Now that I’m present and accounted for–I’m back from holiday–I have no excuse not to blog. đ
See what I did there? The above sentence is a culmination of all three wonderful SoCS prompts presented to you by my three lovely guest posters. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them all for filling in for me while I was away.
I’ve learned a lot from each of my guest posters, but none more than Helen Espinosa. Here’s a lady who has been through so much in her life and yet has managed to keep a positive outlook. Her brave dealings with cancer, during which time she relied on the love of her family is so inspiring. Helen has shown me what it is not to give up, and to live life to the fullest; her philosophy is one I aspire to. Please visit her blog often. You can find Helen here: https://helenespinosa.wordpress.com/
Pav. What can I say about Pav? An English teacher by day, a dedicated dad and husband, a tireless runner, and an author any chance he gets, Pav has a unique sense of reality. His humorous posts are a never ending experience in eyebrow-raising entertainment, spackled here and there with a lesson in what it is to be a little bit of everything all the time. Any time you need a smile, go and read Pav’s blog at http://pavorisms.wordpress.com/
For our last but not least of the SoCS prompts, we were blessed with Leigh. Speaking of busy, Leigh Michaels defines the word. Mom to five incredibly lucky children who have survived the foster care system, she seems to be a full-time everything, including the author of no less than four novels. To me, she is a lesson in what it is to give of oneself – inspiring doesn’t begin to cover it. Visit Leigh here: http://www.authorleighmichaels.com/ to read her blog and find out where you can purchase her novels.
So with that I’d like give my warm appreciation to you, Helen, Pav, and Leigh, for taking time out of your own busy schedules to keep SoCS going for everyone while I was away.
Please join me once again in paying tribute to three incredible bloggers!!
Is it? Can it be? Can it actually – finally – be Friday?? Because I spent ALL DAY yesterday absolutely certain that it was Friday, simply because the week had already been so. stinking. long. But now it finally is Friday! Thank. The. Mayor.
I hope you’re as happy that it’s Friday as I am. To celebrate, how about a little prompt and circumstance? Hehe.
Okay, I’ve put a lot of thought into this over the past couple of weeks, and especially once my co-guest-authors started posting, because – let’s be honest – that’s when this became real. There is one that has been hanging on my mind for about a week now, so I’m taking that as the sign that this is the direction to go. Soooo….
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “excuse.” You can use the noun or verb – or both! Enjoy!
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!!
Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions
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 or âBegin with the word âTheâ.â
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!
Greetings. I’m the second of your Linda’s Christmas Holiday Substitute Teachers. Eyes front. No hall passes.
I have a sort of preoccupation with things I don’t understand, like time and space and Black Friday and the minds of toddlers and why the English language has words like “kerfuffle” (utterly useless) but no answer for the German “schadenfreude” (I would use that word EVERY DAMN DAY). Also, Helen’s prompt gave me a certain kind of nudge in a certain kind of direction, and I find that when you feel nudged, the thing to do is nudge back, unless of course you’re a senator nudging toes in a bathroom stall at the airport.
Er, right. The prompt. I had about a thousand variations on a theme that I pondered for the prompt, from the highfalutin to the plebeian (and, see, now I’m just doing wheelies on my vocabulary bicycle since I’m playing in somebody else’s sandbox). But as intrigued as I was by some of those ideas, I ultimately came to the conclusion that simpler is better, and I, for one, could use a dose of simplicity after the week I’ve had. Let the distractions and the stresses fall away. Take a step back.
So, for this week your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is one word: “Back.” Use it however you’d like: as a standalone, as a prefix, a suffix, noun, verb, or adverb (can you tell I’m an English teacher in my daytime life?); just make sure you have fun and enjoy the words flowing onto your screen so you can share them with us!
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!!
Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions
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 or âBegin with the word âTheâ.â
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!
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.
Hello all! I’m here to fill in for Linda while she’s away and it’s our favorite day of the week… it’s the day we get our prompt for SoCS!
I actually thought of this prompt a while ago, when I first volunteered to help out, not even knowing if Linda would choose me or not. I was happy to find it hadn’t been used before and, if you’re so inclined to use it that way, it could tie in very nicely with the Christmas shopping I know you’re all busy doing right now. Well, anyone who is ahead of the game. Me? I usually wait until the weekend before. I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess.
So, for this week your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “Present.” Use it however you’d like, just make sure you have fun and enjoy the words flowing onto your screen so you can share them with us!
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!!
Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions
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 or âBegin with the word âTheâ.â
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!
For my final Team Pepper post I really wanted to find something profound to write. Something to uplift and inspire. Something that people far and wide will remember for years to come. Something from my own mind, rather than words regurgitated from the world wide web. Something barfed up from my own mouth… in a delicate way. A burp almost. But tangible. Something that my readers can latch onto and hold close to their hearts.
Here it goes.
Are you ready?
…
…
…
Get off the damned computer and go outside already! The internet isn’t real life! Real life exists when you get off your ass and live it!!!
There are times when I feel so much, I could almost make up my own language. Because nothing in English can describe what I feel. With an overwhelming sense of torture can beauty–real beauty–penetrate my mind to press tears at the backs of my eyes and make my ears ring and it’s like OH OH OH I can’t stand it and I have to look away. Or dance.
How can one be surrounded with such stuff and survive? And yet I’ll follow it to the ends of the earth; craving it, desiring to be close to it no matter the cost.
In that moment that I am there, before the beauty, in the music, I am most alive… and grieving that it will die. And I with it.
Guess what? It’s time for your Friday Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt! This week’s prompt came to me completely out of the blue – I love it when that happens!
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “sense/scents/cents,” with a bonus word this week – “sent.” Choose one, use them all or simply write whatever comes to mind- it’s up to you!
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!!
Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions
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 or âBegin with the word âTheâ.â
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!
Welcome to the Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday! Here you will find fun and excitement in blogging excellence all in the comment section… But first, we need writers!
This week’s Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “in-” Find a word that begins with the prefix “in” or use the word itself anywhere in your post. Easy!
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!!
Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions
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 or âBegin with the word âTheâ.â
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!
Thursday is the hardest day to blog for me lately. I have a major paper delivery to do on Thursdays – one free one for every house on my route, with fliers. They’re heavy, bulky, and 124 houses add up to a lot of front steps. Then I come home and nine times out of ten I have absolutely nothing to talk about because, believe it or not, delivering tomes that weigh as much as an entire collection of encyclopedias to each and every house on the block is usually uneventful. Unless you want to hear about how many cats I petted (5), or how many squirrels crossed my path, (35 1/2… don’t ask), then you’re not going to get much of anything out of me on a Thursday.
Is there a day of the week that’s more difficult, or less inspiring than all the others for you? Why do you think that is? I wanna know.
The above blather has been brought to you by Mr. Mark:
lindaghill.com 