Mark shakes his head and looks down at his hands, wringing them in his lap.
Angie: I told Jim to tell you.
Mark: He didn’t. (looks up to the ceiling and sighs) I go on one blind date. The first blind date of my entire life and … (looks back down at his hands) Sorry. It’s not your fault.
Angie straightens her skirt and turns to the window.
Mark: Listen, do you want to go to the movie anyway?
Angie: What for? I didn’t think you were interested …
Mark: I dunno. We can still have fun anyway, can’t we?
Angie:(smiles and reaches for his hand) I think so.
Mark:(takes her hand and squeezes it) Has anyone ever told you you have pretty hands?
Angie: No, but thank you.
Mark hands Angie her white cane and they get off the bus.
Being a writer, I’ve read thousands of articles and opinions on how we typically come up with the characters who appear in our fiction. Is there a typical way? Probably not, but being as this is stream of consciousness and I stuck that damned rule in there to say we can’t edit, … that’s all she wrote.
Anyhoo, back to the topic of characters. One of the phrases I read a lot is “giving birth to characters.” I can’t say that I do that. “Giving birth,” to me, implies that they’re brand new shells of people who rely on me to fill them up with experiences, emotions, ways of speaking, and things they’re likely to do and ways they’re likely to react at any given moment. For me, characters appear as already-formed beings. I don’t give birth to them as much as I discover them.
One of the ways I know this–one of the main ways I know this–is when they show me their accents. In this alone I can tell where they come from, whether or not they have a lot of money, their age, their demeanor. I suppose it’s not necessarily as much “accent” as way of talking. Inflection, grammar, whether or not they use a lot of cliches. That sort of stuff.
It’s not as though I have them hanging around in my head all the time. If they did, I wouldn’t get a thought to myself. Nah, they come and go. You’ll see them in my “Second Seat” series. Come to think of it, it’s almost as though I have a bus inside my head …
Andrea: So, she told me she’s, like, so skinny and when I get there? It’s like, who is this fat chick?
Lacey: Don’t you just hate it when people do that? They tell you one thing online …
Andrea: … and then I know! You find out they’re, like, nothing like they said they were going to be.
Lacey: It’s, like, remember that guy …
Andrea: Oh shit, yeah! That guy who told Billy he was straight and then …
Lacey: No, that other guy …
Andrea: Oh, the one who Martina met in the park? The one who, like, showed up with all this suit of armor and shit?
Lacey: Yeah, that one. Didn’t he …
Andrea:(laughs) Oh yeah, that’s right. He had to go to the bathroom and … (looks across the aisle at a middle aged man) What the fuck are you looking at?
Andrea sits back in her seat and pulls at the gum in her mouth, stretching it.
Andrea:(quietly to Lacey) Do you believe people these days? Jeez!
Joel: Look, I know you don’t want to get caught, but …
Holly: But what? If my husband finds out we’re together, he’ll kill me.
Joel:(holds her hand) But, I was going to say, I can’t live without you. I love you. And anyway, he’s going to find out about the baby sooner or later.
Holly: I can tell him it’s his.
Joel: Yeah right. And when it comes out Asian?
Holly: (whining) Ohh, what are we going to do?
She puts her head on his shoulder and he kisses her hair
It’s Friday! And that means it’s time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. My eldest son is celebrating his 23rd birthday tomorrow, so it’s gonna be a busy one for Mom. Somehow I managed to have all my kids in the fall … and so it begins. Here’s your SoCS prompt for this week:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “birth/berth.” Use one, use ’em both, but whatever you do, have fun!
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 our brand new 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!!
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,” “Begin with the word ‘The’,” or simply a single word to get your started.
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. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re 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 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. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.
It’s been a while since I just rambled about my life in progress. Some of what I have to share has to do with my blog as well, since what is life without the Internet? Seriously.
Yesterday I spent an hour trying to change the size of Alex’s Youtube movie on his screen, because he said it was too small. I tried the settings in his account, I tried the settings on the computer, I switched computers, I switched browsers … I even downloaded a new browser onto his laptop, all the while with him screaming in my ear and signing “fix it! It’s too small!” For an hour. All to discover he wasn’t having a meltdown over the size of the movie, but rather the brand new Youtube logo on the top left corner of the screen. Ah, the joys of living with a kid with OCD.
Alex goes back to school on Tuesday!!! (To understand my excitement, see above.)
I’m so busy with my new freelance editing business, I need a schedule to fit everyone in.
It cost me $73 the other day for the dentist to look at my sore gums and tell me I need to rinse my mouth with salt water for a week. I suppose it could have been worse.
I have a book signing at Chapters on October 1st in Kingston, where my novel is set!! Equally nervous and excited!!!
As of tomorrow, there’s a change coming to this blog. I’ve started scheduling my fiction series, “Scenes from the Second Seat on the Right.” The scenes will appear once a day for the next year (there are 365 of them). Some are funny, some serious, some downright sick, most are realistic, yet some are pure fantasy. If you want to learn more about them, see the link in the menu at the top of my blog page. I’m happy to be posting them here, but at the same time I’m a bit worried that I’ll lose followers over them. We’ll see.
The internal battery in my laptop is almost dead. It gives me a warning every time I turn it on. Is this important?
What’s even more surreal than seeing my words in print: editing the sequel to my book, and rather than opening a computer file to make sure I have my facts straight, checking the paperback instead.
If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, like Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.
3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.
4. Add our very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!
When I started writing books, I thought, Bah! This is easy! And it kind of was for me. It was like writing a short story but not stopping at the short part. It was like writing a really, really long short story. Not really rocket science.
Little did I know the rocket science part was coming.
It started with the editing. First I had to figure out how to do that, so I read a gazillion articles, blog posts, advice columns, took courses … you name it, I did it. I still often consult the wise advice of others. That kind of learning never stops if you know what’s good for your novels. Then, finally, I decided after much intense deliberation to self-publish. I was told I’d have to market myself even if I went with a traditional publisher, so why not do it and keep the royalties to myself? So off I went on a new learning curve.
Articles, blog posts, advice columns … I haven’t taken the courses yet, but I’d be tempted if I wasn’t still learning the editing stuff. Yet what I read in these marketing columns, over and over, is that the most important part of marketing is a newsletter. Which brings me to today.
And why I’m nervous.
I have a newsletter. So far I’m the only one who’s signed up, but I have a “welcome” letter all ready to go for the next person who does. The next bunch of people, in fact. This is brand new territory for me and I’m kind of beside myself, because if you sign up and you read it–or worse, if you don’t read it–we can’t talk about it because it’s a one-way street.
I’m actually more nervous than I was when I released my first novel. Crazy, isn’t it? Ah well, here we go. Worst case scenario, I’ll close up shop and go back to the easy stuff: writing novels.
lindaghill.com 