Life in progress

Tag Archives: Facebook


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New Prompt! Tuesday Use It In A Sentence – Demonstrate

Yes, I’ve decided to launch another prompt. This one isn’t just for the blog, in fact I urge you to do it on Twitter, if you have one, or Facebook, or here on WordPress or Blogger or whatever you use. The one thing that will connect us is this: #tuesdayuseitinasentence. I’m doing this as an experiment of sorts, to see how well a hashtag can drum up views and connections between platforms, so please bear with me as I figure this out as I go along.

This is how you can join in:

Write a sentence using the word of the week. Make it as creative as you can. You can add to it, for instance this week’s word is “demonstrate,” but you can use “demonstration” in your sentence. In other words, the word of the week is flexible. So you can do something like this:

“In a grand display of explosive writing, she demonstrated the most brilliant sentence of her life.”

OR:

“My entire life is a demonstration of tact mixed with tired tension and tepid to torrid tales.”

OR, you can add a picture:

“Me, demonstrating how I feel when I get a new book from Amazon in the mail:”

Kermit gif

OR you can even make up your own definition:

“Demonstrate: a mythical monster who is not gay. Demonstrate.”

Note: This post with multiple sentences is for demonstration purposes only. Please stick to one sentence per post.

So here are the rules:

  1. Make a sentence with the word of the week.
  2. Try to do it on Tuesday.
  3. Include the hashtag #tuesdayuseitinasentence somewhere in the post.
  4. Post it on Twitter and/or Facebook (if you have a public site) and/or Pinterest and/or WordPress and/or any other social media site you belong to.
  5. Participate as many times as you’d like. You can write a different sentence for each platform, but please keep it to one sentence per post.
  6. I will be trolling Twitter for the hashtag, so watch my Twitter feed in the sidebar for retweets. Make sure to connect on Twitter with other participants!
  7. If you post your sentence here on WordPress or on any other site where there’s a clickable link, include the link in the comment section for this week.
  8. Google #tuesdayuseitinasentence to find other participants! The more you connect, the bigger it gets and the more views and followers you’ll have.
  9. Have fun!

If you have any suggestions on how to make this a better prompt (i.e. rules I haven’t thought of, making it easier to follow) please let me know in the comments.

What are you waiting for? Make up a sentence and join in!


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Today’s News and What Social Media Finds Acceptable

I know I’m setting myself up for criticism here, but I just can’t not say anything. It’s been bugging me all day. I’ve accepted the fact that occasionally I’m stuck with coming across an image I don’t want to see on my Facebook news feed – sometimes it’s (in my opinion) poor judgement on the part of a ‘friend’ and sometimes (more often than not) it’s something that Facebook, in its infinite wisdom, has decided I want to see. But today takes the cake.

I am, of course, talking about pictures of beached babies. Isn’t it bad enough to hear about it? I have in fact NOT heard that much about it because I fear of the visuals I might come across online. Let me make this clear: I do not want to look at dead bodies. I don’t care how old they are, but particularly… I can’t even type it. It upsets me that much.

You might be thinking I’m burying my head in the sand, wishing it away to make it all better. I’m not. I acknowledge that innocent people die for many reasons all over the world every day. I’d save every one of them if I could.

You might also be thinking, “Oh poor Linda, not wanting to see things that hurt her poor feelings. How do you think the families feel?” Exactly! How would you feel if you accidentally came across a picture of a loved one, dead for all the world to see just so a point can be made? It’s not something I could ever forgive and certainly not something I’d ever forget.

If I’m missing something obvious to everyone else, please let me know. As I said, I haven’t heard the official story. It’s sad when it comes down to not knowing what’s going on because of the horribly bad taste of a photographer.

I have so had it with social media.


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One-Liner Wednesday – The Superpower We Didn’t Know We Have

Heard on the radio:
“I always wanted to be able to read minds; then I got a Facebook account and found out it’s annoying.”

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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:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use the tag #1lineWed for more exposure.

Have fun!


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One-Liner Wednesday – So Stereotypical, So True

First woman in space

From Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/9gag/photos/a.109041001839.105995.21785951839/10152812166261840/?type=1&theater

_________________________________________________________________________________________

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:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use the tag #1lineWed for more exposure.

Have fun!


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A Rant about Memes

Facebook is littered with them – memes which state that if you care about something you must prove it by re-posting a picture with a bunch of often grammatically incorrect sentences or misspelled words. Things like, “If you want cancer to cured, re-post this in the next twenty seconds,” or “Share if you think animals have rights too.” Of course I want a cure for cancer to be found, and I certainly can’t stand to hear about animals being mistreated, but I never re-post these things – I don’t feel that I need to prove the way I feel to anyone.

But the one that really gets me are the “children with special needs need to be treated like anyone else” memes.

Like this one:

1517440_10205983584770964_93714871328423065_nNo. No, no, no, no, no. I won’t re-post this on Facebook. (Yes, I know it’s going to show up in my feed when I publish this blog post, but at least it’ll have an explanation with it.)

Do I want people to be aware that kids with special needs need to be treated just like everyone else? Yes. Do I want to be guilted into posting this because it shows I have “a strong heart”? No. Do I sound ungrateful right now? Maybe.

I don’t feel that I need a strong heart in order to love my two kids with special needs, and I don’t think anyone else requires a particularly strong heart to care about them. They just need to be observant and kind. Treating any human being with kindness is a simple matter of compassion and at least an attempt to understand. No one has to prove themselves as far as I’m concerned, unless actually confronted with a situation in which they can provide a smile or at least refrain from saying or doing something nasty.

I mean seriously, how far does one of these Facebook memes go? If someone is confronted with an uncomfortable situation in a public place where an Autistic adult walks up to them and begins to talk about his or her imaginary friend, does the poster of the meme remember they posted it and take it to heart? No. The last thing on someone’s mind in this situation is Facebook.

Rather than posting a meme, learn something. Take the time to think about what you’d do. Read articles written by the parents of a special needs child and take their advice. Being guilted into posting on Facebook is useless unless you know what it means.

Ungrateful rant finished.


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JusJoJan 8 – Do Things Really Happen In Threes?

I suppose it’s a question for the superstitious of us: yes, I am one.

When something out of the ordinary happens and then happens again within the space of a day, I expect it to happen yet again. Soon. It’s dreadful if two people die unexpectedly. It’s kind of exciting if I hear from two people from my past. In my case, today I had the latter happen.

First, I spoke to an old friend from my MySpace days. (Yeah, that’s a long time ago, right? Gotta be.) And second, I was contacted on Facebook by my ex husband. The one I would have shared a 32nd wedding anniversary with this year. I spoke to him on the phone too, for the first time in more than 20 years.

Will there be a third? Or have I voided the possibility by asking the question? Ah, there’s another superstition.

Just Jot It January is still a thing! Click on the link to learn how you – yes you – can join in! https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/

JJJ 2015


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A Rose by Any Other Name…

cropped-rose-sky.jpg

It took me a long while to decide to use my real name on my blog, and a little while more before I really felt comfortable with it. To start with, this blog was about me “coming out” as a writer. You may think it silly to equate it to announcing one’s gender preference (granted its nowhere near as traumatic as all that) but in a way it was the same. I’d seen, after all, the way people looked at me when I told them I was writing a novel. The word “flake” might as well have been stamped on my cheek for all the lack of praise the confession got me. It seems if they can’t see the finished product, the product will in their mind never be finished.

So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I signed up with WordPress using my own name. I was tentative – worried people I know would see my efforts and laugh. I still worry about that. But, having said that, I have gained a certain amount of confidence in myself. I started a Facebook page recently with the title “Linda G. Hill, Author” (you can find me here: https://www.facebook.com/lindaghill.fiction?ref=hl Like me!!) and that felt weird particularly when it asked me if the person I was making the page for approved. I think I actually yelled at the screen, “It’s ME!”

I still think about blogging under a pseudonym, even now that I’ve been blogging consistently here with my real name for a year and nine months. There’s a freedom in not using your name; what stops me is not being able to see the point. I’m quite happy here this way. I feel relatively secure in that I don’t disclose my precise whereabouts; I post pictures of my children knowing that they can’t be identified by their surname. (It isn’t “Hill.”) I find it easier than trying to keep up a facade. I don’t need to be careful not to give myself away… and I’m so close to being ready to get published that I’m no longer shy about calling myself a novelist. You’ll get your proof, damnit!

I would say the majority of blogs I follow here are anonymous. I realise there are many reasons for wanting to remain that way. For those who don’t use their real names, have you ever been tempted? And for those who do, was it a difficult hurdle to get over? Please share your story.


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Facing It

I had to face it eventually – the dreaded Facebook page. Not that I have anything against Facebook. It just goes a little against the grain of my personality to have anything dedicated specifically to draw attention to myself. Yes, I know you’re probably saying, why do you have a blog then? and you’re probably saying it in italics to boot.

My blog is a place to talk. When I write here I feel like I’m sitting at a table with a group of like-minded individuals, sharing a laugh, the occasional tear, and a big-assed pot of coffee, tea, wine, beer … You get the picture. But The Facebook Page is, well, it’s advertising. And at the moment I don’t have anything TO advertise, so it’s just me. Little ol’ me standing at the head of the class, waiting for a crowd of people who know more than I do to arrive. At least that’s how it feels.

So what’s the point of this then? I need some friends over there to keep me company, and to hold my hand when the crowd shows up.

Please, “Like” me on Facebook. Be a pal. 🙂

https://www.facebook.com/lindaghill.fiction

And I’ll get off my butt and get this book out. Then I’ll have something to hold up, to take the focus off little ol’ me.


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S is for … Survey – Fictional Characters

The first arguably most difficult thing about creating characters, is avoiding writing about yourself. This argument is based on the fact that you know no one better. Your experiences, tastes, and even your most used expressions are bound to creep in – sometimes you don’t even realize it.

The second arguably most difficult thing about creating characters is making them believable. It’s easy to write a one-dimensional character. So we write back stories, which may or may not show up in the final cut. But how detailed are those back stories? And how rounded do they make your characters?

The difficulty I find in writing a back story is that it tends to be about the big stuff. When I’m writing one, I’m looking for what motivates my characters to do what they do. Because a character with no motivation is the worst kind of cookie-cutter character. So I go back to their childhoods to discover what made them who they are. What are the huge events that shaped them into the person my readers will see when I plop them down in my story and ask them to react?

It’s not just the big things that shape who we are in real life though, is it? It might be where we were when someone else’s big event happened. It might be a piece of music we heard. Any number of trivial things make us who we are. And it’s those little things that make people care about us. Truly care. Which is another MAJOR if not the most MAJOR thing in keeping a reader reading our story.

With this in mind, I came up with an idea. What about those stupid surveys you see all over facebook and the like, which teenagers love to fill out? I looked one up. My mind was blown. This is only one of thousands: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=50193333157 so if you don’t like the questions here, google “100 question survey facebook.” If I answered only a third of the questions on this survey, from the perspective of my characters when they were teenagers, I would know everything I could possibly want to know in order to create the best characters I can come up with. Because the problem with writing just a back story, is the lack of spontaneously coming up with your characters quirks, opinions, and thoughts. Why? Again, because your own seep in.

As soon as I have the time, I will take this survey for at least four of my novel’s characters–two main, and two supporting. I honestly believe this is the golden key to rounding out their lives, and making my readers–and myself–care about them and what happens to them.

Do it. And really put some thought into it. Remember what it was like to be a teenager, when all of these questions mattered. Then let your character’s experiences seep in to your story and not your own. I can almost guarantee that it will give you a better story.

 

Stranger things have happened! Or have they? Click here to go to my fiction blog and see: http://lindaghillfiction.wordpress.com/2014/04/22/s-is-for-serendipity/


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It’s For Your Own Good! A Rant

What are you striving for? Is it within your reach? Yes? Then go for it. You want to lose weight? Stop eating cupcakes. You want to write a novel? Get off Facebook and Twitter and spend more time writing. You want a better job? Make more of an effort to get one than bitching about the one you have.

Is what you want not within your reach? Then stop spending so much energy wanting it. You want to be taller? Too bad. You want to live on a yacht the size of an apartment building but you’re on welfare because you’re too lazy to work? Give it up. You want to be younger? Ain’t gonna happen.

I’m so tired of listening to people complain, who aren’t able to either live up to or define their limitations.

How did we end up being a society of whiners? Is it Facebook and that tempting sweet spot–the box asking us, “What’s on your mind?”–that taunts us to write whatever we’re thinking and share it with the world? Is it the message, “You can be anything you want to be,” that’s expanded people’s heads so that they barely fit on their pillows? “Dream big!” they say.

“Wake up!” I say.

Enjoy the life you are cut out for. Know your limitations! You’ll be much happier.

End rant.