Life in progress


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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for SoCS May 3/14

It’s the first Friday in May. Imagine that! Depending where you are in the world, either spring is blooming or autumn is falling upon you. Regardless, it’s the fifth month of the year, so in celebration of that, I thought Friday’s Prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday may as well reflect this changeable time of year.

This week your Prompt will be ‘change’ in any form or definition of the word. Play with it, and have fun!

After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at the prompt page in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post.

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 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,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people will come and read your post! The way to ping back, is to just copy and paste the URL of my post somewhere on your post. Then your URL will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. For example, in your post you can copy and paste the following: “This post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-314/  ” The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.

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. Have fun!


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What I Learned During the A – Z Challenge

survivor-atoz [2014] - SMALL

Well, I did it, on not one, but two blogs. When I started I didn’t think I’d be able to keep the fiction side of it up. I started the story of Xavier and Jupiter with the intention to make it a single short story – using just the letter A. That leads me to the first and possibly the most important thing I learned.

Someone once asked me what I wanted to do with my writing. She asked, “Do you want to be a writer of fiction? A journalist? A blogger? What do you want?” as though I had to choose just one. So I did. I said the first thing that came to my mind – I want to be a novelist. Until April 2nd I didn’t know why; I’ve only fully realized in the last 24 hours, that it’s simply what I do. Once I get a character in my head, I can’t let go. It’s why I have such a hard time with short stories – because there is always so much further I can take these people who live in my imagination than I can possibly write in, say 1,000 words. I think it’s also why, when I do write short fiction, it’s usually under 500 words. I just can’t get into it without writing a novel. And I would so much rather be writing a novel!

I probably had more fun writing what ended up being a fair sized novella completely off the top of my head every day until I hit about the letter “T” than I’ve had since NaNoWriMo. I love the challenge not knowing what will happen next until I write it.

Which brings me to the next thing I learned doing A-Z – that I find it infinitely easier to write every day when I have a prompt, even if that prompt is simply a letter of the alphabet and a theme. I shouldn’t be writing this post until May 5th when there is, by the way, a link party over at the A-Z Challenge site. But I had nothing else to write today.

The third thing the Challenge gave me, which wasn’t as much of a learning experience as it is simply a fringe benefit, is all the wonderful new blogs I found, and intend to keep following. *waves to the other A-Z’ers* I must also use this post to thank so many of my friends for coming on this journey with me. It was great, wasn’t it? I’m looking forward to all your follow-up posts!

The question, I guess, is what do I do with the things I’ve learned? I may compile my A-Z novella, polish it, and publish it. It might be a good way to get my name out there before I publish Dagmaru. I’d be happy to have any thoughts on this from those who have read it. I also know now that I need to concentrate on my novels.

As for not knowing what to write on my blog, I may seek out more prompts. If anyone has any good suggestions I’d love to hear them.

A-Z was a wonderful experience. It’s helped me to grow as a blogger and a writer. I can’t wait to do it again next year!

 


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I am a stranger here

A great post and a must-read. If you’re anything like me you’ll be shaking your head in disbelief… and yet is it really all that surprising?

mfitz's avatarAtomic Seconds

20140430-194259.jpg
Skyscrapers, my photo

Sometimes I question my
Humanity,
And not because I think I’m
Better
But more that I’m a
Stranger
Here, and I want to contribute to the
World, but I just don’t know
why

It started like most conversations at work
With a person
That wasn’t there anymore, and
two other people
Telling stories about all of the ways that this lady
Fucked up, or mostly in this case
Was lazy and kind of grumpy, and I was only
Halfway listening from under my headphones, I
Wasn’t really feeling the whole thing that day, the office
And the cubicles and the small talk and
The rituals of staged
commiseration
over this grinding
Exchange of time for money, I was just
Trying to ride it out under a blank
Expression, but
I know they were talking about a woman, a former
Administrative Assistant, or probably when she was there

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One-Liner Wednesday – He’s At It Again

My best friend, John, after I told him my son Chris has been washing dishes to earn money: So that’s why there are clean dishes in your cupboards!


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Z is for … Zed

I was going to write about sleep today, but since seeing two other people I follow with “Zzz” for today’s title, I decided to change my mind. I hate being unoriginal. So, zed it is.

But what does it mean?

For any of my American friends who might not know, “zed” is how we Canadians, and those in the U.K. and I believe Australia and New Zealand too (please correct me if I’m wrong), pronounce the last letter of the alphabet.  Here we don’t go as far as to call a zebra and zedbra, but I have an aunt in England who does. We do call a spiffed-up Camero a Zed-28 however.

What does this have to do with writing?

It’s all tied in with spelling, and the way we do things differently. “Colour” and “color” are pronounced the same, but I have a hard time keeping the “u” out of my words. You may have noticed this about me. But what is the preference when writing a novel I know I’d like to sell south of the border? I believe most Canadian authors resort to the U.S. spellings. Still, I wonder how much it throws my American friends off to see all our added letters in words?

I’d love to hear from you.

 

For the final chapter in the saga of Jupiter and Xavier – and Zach and Erin – click here: http://lindaghillfiction.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/z-is-for-zach-and-aarin-the-topless-pirate/

Hope you enjoyed it. 🙂


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Y is for … Yodeling and Other Strange Noises

I can pull off 50,000 words with no problem. Yeah, okay – it takes me a while. But out of those 50,000 or 5,000 or even … whatever … the words that I get the most stuck on are those pesky noises that come out of our mouths and noses that there are no words for. In fact, it makes steam whistle out of my ears.

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Image courtesy of pixabay.com

Some noises are much easier than others, admittedly. Onomatopoeia is a wonderful thing for sounds like banging, clanking and sneezing. The list goes on and on. But what about coughing? “Khe, khe, khe!” How about a sound of derision? “Pff!” Yeah, that’s easy. So many of them are so hard though!

I was quite proud of myself when I came up with the sound for blowing a raspberry. But then people didn’t understand what I was trying to say.

So I’m making it official. And feel free to use it any time. This, “Pthththththth” denotes blowing a raspberry.

As for yodeling? Pthththth. I’m not even going to try.

 

Will Jupiter say yes? If you haven’t read all the chapters, you should before you read this one: http://lindaghillfiction.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/y-is-for-youre-going-to-leave-me-dangling/


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X is for … XXX – How Far Do You Go?

Writing sex scenes, for some authors, can be most intimidating. I’ve seen this mentioned time and again when reading other people’s blogs. Whether you enjoy reading about hot sex or not has little bearing; for one thing, you probably don’t know the intimate details of the novelists life, and so you can pretend or not that they did or didn’t actually experience what you’re reading. When you’re the one writing it, however, I suppose it depends how self-conscious you are.

Take the scenario where you’re sitting down to watch a movie with your parents and a graphic sex scene comes on the screen that you weren’t expecting. Awkward, right? If so, you probably don’t want your parents reading your steamy novel. My own mother used to get up and leave the room when I tampon commercial came on tv. I don’t think she’ll be down for reading my novel.

The question is, do you tone down your writing for fear of family and pointing fingers saying, or even thinking, I know what you’ve been doing, or do you just ignore it and omit from every conversation with your family that you’re a published author?

Where do you draw the line? What do you do?

Only three more installments to go in my fiction A-Z! Read today’s here: http://lindaghillfiction.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/x-is-for-x-marks-the-spot/

Any ideas for a title for my A-Z story? Please let me know!


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What would you do?

How do you deal with people who are slowly but certainly losing their mind? They’re becoming paranoid. You want what is best for them but they just don’t understand. You go out of your way for them: do everything in your power to be kind – but that’s not what they can see. Rather, they see you as cruel; manipulative; out to get them. Nothing you do can ever be good enough.

How long do you keep trying before you give up?

What if you love them?

I’m a strong believer in the philosophy (if you can call it that) that anyone, no matter what their circumstance, can choose to be happy. But what about those with mental illness? It seems that the decision to be anything isn’t an option. Depression, dementia … any number of disorders, are rife within society; within my own scope of experience. Those who voluntarily care for people with mental illness should be granted sainthood, at the very least.

But what of us with only life experience, and no formal training or expertise?

How long do you keep trying?

What if you love them?


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WordPress Meet and Greet – Take 2

This is a great way to meet new bloggers and gain more followers. Thanks so much to my amazingly generous friend, Jason for opening up his site. 😀


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How Many Bugs in a Box – Stream of Consciousness Saturday (Question)

“How many bugs in a box?” It’s a stupid little song that has been going through my head for years. When I’ve finished writing this post (because I don’t want to stop) I’ll look it up and if I can, insert it so that everyone can be tormented by it.

It’s from an animated game for the computer that my kids used to play when they were little. The game was called “How Many Bugs in a Box” and it was a counting/math/number/pattern recognition game. Why am I writing about this? Because every time – and I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME – I try to write a blog post I think of that sentence. The question has been plaguing me now for around fifteen years. Fifteen years of wondering how many bugs are in the damned box!

Why is it that songs get stuck in our heads, anyway? There’s a name for it now: ear worm. Usually it lasts a morning, or a few hours after we either think of a song or hear it after not having heard it for a long time. It doesn’t usually happen – at least in my experience – when it’s something that’s on the radio or my playlist all the time. I think my worst ones to date have to be “C is for Cookie” by the Cookie Monster, or “The Song that Never Ends” by whatshername with the lamb puppet. (Holy crap, “whatshername” didn’t get a red squiggly line underneath it!)

Anyway, by finally writing “how many bugs in a box” in a blog post, I’m hoping to dispell the magic that keeps me wanting to come back to it. I’ll let you know if it worked in another post. Maybe in next week’s SoCS post.

(Phew! Got my Stream of Consciousness Saturday post in just in the nick of time!)