having another guest poster on Sunday, but for now, you’re stuck with me.
How’s everyone doing with Just Jot It January this year? Having fun? I hope so.
Here’s your prompt for today:
The Just Jot It January 12th prompt, brought to you by Tessa of the blog Always A Writer, is: “Tingle.” Use it any way you’re inspired to. And make sure you stop by and say hi to Tessa as well! Here’s her blog: https://finallyawriter.com/
The rules for Just Jot It January are as follows:
1. Itâs never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the âjot itâ part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesnât have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list) counts as a âJot.â If it makes it to your blog that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. The prompts will be posted every day at 2am my time (GMT -5). You donât have to follow the prompt word, but this will be where you leave your link for others to see. Make sure you link your post to the correct day’s prompt. There will be a post like this every day except Wednesday, when the prompt is simply my One-Liner Wednesday, and Saturday, when you’ll find the prompt on my usual Friday Reminder post for Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS).
3. As long as your blog is on WordPress, you’ll be able to link via pingback. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL from the daily prompt post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and go back occasionally to see other bloggersâ entries â the more you visit others, the more theyâll visit you! If you’re participating from another blogging host, just drop a link into the comment section. Note: The newest pingbacks and comments will be at the top.
4. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.
5. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing â youâre going to title it, right? Thereâs your jot!
6. The prompts are here both to remind you and to inspire you to write. However, you donât have to use the prompt word of theday. You can link any kind of jot back here. Even your shopping list. Note: If it’s 18+ content, please say so in a comment with your link.
7. If youâd like to, use the JusJoJan badge (above) in your post so that others can find your post more easily.
lindaghill.com 