The obligatory eight-legged occupant is back in my kitchen this year. Every summer, a small spider moves in and makes a web far enough away from where I normally walk that I leave it, thinking why not? It’ll eat the occasional fly and I won’t have to race around my kitchen with a tea towel chasing it (the fly). By July my occupant is medium-sized and by the end of August it’s a giant, sitting in the middle of its web patiently waiting for its next meal. It’s definitely more patient than my kids, I’ll give it that.
Except this year I have two eight-legged occupants in my kitchen. They’re about six feet apart and so far I’ve seen neither stray from its web. I just hope one of them doesn’t decide to visit its neighbour.
If I have hundreds of eight-legged occupants in my kitchen next year, I’m moving out. I already have hundreds of six-legged occupants in my kitchen. Fruit flies have six legs, don’t they? They’re too small to dissect, and anyway, by the time I’ve gotten one to slow down, it’s flat.
This post is going downhill. I’d better put an end to it.
Awesome new badge up there ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ đ
Stream of Consciousness Saturday is a weekly prompt that I run … and sometimes I even participate before Sunday gets here! If you’d like to check out the prompt and read some of the other posts (which you’ll find links to in the comments) click on the following link: https://lindaghill.com/2017/08/18/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-aug-1917/
Hello, and welcome to the Friday reminder and your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. I know I’m late (again). My excuse this week is appointments. A couple of them. But the exciting news is that we’ll be debuting our new SoCS badge this week! Change is as good as a rest, they say. And who couldn’t use a rest?
Here’s your SoCS prompt for this week:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “pant.” Use one the word “pant” as is, or find a word with “pant” in it and base your post on it. 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!!
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.
First, I’d like to give a special mention to our out-going Stream of Consciousness Saturday badge by Mr. John Holton. As it turned out, he has the distinct honour of coming in last-place this year, perfectly balancing out his spectacular win for the 2016-2017 badge. Thank you John, for providing us with a lovely design. Let’s everyone applaud John!
John Holton 2016-2017
It was a close race this year, with one badge pulling out in front during the final hours of yesterday’s voting. Let’s start with the runners-up.
Almost tied for fourth place were Ruth’s “Zoomburst Flower” and Scott’s “Rushing Stream.”
In third, we had Judy with her last-minute entry, “Sunrise.”
In second …
…
…
was JoAnna’s “Sparkly Stream,” which means our winner with 38% of the votes goes to J-Dubs with “A River with Red Flowers”!!
Congratulations to all the contestants on your amazing efforts. Thank you for making this years’ Stream of Consciousness Saturday badge contest a success!
And huge congratulations to J-Dubs for the winning design!
It’s Thursday, and our contest is closing with six designs in the running for our 2017-2018 Stream of Consciousness Saturday Badge. The winner will have his or her badge displayed both here and all around the Internet by whomever participates in the weekly SoCS prompt.
I would normally post the outgoing badge here, but as it turns out, it’s in the running again. Therefore, I’ll let you visit John’s blog to have a look at it.
The links below will take you to the contestant’s sites, to the posts on which their badges are displayed. Please make sure you have a look at all of them before you vote! I’ll give each a descriptive name which you’ll find both with the link and on the poll for easier voting. I’m not going to vote unless there’s a tie, so it’s all up to you!
Thank you so much to all the contestants for entering and for your hard work. The badges are fantastic. It’s going to be hard to choose!
But choose you must. You have 24 hours – the poll will close tonight at 11:59pm DST (-5GMT). Anyone can vote, so feel free to share this post far and wide, and ask all your friends to vote. Don’t delay, do it now!
Good luck to all the contestants! May the best badge win!
If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the âOne-Liner Wednesdayâ 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 youâre pinging back to is this weekâs! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If youâre 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. Itâs bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so thereâs no need to stick to the same âtheme.â
The rules that Iâve made for myself (but donât always follow) for âOne-Liner Wednesdayâ 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!
How are your badges coming along, artists, photographers, and badge makers? There are still five slots and two days left to get your design in before the deadline.
What’s in it for you? A chance to have your badge with your name on it posted by 30-40 bloggers per week on their Stream of Consciousness Saturday posts! How exciting is that?!?
We have five contestants already. Here they are in the order they submitted their badges:
I’m so happy that our dear Helen has given me the opportunity to feature one of my favourite tunes on my blog for Song-Lyric Sunday. You can find the prompt, which is “outer space,” here.
’39 by Queen is a fascinating song off the album “A Night at the Opera.” It was sung and written by Brian May, which is an important detail. Why? Because Dr. May is an astrophysicist, so one must assume he knew what he was talking about when he wrote the lyrics.
The song is about flying out in search of new worlds at the speed of light. It’s about a man who goes out to find a safe place for his family to live, only to find when he gets back to earth 100 years later that though he’s aged very little, his wife has died and his child is older than himself. It’s the ultimate scientifically possible time-travel scenario, with a sad, romantic story.
It’s a fantastic song. Here is the official video with the lyrics. You’ll find them written out below as well.
Enjoy.
’39
by Brian May
In the year of ’39 assembled here the Volunteers
In the days when lands were few
Here the ship sailed out into the blue and sunny morn
The sweetest sight ever seen.
And the night followed day
And the story tellers say
That the score brave souls inside
For many a lonely day sailed across the milky seas
Never looked back, never feared, never cried.
Don’t you hear my call though you’re many years away
Don’t you hear me calling you
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I take your hand
In the land that our grandchildren knew.
In the year of ’39 came a ship in from the blue
The volunteers came home that day
And they bring good news of a world so newly born
Though their hearts so heavily weigh
For the earth is old and grey, little darling we’ll away
But my love this cannot be
For so many years have gone though I’m older but a year
Your mother’s eyes from your eyes cry to me.
Don’t you hear my call though you’re many years away
Don’t you hear me calling you
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I take your hand
In the land that our grandchildren knew.
Don’t you hear my call though you’re many years away
Don’t you hear me calling you
All your letters in the sand cannot heal me like your hand
I’ve come to the conclusion that writing a series of books rather than a standalone is harder when you’re a pantser. A pantser, if you’re not familiar with the term, is a writer who writes by the seat of his or her pants, as opposed to a plotter, who plots the entire story out ahead of time. If I could just plot out where my characters are going to go after book three, I would know if their life beyond it was worth writing about. Because let’s face it, no one wants to read a book about people getting up and going to work every day, coming home, cooking dinner, watching TV and going to bed, ad nauseam. It’s bad enough that most of us do just that in real life.
Therefore, I can only guess whether my series will be a trilogy or if it will go on.
Don’t get me wrong – I love pantsing. Sometimes I’ll be happily typing along, minding my own business (because I don’t make up my stories. I just pluck them out of mid-air and transcribe them) and suddenly one of my characters will say something that completely blows me out of the water. Like, I had no idea it was coming. It’s by far the best part of writing. When you’re reading a book and you get hit by a sudden revelation, you can bet that there’s a good possibility the author was struck at the same point in the story with that same gong. What’s not to love about being hit by a gong? (I do enjoy stream of consciousness writing.)
If I was to guess right now, I’d say it’s going to be a trilogy. Yet I know I’m going to miss my characters so much that I’m not going to want to stop writing. Will they get up to more adventures? I guess they could. We all do, once in a while, right? If we didn’t, our boring day-in-day-out existences would drive us to eventually seek something more anyway.
Speaking of adventures, I’ve updated and edited an old post. It has more pictures now, as well as a few more links. I can only guess whether or not it will show up in your email if you follow me that way. I’m guessing it will, if you weren’t following me in July of 2013 when it was first posted. I urge you to read it if you haven’t already: it’s one of my best. Even if you have already read it, check out the new pictures. I’ll repost it in an hour or so. It’s entitled “A Haunted Visitation.”
While you’re here, take a good look at the badge, for it may be the last week in which it’s featured! The contest is on right now for a new SoCS badge design. We have five entries already, which means there are only five slots left open. Click the following link to read more about it, see the entries so far, and enter the contest yourself: https://lindaghill.com/2017/08/08/the-4th-annual-socs-badge-design-contest/
Hi. Miss me? I know it’s Friday and here, finally, is your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. I’ve been out all day collecting my mother from the hospital and taking her back to the retirement home, then driving to Kingston to drop off my youngest with his dad. And of course I had to stop at the book store while I was there to check on my books … Oh, you’re still waiting for your prompt, aren’t you? Here it is:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “guess.” Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
Don’t forget, we have the SoCS badge competition going on this week! Click this link to find out how you can have your artwork displayed every week as part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday!
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 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 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.
If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the âOne-Liner Wednesdayâ 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 youâre pinging back to is this weekâs! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If youâre 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. Itâs bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so thereâs no need to stick to the same âtheme.â
The rules that Iâve made for myself (but donât always follow) for âOne-Liner Wednesdayâ 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!
lindaghill.com 