If I could speak to Stephen King right now I would say, “Your books make me want to edit my work, because although I will likely never be, I want to be as good as you.”
Anyone who would like to try it out, 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 ping back, 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.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a ping back 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:
I was reading some of The Daily Post entries today, as I sometimes do, and a good number of them refused to play along with the prompt. Today’s prompt was this: Write a post about anything you’d like — in the style of your favorite blogger. (Be sure to link to them!)
I’m not sure if the participating (and I use that word loosely) posts I read were a good cross section of all of them (I perused about 15% of them) but a great majority of those I read said they didn’t want to imitate anyone, for various reasons. Some simply ignored the prompt and linked anyway, some said they couldn’t find a favourite, and some said they were too happy with their own writing “voice” to be bothered. One even thought it was creepy.
The whole thing reminded me of my high school drama class. We were given an assignment and had a few days to research it before we were to come back to class and demonstrate what we’d discovered. The assignment was to observe the way different people walk and imitate them. Not really a difficult thing to do, and yet no one in the class would do it. We all stated that it was too uncomfortable – we felt like we were making fun of people. I don’t remember if I refused to do it on those grounds or if I was too self-conscious to be the only one who did do it.
It seems strange to me in the blogosphere that people wouldn’t participate in such a thing as an imitation game. Is it really that hard to mimic another writer’s style? Is it that distasteful?
And now for something not completely different… I was originally going to make the three prompts for Just Jot It January 2015 Reading, Writing, and ‘Rithmatic, however, Writing has been covered in many of the prompts that fell under the Reading category which makes it seem a little–get ready for another “r” word–redundant. So for the second prompt I’ll skip straight on to ‘Rithmatic and make the third prompt something truly different.
Here are some ideas on what you can do with the prompt, “‘Rithmatic”:
1. Write something on adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, fractions… you get the idea.
2. Choose a number to write about. Any number.
3. Got a magic 8 ball at home? Roll it and see what comes up.
4. Don’t use the prompt at all! It’s not mandatory – it’s only if you get stuck. Alternatively, use the prompt every day for 10 days. It’s up to you!
Your next prompt will be posted on January 20th, to cover the dates from the 21st to the 30th.
I hope to be able to read more of your upcoming JusJoJan posts, but it seems Alex might still not be attending school next week at the rate he’s going, so it may be hit and miss. So I’m counting on you. Please make sure you check back to the prompt page and see who has posted – it’s a great way to build your blogging community and reciprocate. And don’t forget the most important part – have fun!!
I used to hate people who told me, with their nose seemingly turned up in disdain, that they didn’t watch TV. That was back when I used to do barely anything else when I got home from work at night. Knit and watch TV. Every single night.
Fast forward to now: I never watch TV. I don’t turn my nose up at people who do – I understand that their leisure time is as valuable to them as mine is to me – they just choose to do something different with it. But I do have to say that I’m really feeling the effects of NOT watching it. Why?
Pop-culture can be very important in any work of art. It has the ability to connect the artist to his audience in a unique way, like, remember where you were when the last episode of M*A*S*H was aired? Or when we heard those famous words, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”? Can you? I can. But do I know a damned thing about what’s going on on “The Office”? No.
I’ve just read a fascinating article (which is always dangerous) and I went and generalized it (which is always entirely justifiable… maybe not) and made it about me (which… come on, I’m a blogger, what do you expect).
An article about bamboo.
I’m not a gardener. In fact, if the word “gardener” has a polar opposite, then I’m that. (Blighter? Destroyer of things green? Seriously, you should see my front yard. By which I mean, my front collection of weeds.) But through the whimsy of the internet, I found myself reading this article about bamboo farmers and success. It’s worth five minutes of your time, but here’s the quickly-generalized, me-centric summation of the article.
Bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants on the planet. It grows so quickly and so prolifically, and is so incredibly strong (it has a tensile strength close to that of steel) that it seems miraculous. Some species can grow as much as three feet in 24 hours. (I picture the analogue of my son sprouting up to my height overnight and it gives me the shivering willies.) Yet many people who try to grow bamboo get frustrated and give up and never see it achieve that growth, because the first five years of the seeds’ growth is entirely underground.
Imagine it.
Day one, plant a seed.
Day two, water, check for growth, nothing.
Day three, water, check for growth, nothing.
Day four, water, check for growth, nothing.
Day five, water, check for growth, nothing.
Wash, rinse, repeat, until …
Day 1828, water, check for growth, nothing.
Day 1829, water, check for growth, nothing.
Day 1830, water, HOLY SHARKNADO THERE’S A FOREST OF BAMBOO IN MY BACKYARD.
That’s a heck of a lot of days, a heck of a lot of faith, and an ungodly amount of patience and tenacity: an untold amount of time spent doing a simple but time-consuming thing (watering the plant every day) with not an ounce of feedback that the thing you’re doing is useful, worthwhile, or even productive in any way. For all you know, on day seven the seeds died and turned to dust in the ground, and you might very well be wasting your time. But if you don’t keep working, the seeds will definitely wither and crumble.
And this is a little like writing, innit? Or maybe a lot like writing. Actually, make it a metaphor for whatever you like, but I think it’s particularly fitted for writing. Because we writers do our work underground. We have the inspiration to write and plant that seed deep in the loamy earth of our minds. We enclose ourselves in our batcaves, our secret chambers, our dark enclosures isolated from all human contact, and the words spill out of us like so much irrigation on the soil of our precious ideas. For days, weeks, months we toil in quiet and fear and clandestine hope that our pet projects, our favorite characters, our brilliant plot lines, will take root and spring forth, filling the world with color and the sweet scent of our inspiration … but we have no idea if it’s going to happen. Whether that field of bamboo represents simply getting published, or penning a bestseller, or even just finishing a draft, the finish line can feel so far away it might as well not even exist.
We see the bamboo fields that have sprung up in other authors’ backyards, and that gives us hope–I could have that, too!–but it simultaneously fills us with doubt–will it happen for me? And we don’t have a master gardener standing over our shoulder, telling us to keep our heads down, keep watering the seeds, keep fertilizing the soil, and all will be well. We don’t even have that five-year guarantee that bamboo has. For some, it may happen faster: they’ll have a backyard full of bamboo in the space of a year or two. For others, it may take longer: their garden may take a decade or more to sprout. For still others it may never happen.
But regardless of the speed at which the garden grows, I think any gardener will tell you that it’s not all about the end result. Sure, the rows of tomatoes and the baskets full of roses are the ideal, but even without them, the work is not a total loss. Because the work is therapeutic. Kneeling in the soil, breathing the unprocessed air of the outdoors, feeling the sun on your back, working your fingers in the dirt, plucking the weeds… the work means something in its own right. Likewise, forcing the words onto the page, exploring the characters, designing new plot lines… it means something. Yes, it’s about making the seeds grow, but throughout the process, you learn, you grow. And then, on day 1831, whether your bamboo has pierced through the ground striving for the sky or not, you come back ready to water it again. And again. And again.
Trust in the knowledge that the work matters, whether the bamboo grows or not. You have to be your own feedback. You have to fling your vision forward into the future and visualize those steely shoots springing out of the ground now, starting today, and let that vision sustain you, because the fruits of your labor are just going to be invisible until they happen.
Trust in the bamboo. Keep watering.
Thanks to Linda for allowing me to guest post while she’s out. For more drivel like this, check out my homepage over at Pavorisms.
Anyone who would like to try it out, 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 ping back, 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.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
Okay, I admit it; sometimes my grammar isn’t perfect. Oh sorry, did I forget to ask you to sit down before I dropped my bombshell? That’ll heal, don’t worry.
But seriously, I get tired of trying to write right all the time. It takes, like, brain cells and stuff to make sure I edit the hell out of every single solitary sentence I compose. And so while I do try to do my best here on my blog, I don’t always make sure my comments, my emails and (oh God) my texts are the essence of grammatical excellence. In fact when I’m in a hurry, I’ve actually been known to write things like “u” instead of “you” when tapping out a message on my phone. Don’t all gasp at once!
Is it lack of professionalism? Is it laziness? Or is it a bid to preserve the ever-decreasing amount of grey matter I possess due to the many things I have to deal with in any given moment?
What’s your excuse?
This grammatically questionable post has been brought to you in conjunction with Mr. Mark’s Roadshow
My manuscript is literally bigger than The Stand! I have proof!
But seriously, wouldn’t you love to be able to say that about your body of work and actually mean it in more than a literal sense? Even if I’m that good, which I suspect that possibly I’m not, (ahem) there’s no chance in hell, or even Castle Rock that I can catch up to the great SK. I didn’t start early enough. In fact, by my calculations I’d have to live to be a hundred and twenty five and seven-eighths years old to write as many books as Stephen King has and will. And honestly, I can’t see myself writing much past my 120th birthday anyway.
Conclusion: I’m destined to spend the rest of my existence wheezing on his literary dust. And enjoying the Castle Rock out of his books.
I’m trying something new today. I’m participating in my dear friend Colleen’s prompt over at Silver Threading. Her rules in “Writer’s Quote Wednesday” state that the quote can be by a famous writer or by ourselves, since we’re all writers after all. So I’ve taken the liberty of writing my own statement, as I see it. I have to say it’s a little weird quoting myself. I hope it doesn’t seem too presumptuous.
Even when I was 10 years old, I was a stickler for grammar. I remember a slogan on a used car dealership’s lot in my hometown, meant to attract customers passing by on the road . It read:
“Little used cars use little gas.”
The potential double meaning of this sentence has agitated me–yes, agitated–for forty years.
Anyone who would like to try it out, 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 ping back, 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.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
lindaghill.com 