Does a pregnant pause give birth to little pauses after nine months? And how did it get pregnant in the first place? Was it, perhaps, inseminated by a break? A comma? Probably wasn’t a period. … think about that one for a minute.
I probably don’t pause often enough to contemplate how grateful I am for the life I have. Great friends, a loving family, a roof over my head and a boiler in the basement that works, enough food on the table and laughter all over the house. True, it’s not always easy. But I’m pretty content with it. Of course a warm sunny beach in my back yard year round would make it perfect…
So when do I pause? In the shower for sure. It’s really the only place I’m not pulled away from by the needs of everyone else. It’s rare to sit down to a meal without having to get up half a dozen times. Same with doing the dishes, cooking, sitting at the computer writing a SoCS post.
I’m back. See? You didn’t even notice the pause. đ
The “pause/paws” prompt is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click here to join in today!
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in. It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 2nd post here!
Happy New Year and welcome to the first edition of Stream of Consciousness Saturday of 2016! Today’s SoCS prompt will be tomorrow’s Just Jot It January prompt word, so if you want to use it for your JusJoJan post, go right ahead! Without further explanation or pause, here’s your prompt:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “pause/paws.” Use one, use both, use ’em any way you’d like. 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 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 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.
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.
It’s a dilemma I deal with every time I write a blog post: do I write freely and not take hours poring over my grammar and choice of wording or do I edit my posts to death? To be persnickety or not to be persnickety? That is the question. I wonder how persnickety Shakespeare was? Then again, he probably had an editor.
Seriously, I’d love to be able to just write and release. But for the interests of my writing career, should I have a paid one one day, I demand perfection (or near perfection) from myself. After all, I never know who’s going to come looking. Perhaps someone famous or even better, someone who can get my proverbial foot in the door of the publishing industry will visit my blog. A line or two is all it takes to make an impression, and I want it to be a good one.
I know I’ve asked this question before, but it’s been at least a year so I think I’ll ask again. Who knows, maybe those who have already answered have changed their practices. Oh, the question? It’s this:
How many times, on average, do you edit a post before you hit the publish button? And how do you do your best editing – in the window you write in, or the preview? If I didn’t have the preview screen I’m sure my posts would all be a mess. What I really want to know is, how persnickety are you?
The “Persnickety” prompt is brought to you by Sirius Bizinus at his new home, An Empty Pen. Make sure you go say hi!
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today. It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 1st post here!
1. Just Jot It January starts January 1st, but it’s never too late to join in! Here, we run on the honour system; the “jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post, it can even be a grocery list) counts as a “Jot.” If it makes it to WordPress that day, great! If it waits a week to get from a sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. If you write a JusJoJan post on your blog, you can ping it back either to my daily JusJoJan post or here, to make sure everyone participating knows where to find it. To ping back, just copy the URL from this post or the daily post, and paste it anywhere in your post. Check to make sure your link shows up where you want it to, and come back occasionally to see other bloggers’ entries – the more you visit others, the more they’ll visit you! Note: The newest pingbacks will be at the top of the comments section.
3. Tag your post JusJoJan and/or #JusJoJan.
4. Write anything! Any length will do! It can even be a photo or a drawing – you’re going to title it, right? There’s your jot!
5. This year there are prompts for every day that’s neither a Wednesday nor a Saturday. You’ll find the list below. You can, but you don’t have to use the prompts. Please write whatever inspires you.
6. If you’d like to, use the JusJoJan badge in your post so that others can find your post more easily.
7. Have fun!
My Prompts (you can use them too)
Jan 1 – Persnickety (Sirius Bizinus)
Jan 2 – (SoCS – pause/paws)
Jan 3 – Frozen (Helen Espinosa)
Jan 4 – Dachshund (morgaine620)
Jan 5 – 2016 (Fiona)
Jan 6 – (Cloud -TanGental)
Jan 7 – Robust (summerstommy2)
Jan 8 – Honorable (Corner of Confessions)
Jan 9 – (SoCS – title)
Jan 10 – Sane (John W. Howell)
Jan 11 – Effortless (Dan Antion)
Jan 12 – Skulls (Dean)
Jan 13 – (Sacrifice – mewhoami)
Jan 14 – Motivation (Aaron)
Jan 15 – Leadership (Tessa)
Jan 16 – (SoCS – start your post with “What”)
Jan 17 – Collection (Deborah)
Jan 18 – Elegance (jetgirlcos)
Jan 19 – Climate (Joanne Corey)
Jan 20 – (Surreptitiously – KG)
Jan 21 – Mittens (Candy)
Jan 22 – Felicity (Fun Simplicity)
Jan 23 – (SoCS – odd/even)
Jan 24 – Compelled (willowdot21)
Jan 25 – Prestidigitation (quiall)
Jan 26 – Oneness (writersdream9)
Jan 27 – (Mendaciloquent – Coralee)
Jan 28 – Serendipity (jan)
Jan 29 – Ghost (ghostmmnc)
Jan 30 – (SoCS – “an” as a word or at the beginning of a word)
Jan 31 – Clumsy (Judy Martin)
I still need four more single words to prompt me for the month of January. The spots for the 26th, 28th, 29th, and 31st are still open so please click here now and leave me a word. Just make sure you read the post first, so you enter your word correctly. If you get there fast, there’s a link to your blog in it!
Edit: All the spots are filled up! Thanks to everyone who contributed to my prompts. I look forward to seeing what I make of them when the time comes.
P.S. Watch for the Just Jot It January Rules Post on December 31st. It’s gonna be fun!
Due to the overwhelming response I’ve received for Just Jot It January 2016 participation, I’ve decided to go ahead and run it. Hard to believe it’ll be starting in just a few days, isn’t it? Anyhow, I’m working out ways to make it a little easier this year for everyone to connect. This is what I’ve come up with so far:
I’ll schedule every one of my posts for early in the morning so you have the option of linking to a daily post instead of the Rules Post at the start of the month. This will make the ping backs easier to find. However, if you want to schedule your posts ahead of time, you can still link to the Rules Post – when I see it, I’ll link to the daily post for you. I hope to make this new addition to the rules less confusing when the time comes, so if you don’t understand what you just read, don’t worry about it. đ
Because I’m going to be on more of a deadline (see #1), I’m going to ask for prompts from you. Yes, you. The first 22 comments on this post that include a single word will be my prompts for the 22 days in January that I won’t be writing my own prompts (aka One-Liner Wednesday and Stream of Consciousness Saturday). If you write more than one word in your comment, for example, “My word is antidisestablishmentarianism,” I’ll ignore it. Same thing if you try to slip in two, even in two different comments. Having said that, if I get the same word twice I’ll only accept the first person who got to it. If you’re the second, feel free to try again. And please, remember this is a relatively G-rated blog, so nothing too risque. The sixteenth word will be a special one. If you can figure out why, kudos to you.
I’ll link back to the blog of whoever gives me a prompt on the day I use it, so make sure you get your comment in early!
I’ll be sure to post my prompt word in the title of my post each day so if you need a little prompting yourself, you’ll be able to use it too if you want.
That’s all I can think of for now. The full list of rules will go up on January 1st, so get ready!
Now all I have to do is squint, hold my breath, and hit publish on this post. Let the prompts roll in!!
January is almost here, so I think it’s time to decide whether or not I’ll run “Just Jot It January” (JusJoJan) again this year. It’s been quite a success for the past two years running, so it seems a good idea to keep it going.
For those of you not familiar with it, JusJoJan is a challenge to write a blog post, whether a thousand words or just a few, every day in January. The benefit of joining in is that you can link your post to mine so more bloggers find and read yours. It’s a fun community event during which I and many other bloggers have made friends and gained followers.
So my question to you is this: are you up for it? Let’s see a show of hands!
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