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:
I’m starting to think writing a novel would have been easier than this NaBloPoMo thing. Writing a post every day, especially when I’m being forced into it, is HARD! Writing a novel when I’m being forced into it, on the other hand, is a piece of cake as long as life doesn’t come along and bite me in the arse like it did during NaNo ’11.
Yep, NaNo ’11 was a doozy. I was going along strong and then suddenly everyone got sick. Alex, my youngest, was in the hospital in Kingston, which was miles away and so I figured I’d sleep there, save the drive home. Only I got woken up at two in the morning to find out my eldest, Fred, was puking up blood. What do you do?
I rushed home as soon as I’d talked to Alex’s doctor the next day–which was almost dinner time–and I don’t even remember what happened after that, ‘coz I got sick. At least I knew Alex was taken care of.
The manuscript that came out of that there NaNo ’11 took me another year to complete, as it turned out. Today I printed out all 627 pages of it–again–so I can give it what I hope is a second-last once-over before it goes out to my beta readers. That should take, oh, a week or so if all goes well.
Expressions. We all have them. We all use them. There are so many we all know–he’s pushing up daisies, or busy as a bee, for instance–but how about the ones you grew up with? You know, the ones that come out of your mouth with a satisfied grin because you’ve just uttered the most perfect thing at the perfect moment EVER, yet you get a strange look because the person you’re talking to has never heard them before. So then you have to explain that what you just blurted out was something your mother, father, grandparent, or old Uncle Fred always said when blah blah blah and by the time you’ve finished going through the entire history of your fabulous phrase, its lustre has worn down to the brilliance of a twenty-year-old tractor tire.
You’ve been there before, right? So tell me, what are some of your favourite expressions that no one has ever heard before, and where did they come from?
I love it when a fortune cookie actually tells my fortune.
I did have an opportunity to edit this weekend, since the kids were with their dad. Now to play the lottery with those numbers… or did I miss it? I’ll check Saturday’s draw and see.
In other news, I went to the doctor about my shoulder and my eyes on Friday. She’s sending me for another ultrasound for the shoulder and I’m on Advil three times a day to see if it helps. Apparently if we can figure out whether it’s bone or soft tissue that’s causing the problem, she’ll know how to treat it.
My eyes on the other hand, she had no answer for. My bloodwork showed that I’m perfect – I already knew that though (haha) – so the good news is it’s not diabetes. Anyway, she said she’ll talk to an optometrist colleague this weekend and get back to me next week if they come up with any ideas. I thought of something that I neglected to mention to her since. I’ve been watching my diet, screen time, and all kinds of things to see if there was a common denominator to when I have problems, but the one thing I hadn’t watched was what I was drinking. I wonder if I get dehydrated, particularly when all I drink in a day is coffee and wine. I’ll mention that if she doesn’t come up with anything better.
Or maybe what I really need is more Chinese food to get my answer.
Now that I’ve finally caught up on my comments I’m allowing myself to post. Except… I can’t think of anything to write. Add the fact that I’m so tired that if tired was an animal, my tired would be an elephant. And it would be sitting on my lap. Do you have any idea what it’s like trying to type with an elephant on your lap? Ugh. He just farted.
This is how my family can tell when I’m exhausted. I either go hairy and bounce off the walls until someone placates me with either a cup of coffee or a glass of wine (depending on what time of the day it is… though if I’m honest I’ll take the wine any time) or I get creatively silly.
How ’bout you? Do you scream everyone around you into complete jelly-bowls of submission when you’re tired? Do you giggle until your insides hurt and your bloodshot eyes are ready to walk up the stairs to bed without you? How do your loved-ones know you’re tired?
I like circular. What comes around, goes around and what you give, you get back. Rectangular things are better than trapezoids, but not better than squares. I suppose I’m a little obsessed with order, though you wouldn’t know it looking at my house. Tidying up is at the bottom of my list of things to do.
Order in the way of plans are also important to me. When things go pear-shaped I get stressed. Not that I need to stick to a schedule – it’s more for my kids than me. Both of them are obsessed with schedules.
Today will be a busy day. If things don’t go as planned it will result in a late night.
This post sucks.
But that’s Stream of consciousness for you. Pear-shaped indeed. Show, don’t tell, right? Haha.
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.
There are some things I just can’t help. Eating the last few nuts in the tin even if I don’t want them, straightening out a crooked picture on the wall, … writing a blog post even when I’m too tired to write a blog post…
It’s been a hell of a few days, and the next three aren’t going to be any better. Last week I had two days off (meaning the kids’ dad picked them up after dinner one day and brought them back after dinner two days later) but the one in I should have had a full day off had an appointment for Alex smack-dab in the middle that only I could take him to, so I didn’t really get a day off at all. August was the last time I had one of those. All this to say that I don’t have the energy to write … anything, really. I suppose this is what being a writer is. Compulsion.
Unfortunately for all of you, it means listening to me whine about how tired I am. So here’s a consolation. A pretty picture. (Hunts for picture.) Ah, here’s one from the spring:
and look at that – it’s not even straight
What are you compelled to do, no matter what? It’s okay, go on. Admit it. We won’t judge.
Aside from the fact that I can’t usually find a thing I’m looking for in my house if I haven’t seen it in the previous two days (okay, that’s an exaggeration, but the frustration makes it feel that way) most of my lost things lately have been inside my own head.
Concentration. It’s what it all comes down to. Having a thousand things go through my head at once (disclaimer: this post will include many exaggerations. And by many I mean about a million or so.) is conductive to forgetting everything. For instance, twice this morning on my paper route I walked past a house I was supposed to deliver to because I have my novel in my head. A particular scene that I’ve been pondering… can’t remember now which one…
Too many people to take care of, (the last of which is ALWAYS me (exaggeration)) too little money to do all the crazy things my kids demand of me (i.e. taking the bus to the mall which costs $500 each way compared to driving the car which costs only pennies) (guess which one of those is an exaggeration. Right. The pennies one.), and where was I… Oh yeah. Not having enough time to write and edit, and read and CREATE! That’s gotta be the worst because it’s what keeps me sane. So I create in my head while I’m supposed to be doing other things. Like delivering the paper. And running red lights. And floundering around like a beached fish, gasping for air and dying… dying … dyin… dyi… d.
I’m such a drama queen this morning. Time to find some sense in it all.
lindaghill.com 